It's Monday, What are You Reading? [7]

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

 

Last week I was slammed with interpreting homework.  Honestly overloaded.  Cramming vocab and a little luck did the trick though - I got nine out of ten on the newspaper quiz and a perfect 30 on the quick response vocab test, huzzah!  Sadly with all the vocab going on I didn't have much time to work on my actual interpreting.

This week's class brought sensei #3 and... meh.  First knock against him - he's as much as a translator as an interpreter.  We were interpreting on the spot and after he'd be like, "when I mused over this script at my house I came up with this translation...".  We don't have than luxury!  Comparing our on the spot interpretation to your crafted translation isn't fair!

Second knock - his English is the worst out of the three teachers.  Don't get me wrong, he's still gosh darn good, but it sounds like he's never lived for any length of time abroad.  A bunch of his phrasing sounded odd and he punched letters in weird ways.

Third knock - I felt like a bug under a glass when we were interpreting.  At his teacher station he can listen to any of the student mics, and I get the impression that the other teachers click around, getting a taste of everyone's delivery.  But this teacher listened to me, from start to finish, for two of the long exercises.  Afterwards he was like, "I was listening to Karla-san and found xyz interesting...".  Kinda creepy.

He seems to be a nice guy, though, and the class atmosphere was definitely more jovial than usual.  He also had the decency to only call on me when I had a decent interpretation, hehe.

Tonight The Artist and I are meeting up with some of his old Art School Friends for dinner.  There will be an American there who doesn't speak a lick of Japanese so I may get some real life interpreting practice!

Read Last Week

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth  ★★★★★

Holy cow. An instant recommend to anyone who likes dystopia. I'm sure other reviewers on Goodreads will do a better job explaining the plot so I'll leave them to it.

The good:

- it didn't feel like a YA novel, at least not in the annoying ways I've come to expect
- the heroine's journey of self discovery is realistic and gripping
- the world is beautifully imagined

Think of this book as a well rounded action movie.  Don't go poking in the corners, don't go digging deep for symbolism, just enjoy the amazing ride.

Being YA any steamy scenes to come in later books will surely be tamer than I care for... but when the story is this good, who cares?

on Goodreads

 What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro  ★★★★

I found this book to be a very through, un-sensationalistic look at body language. There are no outrageous claims ("Determine if your husband is cheating by studying his eyebrows!!") and Navarro goes out of his way to reinforce that body language can't stand in for a lie detector. After reading the section on hands, especially, I became more aware of my own movements and what they might be communicating to the people around me.

The writing style is clear and easy to understand without being overly casual. I loved that mentions of research were always cited.  Pictures and interesting stories from Navarro's time as an FBI agent pepper each chapter.

If you want to become very good at reading nonverbal tells you can do so by diligently studying this book but even the casual reader has much to gain from its pages.

Currently Reading

 

The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg

I only have one more day on this library book and there are 300 screens left, oh no!  I'm going to turn around and take it right out again as I'm loving every page.

 

 

 

 

 

Next Up

 

Not much change here:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt
Better than Beauty by H. Valentine
A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Small Space Organizing - 2 out of 2 (one month wait)

Dreaming of Mr. Darcy - 3 out of 3 (six weeks)

Desire Unchained (Demonica #2) - 5 out of 6 (six weeks)

How Will You Measure Your Life? - 17 out of 23 (two months)

Halfway to the Grave - 9 out of 16 (six weeks)

Never Seduce a Scot - 4 out of 43 (one week)

The Angel - 4 out of 10 (three weeks)

Dark Lover - 7 out of 18 (two weeks)

Laid Bare - 2 out of 13 (one week)

The Siren - 1 out of 3 (next!)

How to Be a Woman - 90 out of 95 (six weeks)