May Reading

Seeing as how I successfully managed to finish my last book club selection on time, I'm now going to post my initial thoughts on our newest book for the month of May: Atonement.

Shocking, since I haven't yet cracked open the book. In fact, I don't even have the book in my possession! This month, I'm leaning towards a digital read. Yup, I'm going to go ahead and purchase it online and read the book on my Sony Reader. Either that, or see if I can find a PDF of it for free online and then read it on my Sony Reader. Either way works for me :)

Without having read the book, I'm going to compare titles since I saw the movie twice now - once on the plane on my move back from France to the U.S. in 2008, and then on Netflix sometime last year.

When living in France, a book (and movie) called Reviens-Moi kept popping up everywhere and I really was interested in picking it up at a French librairie (don't be fooled, that's a book store, not a library). Unfortunately I never actually went out and purchased the book or saw the movie in French.

Oddly enough, a few weeks later I went back home and lo and behold Antonement was showing on the flight! It wasn't until I flipped through the airplane's magazine, that I noticed the movie poster was the same exact image as the French book I'd been eyeing:

Which brings us to the topic of translation. In French, the book/movie is entitled "Return to Me," while in English, we're all very familiar with the title "Atonement." I don't want to ruin it if you haven't seen/read it but I just want to discuss the subletities between the translation and the original.

The English title makes the movie seem about a wrong-doing throughout the film that eventually is confessed. Whereas the French title sounds like the movie will follow the pair of lovers, who at some point become separated, and their journey back together.

If you've seen the film or read the book, it's amazing how different each of these storylines are, and how one language chooses to make one storyline the focus of the plot instead of the other. Honestly, I don't know what to think! I'm not sure which storyline I find more predominant. I'm definitely going to have to be aware of the two while reading and hopefully come to a consensus as to which should be the title!

If you'd like to join us, go right ahead, the more the merrier (and also, more engaged the conversations can be) :)

Happy reading, everyone!