Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

'In a few short months, I had gone from a friendly, optimistic, confident woman to a confused girl with a nervous stammer who second-guessed every thought that went through her head and rationalized every bad decision she made.'

(The full title of this book is Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, so I'm sure you'll understand why I wanted to shorten it a little bit.)

Hello! I've been reading too many books and reviewing too few lately, so my apologies if these feel a bit short right now.

So yeah, I totally read a book written by a Playboy Bunny. It was a litle awkward to make small talk about to people. But with Hugh Hefner's recent passing, I started thinking - I don't actually know all that much about life at the Playboy Mansion. I don't think Holly Madison is the best source of information there is, but for my purposes her book was pretty decent. I never watched The Girls Next Door (I must've been too young?) so I'm pretty sure I missed some of the 'while that was happening, this was going on behind the scenes' stuff. That's okay though.

Down the Rabbit Hole is a memoir of Holly Madison, starting before her introduction to the Playboy Mansion and following her through her seven years there, from a visitor to Hugh Hefner's number one girlfriend. Finally, there's her exploits and reinvention afterwards.

Of course, there's many ways in which to view this book. On one hand, she comes across as very likeable and her motivations understandable - she wrote this book herself, after all. But on the other hand, there's a strong undercurrent of why would you do that and why would you stay. Because of that, I had to spend a considerable amount of time justifying her actions while reading the book, just like she did to herself.

Another problem with this book was that since it's an autobiography, there's a lot of 'all the other girls were so mean to me even though I'm nothing but kind!!' which had me thinking there might actually be two sides to the story - but only one that gets put on paper. It's a very gossipy book and almost everyone other than Holly herself gets dragged through the dirt. Hence, it would be really interesting to hear what someone else had to say about all of this...

This book felt a little bit too long, and I have to admit that sometimes I was also confused about the timeline. I'll mark that down as 'there wasn't much to say about that year' but on the other hand I felt like the book didn't tell me all that much of the everyday, which I definitely wanted more of anyway. Ultimately, it was an enterntaining experience I found myself picking up every so often, but it won't change my life or anything.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 48: A book about something which you know only a little bit. Kinda obvious I suppose.

Holly Madison has since published a second book called The Vegas Diaries. I might have to give that one a look at least because I feel like a kind of know her now. I'm hoping it'll be like checking an old acquintance's Facebook or something.

Pollomuhku ja posityyhtynen - Jaana Kapari-Jatta

'Suomentaja ei käännäkään sanoja vaan ajatuksia.'

'A Finnish translator doesn't, after all, translate words but thoughts.'

Heyo!

Pollomuhku ja posityyhtynen ('Bubotuber and Pigwidgeon') was my reading marathon number two book number one - a book by the Finnish translator of Harry Potter on her perhaps biggest and probably most influential work to date; translating this beloved series from beginning to end (including The Cursed Child and other stuff like that too).

This book answers most of the questions the translator often gets asked: how do you translate all those names, how does the fame of the series feel, does she miss them now that it's fin(n)ished... And it's really quite interesting. Even though I've always comprehended that someone does indeed translate all of these books, I've never fully realised just how much work goes into it. I'll be sure to appreciate it more in the future and maybe even read more translated works.

It's clear from the way Kapari-Jatta talks about her work that she has a strong passion for it. The only book I've actually read with her translation (since I've happily read Harry Potters in English) is Holes by Louis Sachar. I would say that's a good translation as well. Pollomuhku talks very in depth (sometimes too much so) about the creative process of the translator as she attempts to understand the mind of the author and the complexities of the world they have created. She also really thought deep and hard about how to translate all those imaginary words while preserving their spirit. This is especially important since these books started out as children's books and you can't reasonably expect every Finnish child to know enough English to make the connections.

Another thing I thought was cool: translating hints. If you've read these books before, you'll probably know that J.K. Rowling adds a ton of hints in her books about what will happen in the future instalments. The translator talks about how the hints need to be of the same quality as originally - not more or less clear. It's another thing I've mostly taken for granted, translating these things skillfully, but they do take a lot of thought, especially in Rowling's case.

I might even have given this a five but sometimes it just trailed off a bit too much and repeated the same things many times. For a (by default Finnish skills are required) Harry Potter fan interested in languages I would recommend this without hesitation regardless!

Also something to appreciate: this cover was made by Mika Launis, who also made all the Finnish Harry Potter covers! I really like his work and I think these two people definitely made the Finnish editions of Harry Potter what they are.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in a category I've been dreading filling because it's so niche.... 25: A book where nobody dies! Yay!!!