Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 14

In no particular order, books that have caught my eye.

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Мы дзеці таве, Беларусь [My dzetsi tave, Belarusʹ] (We are your children, Belarus): A photo album of kids in Belarus, from infant to teen, doing a lot of extremely stereotypical Slavic things. In traditional dress, harvesting potatoes, singing, dancing, riding bikes, sitting with cats on top of stove, feeding chickens, peeling potatoes, riding sleds being pulled by horses or dogs. Just one page for riding skateboards & roller blades.

Agresja językowa w życiu publicznym : leksykon inwektyw politycznych, 1918-2000 / Irena Kamińska-Szmaj.
Polish: something like “Agressive language in public [something]: lexicon of political invective, 1918-2000”

“Istoricul tracţiunii feroviare din România”
Three colorful volumes (red, yellow & blue) on the history of railroads in in Romania.

A biography of Maxim Gorky. He is a mustachioed fellow; when I lived in Irkutsk there was a statue of him downtown that I thought was Stalin (also mustachioed) for a while.

Big fat book in Russian on the possible authorship of Shakespeare’s work. Who’s responsible? Everybody wants to know.

A catalogue of the Tibetan manuscripts and block prints in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciencee, by Gergely Orosz.

Миссия России : православие и социализм в ХХI веке / А.Е. Молотков.
Russian: “Mission of Russia: [Orthodox] Christianity and Socialism in the 21st Century” by A.E. Molotkov. I looked at this one and thought, ‘honestly? there is enough going on with this to write a fat book?’ and then I remembered I probably don’t know as much as I think I do.

Co dělat, když Kolja vítězí / Andrej Stankovič
Czech. Beginning of title looks like, ‘what to do’, no idea about the rest. Book copyright not the author, but Olga Stankoviča (heir). He passed away in 2001, but he’s still being published.

Oh yeah, doing this just on Fridays now.

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 12

More fun with Polish!

Here’s an English language book, published in Poland, on local adaptations and interpretations of Shakespeare. Flipping through it briefly, one case is about a Singaporean modern adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, called “Chicken Rice War,” wherein the unfortunate lovers are children of rival chicken rice vendors. Since everything is on the internet, here’s what the film’s website says: “It is in the midst of bitter rivalry, close friends and chicken rice that love begins to blossom.” http://www.mediacorpraintree.com/crw/index.htm

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So much Polish today! Here’s a book title I would reuse, in my imaginary rewriting of books based on how I think they translate: Dzień przed końcem świata, by Aleksander Jurewicz. Seems like “The Day Before the End of the World” to me. The cover features a 1940s black and white photo of a mournful little boy on a rocking horse, with a equally serious young man kneeling with an arm around the child. Perhaps it is actually a novel about WWII.

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A subject heading from a Polish book: “Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust”

That’s the thing — spend any amount of time poking around in Eastern European type things, and things start turning up about Jewish history, and the terrible things that happened to them. Not that I can keep track of all the books I’ve seen, but I can recall two or three just about the extermination of Lithuanian Jews during WWII. My supervisor, who is from Lithuania, mentioned that the financial crisis is bringing up anti-Semitic feelings there, given the stereotypical view of Jews being in charge of the financial system. Oh, and Bernie Madoff’s not helping.

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 11

Big excitement in Slavic cataloging! I found a book which is missing its last 14 pages. Goodness gracious! It will go back to the head Slavic librarian who orders everything, presumably it will be sent back as a defective copy, and exchanged for a complete copy. This is serious drama!

Okay, not very serious, especially compared to the trials and tribulations I hear the media ladies discussing (half of which have to do with cataloging, half of which have to do with their teenage children or aging parents). But my supervisor praised my eagle eye, and said I should get paid $20 an hour, which offer was quickly rescinded in the face of budget realities.

Budget realities, in fact, are pretty grim. I’ve also been told that incremental raises for student workers (every 150 hours you get a few extra cents!) are suspended for a year, and heard plenty of talk about how many people will be cut from library staff. No one has disappeared from the section I can keep track of, but there is lots of worried conversations about how they couldn’t possibly give up a specialist — “no one else can do the things I do” sort of thing.

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The non-financial sad part of this job: seeing really interesting novels that I shouldn’t even bother trying to read because it would take me years to get through 510 pages of modern Russian fiction. I only read short story collections, which are infinitely more manageable, but still get submerged by school work. The best story length is under ten pages, really.

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 10

…and we’re back after spring break, with some disturbing news about linguistic geography: vowel distribution across Europe is strikingly irregular.

Exhibit one. Bosnian book title. “Mrtva trka”
Exhibit two. Lithuanian book title. “Lotynu-Lietuviu”
Exhibit three. Estonian book title. “Eesti Korporatsioonide Liit”

Not to mention that the Poles are hogging all the Zs.
Exhibit four. Polish book title. “Peregrynacje do źródeł : twórczość pisarzy Lubelszczyzny od połowy XIX wieku po współczesność “