Books

For historical content, this book is strong, and it effectively forms a man-on-the-ground narrative from the battles of the Chosin Reservoir campaign of the Korean War. But considered purely on writing quality, it's only decent. For instance, the author has a strange and persistent love of comma-splicing clauses that are nowhere near full sentences. I can accept it as a stylistic quirk, but it makes for uneven reading.

First Hemingway I’ve read in a good long while. The stereotype is that he writes lots of short sentences, but I don’t think that’s true. He likes writes a lot of direct descriptive sentences, but also goes hog wild joining them together into the long run on that are expressive in the way poetry is: dense with imagery, occasionally wandering into philosophical speculation.

I was holding out hope that the ending would not be sad, but it was, and abruptly, viciously so.

I felt a little disappointed that the main plot was ultimately all in Paul Berlin's imagination. Yet there were clues throughout the book, such as in Paul's thoughts to himself while in the observation post, that the soldiers had successfully returned from their search for Cacciato. So I knew ahead of time that in some way they had to have "returned" to Vietnam. I guess I was just holding out hope that all the fantastic events of the book would have really happened.

Enjoyable, but I felt the plot wasn't fully-formed, and I didn't like that things just petered out into epistolary epilogue fragments at the end.

This book was valuable even though I'd already read Under the Black Flag and The Republic of Pirates. Dolin focuses on piracy's effects on the eastern seaboard of colonial-era America, which the other books only covered in passing as necessary.

For instance, from The Republic of Pirates I knew the basic outline of Henry Avery's attack on Muslim treasure fleets off the coast of India, but I never knew that the Mughal Empire's outcry over that attack, transmitted to the British East India Company and from there to the Crown, directly led to an Act of Parliament which materially contributed to the decline of piracy in its Golden Age. I also didn't know that there was a thriving pirate base in Madagascar involved in both the slave trade and the transport of pirates to and from the New World.

I liked this even more than The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

The autobiography of Joe Bonanno, formerly the head of one of New York's criminal "Five Families." Worth reading for extensive discussion of how the Sicilian Tradition is not limited to the cliches of mob movies -- as long as you believe Bonanno, who is surely not a disinterested reteller of historical events.

This detective novel is both a gritty murder mystery and a beautiful realization of an alternate-universe version of Sitka, Alaska -- a Jewish Sitka that never was, a post-Holocaust outpost of Yiddishkeit at the frozen edge of the world. The setting is potent; one could easily set a series of books here. The ending seemed to come on a little too quickly, but I tend to see that in most crime or thriller novels, so I wonder if it's just me.

The title is absolutely killer. Pity it wasn't used on a better book.

A World Lit Only By Fire is about the transition from the medieval world to the Renaissance one, focusing on how the rise of Protestantism shattered the medieval worldview's unchanging conceptions of the world and man's place in it. The book offers a reasonably detailed account of the Reformation, and how its flames were fanned by anticlericalism and budding nationalism, but I don't think the author does a great job even staking out a thesis, let alone defending one. He couldn't seem to make up his mind whether he was explaining history or merely describing it.

This is the best novel I have ever read.

I should have loved this book. It was recommended by a dear friend, and the elevator pitch is pure Maxwell bait: "In the 17th century, an Italian is captured by Turks and forced to work for their rulers".

But by God, the writing is dull, dull, dull. 80-90% of this slim book is the main character endlessly pontificating or having pointless arguments with the Turk who is his tutor, student, and jailer. It's not quite as bad as The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt, another mind-melting bore with a navel-gazing, daydreaming, self-hating protagonist. But it's friggin' close, and in some cases it offends more: the setup for the most predictable twist in the world is not so much telegraphed as repeatedly blasted into your face.

A solid spy thriller by a master of the genre. This is the second book I've read by Le Carre, the other being his famous The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Naturally, he knows his spy tradecraft, the details of which are used to great effect in portraying a competent protagonist drawn into events larger than himself, by no fault of his own.

Le Carre also deftly makes reveals that kept me turning pages til the end. As with Came in from the Cold, the ending happens suddenly and all at once. As in that other great spy thriller, The Day of the Jackal, the full strength of the protagonist's plan is kept secret from the reader till the very end, yet (also as in Jackal) it's all very logical: Le Carre doesn't cheat the reader by pulling things out of his rear end.

Barzun's magnum opus illustrates 500 years of European cultural history, with details focused primarily on the lives, works, and philosophies of key players great and small. He asserts in plain but erudite language what people thought and why they thought it, and how ideas and movements related to contemporary culture and influenced major events. His observations continually return to major themes, including individualism, self-consciousness, emancipation, analysis, reductivism and primitivism, which he uses to characterize change and continuity among works of art, social movements, and strains of thought. Interlude chapters step back from the personal perspectives to show what it was like to live in key cities during the time periods when they were most prominent on the world stage.

A loving meditation on the differences between knowledge gained through solitary scholarliness, and understanding gained through worldliness and devotion to artistry. The titular Narcissus is an austere monk; Goldmund, his former pupil and fellow monk who leaves the monastery to travel the world and follow his passions. I am much more of a Goldmund than a Narcissus; though I have done a number of things in my life that must surely be coded as scholarly, my motivation to undertake those things has stemmed from personal interest and passion in various subjects. I recommend this book to anyone who considers himself an artist.

If you haven't read Heinlein before, I wouldn't start here -- try The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, then maybe Starship Troopers -- but if you're a diehard fan, you can't go wrong with the extra dose of R.A.H. which this book provides.

The short stories in this collection are classic Heinlein: expect a lot of tight, dialogue-heavy prose between competent, confident (but not two-dimensional) characters. There are also non-fiction essays on several topics, including an amusing and cynical diatribe against public education standards organized around a disheartening exploration of just how little some students actually learn while supposedly "earning" a bachelor's degree at UC Santa Cruz. (Having attended there as a master's student through the end of last year, I can tell you that at least from what I saw, the situation hasn't changed much in 2024.)

This book was catnip for me. Highly recommended.

It's set in 16th-century Italy. O'Farrell clearly did her research into the material conditions of everyday life, the politics of dynasty and inheritance, and, most importantly, the mindsets that nobles, courtiers, artists, and servants would have possessed. Depth of detail does not make a novel good on its own, but O'Farrell marries her deep knowledge of the past with rich, carefully crafted prose that subtly adds or reinforces detail about the book's setting, and skillfully conveys the psychology of Lucrezia, the willful protagonist who struggles against what is expected of her before and after being married off to produce an heir for Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara.

A police thriller where the protagonist, a forensics cop with a CIA background, works to figure out who's trying to frame him for the work of a psycho that loves building murder tunnels. The intrigue is competent, but there are no twists whatsoever, and the writing quality ranges ranging from serviceable to quite poor. Gets a 2.5 instead of a 2 because, for all that, I was sufficiently drawn in to read most of it straight through.

I won't give this book a score because I didn't really give it a fair shake -- but after 30-40 pages, I still didn't give a shit about the characters or what was happening to them. I'm also deadly allergic to the technique of using Capital Letters to make otherwise ordinary Nouns seem Portentous.

I love me some Paul Theroux travel writing, but even his skill with the pen can't save this book about walking England's coastline from coming off dull. By deliberately avoiding the monuments, castles, and other sights that one would ordinarily include when writing about England, Theroux sets himself the challenge of writing only about everyday things like hotels, travelers, trains, cliffs, roadside amusements, and shabby little towns.

I was so utterly absorbed in this book that I read it all in one sitting, staying up until nearly 3 AM. I kept thinking, "Man, it's getting late. I've gone another 50 pages since I last noticed the time ... but a little more won't hurt."

Author not to be confused with D. H. Lawrence, naturally.

Braudel is unimpeachable as always: the detail-obsessed, big-picture-grasping polyglot that every historian should strive to be.

An engaging and informative dual biography of Anthony and Francis Bacon.

Reasonably good account of the US Exploring Expedition. Fine subject matter, and Fredrick's writing is by no means bad, but in the large his authorial voice has a certain monotony. Each chapter felt almost the same; incredibly, I began to say "ho-hum, another adventure?" even as the feats managed by Wilkes' crew at the southernmost parts of the world grew more and more fascinating.

Catlin was a portrait painter who spent about 7 years living among the Indians of the Louisiana Purchase territories. His paintings, reproduced here as full-page color prints, are a treasure trove for anthropology. His writings are also a fitting riposte for anyone who claims that all historical Americans were racists, or otherwise intolerant of natives. His attitude is even more positive than that of Meriwether Lewis (who I recently read about in Undaunted Courage.)

On a linguistic level, Lolita is crafted as masterfully as one would expect from Nabokov. But I must say that this didn't capture me the way Pale Fire did. I'll have to return and tackle it again, finishing it this time; I am certain that the fault lies with me and not with the author.

Fernand Braudel shows that economic historians don't have to be boring -- but they often are, and Erlichman is.

Out-fucking-standing.

I've written a review of Coal and will post it here when I have time.

"Our Western Furniture" is the centerpiece of this collection. I recently read that poem as my introduction to Fenton, and it is fantastic work; a 5 on its own, without question. However, of the other poems in Terminal Moraine, I only liked a single one: "Put Thou Thy Tears into My Bottle, Part One." Stupid title, but unparalleled use of enjambment to create a rhythm that rolls incessantly from line to line.

Thus, considered apart from "Furniture," this collection gets a 1; and "Furniture" is so long a sonnet sequence, and makes up so much of the volume, that I have to rate it by itself, and won't let its score upgrade Terminal Moraine's.

Only a few glimmers of the intriguing subject matter make it through the bland prose.

Oh, how I wanted to like this "dictionary novel." Unfortunately, it completely failed to deliver on both parts of that premise.

It is entirely possible to read a topic-specific dictionary and enjoy it in exactly the way that Khazars ought to have aped. For instance, I found it tremendously satisfying to read a 1980s cultural dictionary of Japanese which, apart from being a first-rate dictionary, introduced me to aspects of Japanese material and intangible culture which I had never heard of before. All Khazars had to do was be a made-up dictionary of the same kind, and I would have found it impossible to put down!

Read my Elfland poems: one, two, three, four.

What a great book. Bill Porter, known in Chinese as Red Pine, has for decades been an important figure in the world of translated Chinese poetry. His travel writings have also gained a huge following in China.

In thirty chapters, Porter describes a personal quest: spend thirty days tearing ass all over China in search of graves, hometowns, and shrines from the lives of important Chinese poets so that he can toast them with fine American whiskey. The book is not only a modern Chinese travelogue, but also a primer on Chinese poetry. Breaking up the travel narrative are over 200 Chinese poems, accompanied by Porter's translations.

Chinese title: 十个词汇里的中国. Chris Stasse, Alexi C., and I are reading and responding to this as part of a Chinese reading group. Each chapter is an essay prompted by a single two-character Chinese word. Below are the ones I've read so far; I'll definitely end up blogging more about this book.

• 人民 People
• 领袖 Leader (finished 2020-09-21)
• 阅读 Reading (read 2020-10-10)
• 7 more chapters... [edit: the middle chapters turned into a slog, and we gave up.]

[Not exactly a book, but I'm not going to make a "Plays" page when I don't read or see much theater.]

I've been looking through the Packard Humanities Institute's online version of Ben Franklin's papers.

The crouds of Coaches and Chairs for that Reason is not so great; Men as well as Women carry Umbrellas in their Hands, which they extend in case of Rain or two much Sun; and a Man with an Umbrella not taking up more than 3 foot square or 9 square feet of the Street, when if in a Coach he would take up 240 square feet, you can easily conceive that tho' the Streets here are narrower they may be much less encumber'd. They are extreamly well pav'd, and the Stones being generally Cubes, when worn on one Side may be turn'd and become new.

Letter to Polly Stevenson, Paris, Sep 1767. Franklin Papers 14:250

1. His own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the numerous class of “lawless resolutes,” whom the crusades had turned back on their country, accomplished in the vices of the East, impoverished in substance, and hardened in character, and who placed their hopes of harvest in civil commotion. To these causes of public distress and apprehension, must be added, the multitude of outlaws, who, driven to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility, and the severe exercise of the forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and, keeping possession of the forests and the wastes, set at defiance the justice and magistracy of the country. The nobles themselves, each fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. To maintain these retainers, and to support the extravagance and magnificence which their pride induced them to affect, the nobility borrowed sums of money from the Jews at the most usurious interest, which gnawed into their estates like consuming cankers, scarce to be cured unless when circumstances gave them an opportunity of getting free, by exercising upon their creditors some act of unprincipled violence.

   Chapter 7

I quit reading this after ~100 pages, because I felt it could be summed up as "The Bonfire of the Vanities, but in Atlanta." I'd rather read something totally new than something which feels like a retread. I don't care if that's actually an unfair characterization; with so many other things to read, this didn't make the cut.

As with Slaughterhouse-Five, I dug this out of the box housing my high-school bookshelf to reread it with the benefit of--eep!--an additional ~decade of life experience.

William Mandella, the main character of the book, experiences total and utter alienation from the rest of the human race after spending hundreds of years traveling at light speed while only aging a few years. He was born in the 1990s, but ends the book living in the 3000s as one of just a dozen remaining 'original' humans.

Reread. Worth every second, as a plea for all people to be competent, self-reliant, and willing to live and let live.

Reread. The first time was in high school, but I didn't pay it enough attention at that time. [Response in progress]

Mote is successful because the authors have written science-fiction analogues to things they understand from the real world. [Response in progress]

On 2019-08-04, my friend Chris Stasse gave me this collection of stories (Chinese title: 老舍小说集). I've been working my way through the collection; as of today, I've read these stories:

• 《马裤先生》 (read my English translation)
• 《恋》
• 《月牙儿》
• 《不成问题的问题》
• 《歪毛儿》
• 《铁牛和病鸭》 (read my English translation)
• 《一封家信》
• 《热包子》
• 《老字号》
• 《大悲寺外》
• 《也是三角》
• 《柳家大院》
• 《东西》 [2019-12-04T12:14:16-0800: one of the two main characters has a fixation on the contrast between Western and Eastern schooling, manners, lifestyle, etc. The title is thus best translated as "East and West", not as "Things".]
• 《陈二哥加薪水》
• 《善人》
• 《同盟》
• parts of 《黑白李》、《上任》

A meditation on taste, culture, artistry, and aesthetics which is worth the read. I can't say I cared for the ending, but that's probably on me. Recommended to those who consider themselves artists or art enthusiasts.

Skillfully weaves together biographies and historical events from the Golden Age of Piracy, focusing on the lives and exploits of Henry Avery, Blackbeard, Charles Vane, and other major pirates in the West Indies (which includes the Caribbean Sea.)

Available for free online. My favorite part was Chapter 13.

Word list:

• gaberdine
• pelerine
• caftan

1. Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string. pg 9

2. The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. pg 16

Excerpts:

To get salt to go in your bread in slavery, well, they would dig up the dirt where the fresh meat hung over and had been dripping salt, and would boil this to get the salt. They would get and parch sweet potato peelings to make coffee. You-all are blessed children; you are living on flowery beds of ease. I would to God sometimes that I was able to express myself.

Mr. Reed, in "A Negro Has Got No Name" - pg 25

Excerpts:

Did Frost know what he was going to do when he began [Stopping By Woods]? Considering the poem simply as a piece of juggling one cannot fail to respond to the magnificent turn at the end where, with one flip, seven of the simplest words in the language suddenly dazzle [...]

pg 674

Or suppose that there existed somewhere a religious order that imposed a vow not only of eternal silence, but against all verbalization even of one's thoughts. Initiaties, suppose further, must pray a certain number of hours each day, but they must dance their prayers. [...] Can there be any doubt that the kinds of postures and the sequences of actions such dancers could fall into could constitute not only a language but a language susceptible of great refinement?

pg 707

1. In the tiny country of Malawi the winter is severe [...] May, June, and July, the cold months, are also the harvest months. This is the season when the village silos -- huge baskets on legs -- are filled to the brim with corn, the staple food of the Malawian. The oranges and tangerines are ripe; the second bean crop, the tobacco and tea are all being harvested and auctioned.

   Winter in Africa [July 2, 1965] - pg 12

I skimmed through about a dozen of the interviews that make up this book.

1. Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long, vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no further. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible landscape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky.

   pg 20 / Thin Cities 1

Word list:

• byre
• bannock
• tanist

Word list:

• gamine: n. a mischievous, playful, or elfish girl or young woman; a female waif or urchin.
• cassoulet: n. an oven-baked stew or casserole from southwest France, containing beans, meats, vegetables, and herbs.
• spile: n. a pile (anchoring post); a bung or spigot.
• splenetic: adj. (also "splenic") Ill-humored, irritable. [obviously related to "spleen"]
• vitiate: v. reduce the value of, impair, spoil, make ineffective, invalidate; debase, corrupt.

Stupendously D&D-able, the way that Fernand Braudel and other "histories of everyday life" always are. The first half of the book is about the myriad and variegated traditional ways of life in France up through ~1900; the lack of a conception of "France" as opposed to individual pays (tiny areas with fuzzy boundaries but strong identities); and the huge ignorance of the land's features and inhabitants in which most people persisted, for most of French history (not that anywhere else was much better). I kept finding parallels to what I know of China, past and present, with countless micro-cultures spread over a vast area. The second half concerns the growing of national identity; the bypassing of village, forest, and transhumance trail by railroad; the disappearance of folkways; and the replacement of ignorance of the contemporary with ignorance of the past.

Rough subject matter (the unforgiving life of Norwegian frontier settlers), gently unfolding. Worth your time.

I like this book so much that I've bought copies for friends. Ode is a practical manual for improving one's poetic craft. The book expects you to complete exercises as you go. To not do these exercises would be to entirely miss the point. I've uploaded my silly, crappy responses to some of them my Poetry Exercises page.

This tiny book was underwhelming, but at least it taught me some terms for kinds of metric feet, and inspired me to read some Yeats.

I had not read any Nabokov before this book. From the first page, I knew I was in for something unique. "Wordplay" usually means puns and such, but this whole novella feels like "wordplay" in the literal sense of playing with words.

I've never read a memoir quite like this. The people, events, and choices that made Sung Yim's life a hell of mental illness and drug addiction also made her into someone who probably would not like me, and who I would not like to spend time with -- but I am glad to have spent a few hours absorbing her perspective.

I was introduced to JoJo through the anime adaptation, of which I've watched all of parts 2 through 5. After the part 5 anime concluded, I decided to try the manga, and found copies of part 6. While I liked many of the characters and Stands, overall I liked Stone Ocean less than the other parts with which I'm familiar.

I was skeptical about this novel's premise, but my friend Matt guaranteed I'd like it. He was right: I adored it.

1. "The novel I should most like to read at this moment," Ludmilla explains, "should have as its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories upon stories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life upon you, simply allowing you to observe its own growth, like a tree, an entangling, as if of branches and leaves ..." pg 92

An excellent overview of the historical conditions that led to the Xinhai Revolution, the warlord period that followed, and the Nationalists' eventual unification of the country. Outside of explaining the larger historical context, the book focuses mainly on Sun Yat-sen and his leadership.

The only criticism I have is that I found it a bit difficult to keep the timeline straight, and I believe this is a consequence of Linebarger's decision to split the book up into conceptual sections rather than by chronology. One section will detail events up to a given time period, only for the following section to return to an earlier era.

Selections from this volume kicked off my Favorite Poems page. Word list:

• rialto: n. theater district. Marketplace; exchange.
• pelf: n. wealth or riches, especially when dishonestly acquired. Frippery; rubbish; refuse; trash.
• welkin: n. firmament (the whole of the sky.)
• sursum corda: "hearts up", a phrase from the Mass
• sepulture: n. I knew the word "sepulcher" (tomb, burial place) and wondered if this was a synonym or variant spelling. It can mean the same thing as "sepulcher", but can also mean "the act of burial".
• uxorious: adj. excessively devoted to one's wife.

Because this city, as we know, is alive with girls wholly unlike Mary Jane Reed, promising, unbroken, uncontaminated young women--healthy, in fact, as milkmaids. I know, because these were her predecessors--only they didn't satisfy, either. They were wrong, too. Spielvogel, believe me, I've been there, I've tried: I've eaten their casseroles and shaved in their johns, I've been given duplicate keys to their police locks and shelves of my own in the medicine cabinet, I have even befriended those cats of theirs--named Spinoza and Clytemnestra and Candide and Cat--yes, yes, clever and erudite girls, fresh from successful adventures in sex and scholarship at wholesome Ivy League colleges, lively, intelligent, self-respecting, self-assured, and well-behaved young women--social workers and research assistants, schoolteachers and copy readers, girls in whose company I did not feel abject or ashamed, girls I did not have to father or mother or educate or redeem. And they didn't work out, either!

pg 215

1. This was my master's way. He not only knew how to read the great book of nature, but also knew the way monks read the books of Scripture, and how they thought through them. pg 24-25

2. "Monasterium sine libris," the abbot recited, pensively, "est sicut civitas sine opibus, castrum sine numeris, coquina sine suppellectili, mensa sine cibis, hortus sine herbis, pratum sine floribus, arbor sine foliis […]" pg 36

3. Then the abbot gave his benediction, the hebdomadary said the prayers, all bowed toward the altar in a moment of meditation whose sweetness no one can comprehend who has not experienced those hours of mystic ardor and intense inner peace. pg 102

This is a collection of interview articles which novelist Amos Oz conducted in October and November, 1982, while writing for the newspaper Davar. The titles given in the citations are those of the articles, which are also the titles of the collection's chapters.

When I checked out this book, the library clerk said he thought the ending came too fast. Events do happen quickly in the ending sequence, but I disagree that they happen too quickly.

I've read magazine pieces by Tom Wolfe, but this is the first novel of his that I've read. Wolfe's strongest skill is capturing the every-which-way rush of ideas that the average person experiences in unsure and stressful situations. He does this with a signature style in which descriptive prose is constantly being broken up by characters' reactions and inner monologues. He's also good at writing odious characters, and at simmering both the characters' anxieties and the reader's expectations. On the other hand, his verbose style can come off cutesy, flat, and artificial once I've spent enough time trekking through it.

The second book in the Pantagruel and Gargantua series, which I read first (my copy of the series placed it before Pantagruel because it's a prequel to that book.)

The introduction made me laugh hysterically, and the first several chapters made me laugh until I cried. Rabelais is a master of repetition; his most common form of joke is to describe a ludicrous number of items within a character's response, or in a description of a scene. For example, one early chapter (in my opinion, the funniest) is almost entirely taken up with an enumeration of the things that Pantagruel, a toddler of comic proportions, has used to wipe his bottom.

One way for a book to earn my approval is by making me laugh out loud. Three Men in a Boat accomplished that several times.

• I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

He Yu, byname Yanju, a native of Shanyin in Guiji, once fell ill and unconscious. Only a place beneath his heart remained warm. After three days he revived. He said that a functionary had to taken him up into the heavens to appear before a magistrate. The Magistrate's official quarters were very imposing. He ordered Yu to be taken into a secret chamber with several shelves. On the shelves were a seal and a sword. Yu was directed to take whichever of the items he liked. He was short and could not reach the top shelf, so he took the short sword [from a lower shelf] and went out. He was asked, "Which did you choose?" Yu said, "I chose the sword." The functionary replied, "What a pity you didn't choose the seal. With it you may have commanded the hundred spirits. With the sword you command only local earth gods."

After he had recovered from his illness, whenever Yu traveled about, he saw earth gods along the roadside bowing to him as if to a superior.

Originally from 录异传. pg 22

A gem of a book. I can soak for hours in descriptions of historical daily life such as these. Some notes and quotes from Chapter 3:

• The cathedral, as the seat of a bishop, had the right to ring bells before the count's chapel and Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains
• The housewife's first chore in the day is shopping for food. In the streets surrounding St-Jean, signs furnish a colorful punctuation: a grape bush for the vintner; gilded pills for the apothecary; a red-striped hand and forearm for the barber-surgeon; a horse for the harness-maker; a unicorn for the goldsmith
• In the butchers' quarter, slaughtering is performed on the spot [...] blood dries in the sun amid piles of offal, swarms of flies.

I read this in Chinese. Anyone lauding The Three-Body Problem has not read enough classic 20th-century science fiction, which expected some effort from its readers. Occasional memorable scenes (like the ship assault) and the solid Cultural Revolution sections cannot save the daft plot. One example: the alien "videogame" lacks the features of an actual videogame -- motivation, progression, reward -- and is more like a series of weird lectures. While people do play bad videogames, the way this one is described, it's hard to understand why Earthlings would play it in large numbers.

Before bothering with this, read Roadside Picnic, Dune, and Starship Troopers. [And don't whine to me about Heinlein.]

A first-rate novel. (I'm afraid I can't say the same about Amores, a collection of Lawrence's poems.)

A phenomenally inventive collection of stories which is enjoyable by anyone, SF fan or no. While the protagonists are robots who ride spaceships and build poetry machines, and Lem employs endless riffs on scientific and technological diction, the stories in The Cyberiad are structurally myths, or fairy tales. My copy is, quite accurately, subtitled "Fables for the Cybernetic Age."