Do you know who should be the next Translator in Residence at the U of Iowa? Tell them to apply!

What is the right descriptor for the Sam Konstas lip curl? Sneer?

Beyond a Boundary is an incredible book!

That was quick…

#AusvInd Wikipedia’s entry 😂

Ouch! That ball must’ve hurt more than Virat’s shoulder charge…

I can’t wait for the many many fan videos subtitling what Sam Konstas is muttering to himself as he faces down Bumrah, Siraj, and now Akash Deep too…

And that’s 50!

Cricket is an Aristotelian drama, with unities of time, place, and action. And action reveals character. Welcome to the stage, Sam Konstas: an instant major antagonist in the Jasprit Bumrah cycle.

So it turns out China Miéville’s latest was co-authored by some guy called Keanu Reeves. Kinda fun. Best enjoyed after a grading marathon in front of your father in law’s wood stove.

Reading: The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin. Vibe: “Morning came in a thousand thousand minute gradations of blue-white upon blue-white.” Genre play: clever. Beautiful sentences: many. Body count: high. Reminds me of: The Red Dog by Willem Anker, trans. Michiel Heyns.

Breyten Breytenbach: a masterful poet, jailed for his politics, who reimagined South Africa The celebrated South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach has died at 85. He used his art to fight for justice for marginalised people throughout his life.

theconversation.com/breyten-brey...

Absolutely! There were some eyebrows raised when Shukri declared that Stubbs will be batting at 3 in the foreseeable future, with the semi-informed mouthing off about “aggressive style” and “T20 hit & gig stuff,” completely ignoring his first class cred. Now it’s plain to see he’s the real deal.

Three more entries in the burgeoning micro-genre of novels with translator protagonists: Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies (already a mainstay in our undergrad courses); Shuang-zi Yang’s
Taiwan Travelogue, trans. Lin King; and Szilvia Monar’s The Nursery. Always eager to learn about more books like this!

Beat by a pug called “Vito”. We was robbed.

Perhaps there’s a third 7ft identical brother? Duan, Marco & Jensen Jansen.

The Zit won best in group!

A hound watching the hound group. Game recognizes game.

I’m kinda into the Ibizan Hound this year. Best in breed is called “The Zit”.

Jansen’s 7/13 was quite something. The commentators really couldn’t keep up. Pollock was still complaining about his lines in his first over after he’d already taken 3 wickets…

Legs, too, is gripped by the dog show. But not the toy breeds…

Every year we watch the National Dog Show on Txgiving, as if live. Perhaps the essence of sport spectatorship is in its unscripted live nature, which is why watching cricket highlights is never really satisfying. But this does not apply to the doggies… I’d watch that absurd Maltese strut anytime.

Yes, please!

Picking on potential? I’ve been overlooked for younger academics with “potential” in my time, but at least in academia they can push these promising princelings toward success: pre-tenure post-docs, low teaching loads, book subventions, sabbaticals, mentorship, etc. But all that’s just not cricket.

Thanksgiving break here, so, of course, I watched most of the IPL auction. The Rajasthan Royals bought a 13-year-old player, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, for around $130k (for 10 weeks of work). Some questions: Locker room teachers? Child labor laws? Allowed to face Joffra Archer in the nets? Night games?

Breyten Breytenbach (1939-2024). My first love in poetry. The first writer who compelled me to translate (so that my English-speaking high school friends could understand). A brilliant, fearless unicum of a man.

Looks like a great book. Only wish I knew about it before teaching the art module in my Congo grad course this semester.

Check out the new issue of Exchanges! exchanges.uiowa.edu/f24spirit-fu...

Taiwan Travelogue - National Book Foundation May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no...

for anyone keeping track, this is the second year in a row that the National Book Award for Translated Literature has gone to a novel translated by an exophonic translator

it's almost like this is a good thing that publishers should be more receptive to

www.nationalbook.org/books/taiwan...

Ok. Can I claim “second-biggest fan” then?