When we were in Mongolia, I finally got around to finishing the gorgeous book that M. gave me for my birthday (*cough* two years ago *cough*), Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller.

Why don’t English speakers read more books originally written in different languages? It’s something I didn’t considered before dating a European. Almost every other language reads Shakespeare (many countries read him more than Australian students do!), yet the only time I ever read authors that weren’t British, American, or Canadian  was in my French classes, in their original French. We English-speakers miss a huge chunk of the world’s literature by ignoring translations.

Anyway, back to Calvino. (more…)