Don’t the Fans Read Their Favorite Books?

Cover via Amazon

When The Hunger Games movie came out, there was a number of very disappointed and very loud fans, who complained about a certain character being played by an African-American actress. I will not repeat their very racist and very malevolent comments; what I will say is that they claimed to be great fans of the books, and yet they managed to overlook the fact that particular character was indeed a 12-year-old African-American girl. And the young actress who played the part was simply adorable.

 

 

 

 

Similar thing happened recently, although on a somewhat lesser scale. Cast for the City of Bones was announced, and the role of Magnus Bane, the 800-year-old (but looking as if he was 19) gay warlock will be played by Godfrey Gao. Once again, some so-called fans complain because the actor is Asian. Once again, the so-called fans manage to overlook the fact that Magnus Bane is part Asian (although he is actually part Indonesian, and Mr. Gao is Taiwanese).

 

 

 

 

Godfrey Gao

How do they manage to overlook that? I haven’t read The Hunger Games, so I can’t say anything about that (although people who did read it assure me that it was very clear the adorable 12-year-old girl was African-American), but I translated one of The Mortal Instruments books, and Magnus Bane was very clearly part Asian. And even if they did manage to overlook that fact, why can’t they just laugh at themselves, something like “Silly me, how come I didn’t notice that about my favorite character in my favorite book?” and move on? Why spilling so much hatred all over social networking websites? Why telling all the world they failed to notice a very obvious fact from the book they say they keep rereading, and why showing off their racism?

Frankly, I don’t get it. Do you?

 

 

 

 

My 2011

I did some work before I fell asleep, really!

This has been a tricky year for me. At the very beginning of it, I was left without job; not only was I left without my income (which wasn’t much to begin with, but still better than nothing), I was also no longer writing for a living. Although, truth be told, I was more concerned about the income.

Some start of a year.

A friend helped me, she found a guy who needed a book translated from Croatian to English, a crime novel. I’ve never translated an entire novel before that, but hey, there’s a first time for everything, and I made it. After that, a publishing house hired me to translate Graceling by Kristin Cashore and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. More work, yay! And then, there was translating The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman with a killing deadline — a new challenge, and a great experience; I’ll be translating another book by Mr Newman, the one which nobody dared to publish.

So, within a year, I have translated four books — is it good, bad, average? I’m not sure.

I’ve also managed to finish a short story collection (ghost stories), I hope it will get published sometime next year.

Not to forget: I’ve written some reviews for Suite101, and one of those reviews helped a book get translated into Polish. I’m really proud of that.

All the time, there’s the economy crisis (although, there’s always some sort of a crisis here), lousy health mostly due to stress (both me and SO).

Did I do well this year? Or bad? Something in the middle? I don’t know, but we survived. I guess that counts for something.

What was your year like?