Tag: China
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Just Finished: Silver Repetition
After an extremely tough start with terrible metaphors and aggravating characters, this became a sparse, sad exploration of an immigrant family. What happened with that first 40 pages!? I do not recommend simply on the basis of that lopsided introductory section. From the publisher: In Silver Repetition, Lily Wang’s endless, perfect loops of memory and dream,…
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Strolling through a few books at once
I’ve had trouble reading books over the last few weeks, despite hanging around bookstores and book festivals. I’ve been reading articles and stories online like mad, trying to get my attention span back, and it’s kept me from scrolling too terribly. Though I will say, the latest issue of the Paris Review starts so terribly…
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Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo
I quite adored this book, which follows a young woman’s life in Beijing as she pursues a career in the film industry. My only sadness was how short the book felt. It was illustrated, but many of the photos were a bit too small to maintain any clarity. But I immediately fell in with the…
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The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
I read Razor’s Edge in early college and found it to be a deeply thoughtful book — paired with Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, which completed the duo of recommendations from my aunt one summer. Weird combination. But anyway. I was malleable and 19. I like Maugham’s writing style. It’s so flowery and obsessively moral. This is…