#BBAW
Book Blogger
Appreciation Week
2016
Interview Day
Day 2 Interview day
I was paired with Nat, one of the three bloggers at
Here are the questions Nat asked me, and my answers:
1. How long have you been blogging? What made you start?
I have been seriously book blogging since September 2010 – yeah, getting old!
I have always loved reading and talking about books.
One day, I discovered evolution had produced a rare species, book bloggens. I was overjoyed to discover there were not far from me, just a few computer keys away, and that I could communicate with them in a common language. So we started talking, and one day, I decided to join their lively community. I have not regretted it once.
So when I can’t talk books with people around me, I can always go and find other book bloggens members. Through them, I have discovered zillions of books I would never have heard about otherwise.
2. Has your translating work changed your reading habits? Are you more aware of other translators? Do you think in how you’d translate something while your reading?
Not translating in general, which I have been doing for decades now.
But translating fiction, which I started just a couple of years ago, has been changing my reading habits: to improve (there’s always room for improvement in that type of thing, just like in creating and writing, right?), I now again spend more time reading in French, not just classics (I’m in the last volume of In Search of Lost Time by Proust!), but also very recently published French novels. Thank God for the existence of Netgalley.fr!And I follow a few translators’ blogs. I just discovered a new translation in French by Marie Darrieussecq of A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf. I’m studying it to check how she rendered this classic and get some special insights.
Ah! You guessed it! Yeah, sometimes it’s a pain, because I get caught sometimes into wondering how I would translate this or that.
3. Is there a book you wish more people loved as much as you do?
Yes, one of my most favorite French books, but maybe it needs a new translation in English – it was published in French in 1913. Click on the cover to read my thoughts about it.
4. How do you keep track of other book blogs?
Some through email subscription, but most through Bloglovin’, the best replacement I’ve found after the sad demise of Google Reader. According to Bloglovin’, I’m following 451 blogs (I know, I’m nuts) as of today – but probably more by the end of #BBAW!!
5. Do you have any tips for someone who has recently started blogging or is thinking about starting a blog?
- Visit many other book blogs
- and comment
- reply to all the comments you receive
- visit those who visit you and try to leave a comment on one of their posts
- WHILE remaining who you are
- and doing whatever you want on YOUR blog and how YOU want to do it
- have fun, no pressure
6. And, finally, do you really hate Jane Austen? Why? I’m genuinely curious. Was it a bad experience in high-school, or something about her writing doesn’t resonate with you.
Yes, I really can’t stand her books.
I did all my studies in France, and she is not on the high school curriculum in France, as far as I can remember.
BUT I had to study her extensively for a super hard study program at university level (a super insane thing that does not exist here in the US, something like the toughest of the toughest Ivy League type of thing if you wish).
That’s not the reason I don’t like her writing (I love John Milton whom I studied during that same program). The reason It’s the social milieu she describes that gets to me, and these girls in a milieu that’s too protected.
Words And Peace 