I feel like I’m going a little bit crazy, so hoping someone can help me out with this. I’m reading the French and English at the same time - I’m a translator so I’m interested in that comparison. I have the Global Publishers ebook edition, and the English is the 1946 Stuart Gilbert translation as far as I can tell.

There is a HUGE chunk missing at the end of the English version of part 2 chapter 2: that edition ends the chapter with “I even tore off splinters from my plank bed and sucked them.” Then it goes right into the same opening of chapter 3 as in the French.

But there’s a whole piece missing, about 4.5 pages - the section that discusses memory and the newspaper article about the Czech man is entirely missing. I also searched to see whether it was placed elsewhere in the book but couldn’t find it.

What’s happening here?? Is anyone else reading this English edition, and does your chapter 2 end that way?!

Edited to add that I found another instance of this abridgment later on: a full 8 pages were cut from the end of Part 2, Chapter 4. I think that one is more plausibly for political reasons, and I’ll make a separate post for it!

Hello, lovely people of PB!

I'm once again in need of recommendations, and I thought who better to ask than the PB community!

The theme of my next book club is "the sea" and I don't know any books that fits it 😭

What's the best book you've read that would fit it ?

I do have a few restrictions: I do not want romance or thrillers, as I really do not like those 2 genres but I'm open to everything else 😁

If possible, it would really help me out if this book has been translated into French, as it is the language in which the book clubs will take place. But don't worry if you don't know if it's been translated, I'll check it out myself!

pls dont get me wrong i am so grateful to be doing my MA in literature and i am always so excited for it, but it is sometimes mentally demanding to the point where i get burnt out from reading and decide to doomscroll instead to wind down from something that i used to do to wind down. which is so ironic bc i literally enrolled in this program bc i love to read.

all these books ive been reading that i hear about all the time are so great and i see their merit as to why theyre in the canon but i guess what takes the fun and engagement out of the books is the fact that its graded and u have to interact with the work based on a rubric and a prescribed set of theories??? if i had the liberty i would genuinely go crazy—i know i did when i was assigned earnest hemingway's old man and the sea with specific instructions from the prof of "no instruction." but say for example when i was required to read olga tokarczuk's books of jacob i was given two other books as my theories to interpret the novel and bc of that i just gave up on the book after part 2 😔

and with productivity-signalling by requiring journal publication for graduation and my professors making us academic mules by churning out at least 1 academic paper per month so we have a lot of work to choose from to submit to different academic journals (at least in my country), it gets to a point where u wonder if "passion" and "love for reading" is a valid reason to enroll in a masters in literature, or is stamina a more sustainable source of motivation 😕

luc is so full of himself i think. why would you think a buzzfeed-adjacent would write an article—no, a listicle about an 80s rock singer's son? my guy u r not that important 😭