Reading progress update: I've read 1 out of 741 pages.

The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir, H.M. Parshley, Deirdre Bair

I feel like I have woefully neglected my efforts to read more Camus this year and also to finally read de Beauvoir's magnum opus. 

 

Well, this is my start to it. I may be some time. 

 

Also, I know that we had a discussion last year about the translations that are available of this book and that there seem to be two prevalent translations available in English: a newer translation which has been criticised for the translators taking some liberties with the meaning of words, and this one by H.M. Parshley (first published in 1953) which is often described as being "abridged". 

 

While I do not have the original French version at hand for comparison, the foreword by Parshley states the following with respect to any alterations:

"At the publisher's request I have, as editor, occasionally added an explanatory word or two (especially in connection with existentialist terminology) and provided a few additional footnotes and bibliographic data which I thought might be to the reader's interest; and I have also done some cutting and condensation here and there with a view to brevity, chiefly in reducing the extent of the author's illustrative material, especially in certain of her quotations from other writers. Practically all such modifications have been made with the author's express permission, passage by passage."

I found this somewhat reassuring.