Memoirs of an Ass

[travisluis]

Part II of this essay is also great: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/14/memoirs-of-an...

[npsimons]

This review reminded me of "How to Read a Book", specifically the getting more out of it with each reading. It might be hard to fathom with most of today's mediocre fiction, but there's a reason some books are classics and end up on lists of what books someone would take to a desert island.

[noobly]

Great book! Adler really changed my perspective quickly in that short read and addressed many problems I've encountered. Imo, it was rather lacking in the techniques for reading fiction, and Nabokov has some excellent insight in this domain in his "Lectures on Literature" series (which I have admittedly only yet read small portions of).

There's an algorithm[0] I stumbled upon that I refer to often that was derived from Adler's book, might as well share it.

0: https://pastebin.com/wGFMM1pZ

[raister]

this opus should be included in https://standardebooks.org/

[sevensor]

Sold. There's an English translation on Project Gutenberg, under the name The Golden Asse. I'm going to give it a look.

[freefal]

That's the version from 1566. It's readable, but requires some extra effort to parse due to style, antiquated words and antiquated spelling.

[apo]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1666

[ginko]

I can really recommend the book. It's a lot of fun. Arguably one of the first picaresque novels.

[wazoox]

I have some trouble understanding so much effort given to reading 8 different translations, and not giving the original text a try. Latin isn't so hard, really.

[qsymmachus]

Mhmm, sure thing pal.

I studied Latin for five years before I read the Golden Ass. It's not a straightforward text.

[gugagore]

What do you mean when you say a natural language isn't that hard? Surely it depends on which languages you know already.

[mwfunk]

Well if that's not a humblebrag then I don't know what is. Learning any natural language (especially an ancient, complicated, and dead one) takes tremendous effort. It's not some trivial thing to do like going to med school or climbing Mt. Everest or something.

[chamilto]

You casually read literature written in Latin?

[andyford]

oops. one of the homepage links points to their dev site http://theparisreview.tierradev.com/interviews/6806/the-art-...

[pvinis]

Memoirs of an Arse sounds better. :D