Why the lack of novels in VietNam?

[thehunterxmaster]

Ok, I have just been back here for over a month, so I went to bookstores,which have foreign novels. After checking those places, I felt dissapointed. I mean, how the hell there is no Robin Hobb's novel or Mistborn or Lovecraft's novel, let alone Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast or Robert E. Howard's Conan?

When I checked bookstores on Nguyen Hue, Le Loi or Tran Hung Dao, all I saw was what, Harry Potter and ah Dan Brown, Game of Thrones (and they haven't had book 3 onward @_@), some Stephen King novel (yet they didn't have The Dark Tower series), well there's LOTR, there's some Shanara or Eragon in the translated novel, but they didn't add much more to be honest. Why the hell there are no Moorcock, no Howard, no Lovecraft, no Leiber, no Asimov or even newer author like Hobb, Sanderson, Erikson, Mieville or even Martin.

Am I the only one who feel sad for this lack? (end of my rant, thank you for reading it)

 

[Mr.Garfield]

There are Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solokhov, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dumas, Balzac, Hugo, Maupassant, Thackeray, Walter Scott, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Jack London, O.Henry, Marquez...
These are on my bookshelf alone, I could list a few more but you get the idea. So I wouldn't call it lacking.

But I under you are talking about some modern sci-fi and fantasy right? That I agree, although I couldn't care less.

 

[cruelshade]

Well, they would publish novels that sell rather than those that would rule the bookshelves for a millenia.

 

[logean]

I don't think it's lacking, just that you don't know what kind of book you're looking for
Even when I was in Switzerland and UK, finding a book in a library could take times for scouting, Blackwell and other bookstores might have what I want, but finding a book isn't easy even in Western country, I ordered from Amazon, done

 

[CyberTuxedo]

Ok, I have just been back here for over a month, so I went to bookstores,which have foreign novels. After checking those places, I felt dissapointed. I mean, how the hell there is no Robin Hobb's novel or Mistborn or Lovecraft's novel, let alone Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast or Robert E. Howard's Conan?

When I checked bookstores on Nguyen Hue, Le Loi or Tran Hung Dao, all I saw was what, Harry Potter and ah Dan Brown, Game of Thrones (and they haven't had book 3 onward @_@), some Stephen King novel (yet they didn't have The Dark Tower series), well there's LOTR, there's some Shanara or Eragon in the translated novel, but they didn't add much more to be honest. Why the hell there are no Moorcock, no Howard, no Lovecraft, no Leiber, no Asimov or even newer author like Hobb, Sanderson, Erikson, Mieville or even Martin.

Am I the only one who feel sad for this lack? (end of my rant, thank you for reading it)

Honestly, I couldn't stand most recent translations and would rather print and read the original. And it is much cheaper anyway (horizontal, narrow border, size 9, 3 column, spacing 1.2x). Besides, puns and wordplays are usually lost in translation (e.g. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes or Ton-Tongue Toffee)

Anyway this is GLNN, so I couldn't understand why are you complaining about translated versions