(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

HEY YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE?

If they had told me, at the start of this REALLY LONG book I am reading which is full of HARD TO DEFINE PORTUGUESE RELIGIOUS TERMS

That at the end of the book

THERE WAS A GLOSSARY.

I'm thirty pages from the end and have finally discovered what an eiru is, for the love of Pete.

Comments

[888mph.livejournal.com]

...

Dude...

I have no freaking clue what the hell an eiru is.

[megaleena.livejournal.com]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+an+eiru

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Hey smartass :D Google it for yourself and see if anywhere on the first page you get the answer "a ceremonial scepter".

[megaleena.livejournal.com]

I can't be bothered, you just told me it was a ceremonial sceptre ;)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

LOL at this thread.

Come on, you're a creative guy, surely some of the definitions you extracted from context were at least ... imaginative?

(I totally know where you're coming from, though.)

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I thought it was some kind of whip. :D There's a lot of horse imagery in this book.

[888mph.livejournal.com]

What book is it?

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

The War of the Saints, by Jorge Amado. The religion discussed in it is mostly folk religion out of Brazil. Very difficult to google with any degree of success.

[888mph.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. That portuguese. :P

[888mph.livejournal.com]

Let me rephrase that for you: hey, I'm Portuguese and I'm also an Historian and I never heard of that word. I can only imagine how confusing that must have been for Sam. :-|

[kaesa.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is easily the least helpful set of Google results I've ever seen.

I'm impressed.

ETA: Maybe the Cafe should Googlebomb the ceremonial scepter meaning, for future Googlers. It's only responsible.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

ALLOW ME TO SHARE MY KNOWLEDGE WITH YOU

It is a ceremonial scepter of oxtail or horsetail.

[888mph.livejournal.com]

In my language? Are you sure?

[celandineb.livejournal.com]

Being a (semi-former) academic, I cultivated the habit of looking at the front and back of books to see if there's useful information there. Doesn't happen often (especially in fiction), but enough that I keep checking.

Has discovering the glossary helped you retrospectively?

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Not especially. By the end I was coasting on a combination of context and apathy :D

[sabra-n.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, so glad I read secondary sources (like Lewis Hyde's The Gift) before touching Mauss.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

For some odd reason that reminds me of when I was 13 and visiting my cousin (same age), and he went on and on about how crazy difficult a book I was reading must be because it needed a glossary. It was Dune, and I'd hardly looked at it because from what I recall things generally made sense in context.

From the sounds of it I'd have no clue what an eiru is without help though.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Yeah. From what I recall, I was surprised anyone had thought it needed a glossary. Hints at pronunciation, maybe. Sometimes I forget how spoonfed "regular" readers can expect to be. (Whatever that is.)

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I do wish more books had a cast of characters list though. (And then there's the books where a family tree can be mega-important to keep track of what the heck is going on and why. . .)

[illariy.livejournal.com]

... and that is why I check out the end of books, the beginning/foreword and all the other interesting corners before I decide to ~engage~ in reading the main part. (In other words, I would've found the glossary but its existence would likely have turned me off from reading the book entirely. :P)

[foxxydancr.livejournal.com]

Speaking of glossaries, and magical realism, have you ever read Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars? I think you might really dig it. It's a novel written as three inter-related encyclopedias. the more dynamically you read it (moving between the three in different orders instead of cover to cover) the more interesting it gets.

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, like the Tough Guide to Fantasyland?

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I have not, but now I'm intrigued. I do like unusual structures like that, though it sounds REALLY HARD TO READ.

[foxxydancr.livejournal.com]

You can read it cover to cover and it's still interesting, but you're aware that there are pieces you don't have yet. I think I want to read it again but I need to like, keep notes or put colored post its on the entries I've read, or something. But it provokes some serious disorientation and the translation keeps some fantastic word usage and phrasing. It also beautifully interweaves the real historical issue of the Khazar Polemic and some real historical figures with fictional elements. I suspect you might dig it, and if you do read it, I'd love to hear what you think.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Early in college, I decided to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on my own, in a very difficult Middle English dialect. This was a long time ago, long before the Middle English Dictionary went online.

I was probably 2/3 of the way through when I chanced across the glossary. I felt so stupid.

If books actually in Modern English are going to use specialized terms, they should put the glossary in front rather than in the back!

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I'm good with having it in the back, but they should probably have a table of contents that mentions there is a glossary.

[aige09.livejournal.com]

See now, I would have read the whole novel, and made up the meanings based on the scant amount of Maori I actually understand - which is surprisingly a lot, but only sometimes - and then found the glossary, and the whole story would suddenly have taken on new meanings, or actually made sense, depending on how intelligent I was feeling that day.

But that's what you get for being a Kiwi.

[jannamaxwell.livejournal.com]

That exact thing happened to me the first time I read Trainspotting. I had everything pretty much figured out by the time I got to the end, but it would have been useful in the beginning.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I recently read Under an English Heaven, the story of a B17 bomber crew during WWII. On finishing the book, I flicked back to the front and was reminded that oh yeah, there's a detailed cutaway diagram explaining all the parts of the plane and showing where each crew member had his station, where their guns were etc.

Would have been reeeeally helpful if I'd had that to refer to whilst reading the bloody book. But I have no-one to blame but myself - I saw the diagram before I started reading, and just completely forgot about it for the entirety of the book.

*fail*

[minkrose]

Oddly enough, I recently went looking for a glossary in my own book and couldn't find it. I assumed it would be there - and it WAS there, but it was buried in a bunch of other character descriptions and historical situation explanations (fantasy world).

I knew the author well enough to know she would have a glossary, I just wish I'd found it sooner!

Doesn't help that my other book is using some kind of South African language and there is NOT a glossary. Might be because it's an ebook, I'm not sure. It was also confusing to have two different books with different unknown/slang languages in them!

[(Anonymous)]

yeah, I did something similar with "Dune." But whenever the glossary definition matched the definition I had guessed I felt extremely vindicated.