What are you reading?

[Lu]

What I've read from Mo Yan in Chinese, it's very very difficult - chengyu upon chengyu upon chengyu. Apart from that, Big breasts... didn't have very good reviews, but ymmv of course. Read one Wang Shuo book in translation and liked it a lot, but the plot was rather complicated, so depending on how hard his Chinese is, might be a difficult or an interesting read. No idea about 阿城, the 棋王 I read was by 张系国 (I liked it). For 7 rmb, I think I'd start on 阿城 :-)

[skylee]

ymmv? 그래.

[Guest realmayo]

그래요!

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=YMMV

Literally means "Your mileage may vary" but is often used in forum talk meaning that your results will vary

[skylee]

그래그럼.

[Nathan Mao]

士兵突击 by 兰晓龙

[imron]

莫言 - Read any of his books?

I've read 《蛙》.  It starts off well, but the last half is rubbish.

[ouyangjun]

 

 

What I've read from Mo Yan in Chinese, it's very very difficult - chengyu upon chengyu upon chengyu. Apart from that, Big breasts... didn't have very good reviews, but ymmv of course. Read one Wang Shuo book in translation and liked it a lot, but the plot was rather complicated, so depending on how hard his Chinese is, might be a difficult or an interesting read. No idea about 阿城, the 棋王 I read was by 张系国 (I liked it). For 7 rmb, I think I'd start on 阿城 :-) 

 

I downloaded a the sample of 莫言's 《生死老皮》 from Amazon China last night.  The first 5 pages of the book are an introduction of important characters... the character telling the story was killed and came back to life as a donkey...  Seems interesting, but yes, seems difficult.  From my experience if a book requires the first pages to be dedicated to explaining the characters and relations prior to the story beginning it is not going to be a light read.

 

As for 阿城, I downloaded the sample of his book of works last night and the first story is 《棋王》.  I read the entire sample, and it seems good so far.  About a young man during the cultural revolution who has a love for chess.  If nothing else I will be able to play a game of chess in China and use the proper words.

 

About 阿城's book of works only being 7RMB... Amazon China is great.  I wish I would've linked my Kindle to the China store months ago.  The 莫言 books above are only around 2 RMB.  The prices of books on Amazon China are so cheap there is no point to waste my time looking for quality 盗版 ebooks on the net.  I will happily pay the price in the Amazon China store and save my time for reading instead of researching where to download.

[OneEye]

For school, 《閩客方言史稿》 by 張光宇. I'm copying out 智永's《真草千字文》 and the 《說文解字》 (again) by hand for my 書法研究 class.

 

For pleasure, I'm reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami (in English). Next up will be either Battle Royale by Takami or Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

[Lu]

From my experience if a book requires the first pages to be dedicated to explaining the characters and relations prior to the story beginning it is not going to be a light read.

Either that, or under-edited... I read a writer advise somewhere to write a book and then scratch the first chapter altogether, plunging the reader right into the action without first introducing everyone.

Just read Perry Link say about 阿城 that his book was so interesting because it was tearing away from CR language, and now I want to read it too. If I can finish 杜拉拉 this week...

[gato]

阿城 is a pleasure to read. 汪曾祺's short story 受戒 has a similar lyrical quality.

[icebear]

国家新型城镇化规划（2014－2020年）from 国务院

One long form article per day from 财经

A handful of short articles each day, mostly from 经济参考报

Inferno by Max Hastings

[ouyangjun]

Picked up two books, will start to read them both and see if one pulls me in more than the other and stick with that one or read in parallel.

 

《阿城精选集》  collection of works by 阿城

《我是个算命先生》by 易之

 

I picked both of these up as samples on Kindle and read the entire sample of both, like both of them enough to dive in... let's see what happens.

 

The other non-Chinese book I'm reading is "Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap, and Others Don't" by Jim Collins

[ouyangjun]

I just want to give a big thumbs up to the book I just finished, 《棋王》by 阿城.  Really good book.  Prior to reading it my friend explained the book to me as,  “武侠小说的描写，佛教一样的内科".  I liked it a lot.

[gato]

Try 汪曾祺's 受戒 when you get the chance. It's definitely along the lines of 佛教的内科.

I'd also highly recommend the movie "孩子王" adapted from 阿城's novella of the same name (part of the "王" series) and directed by 陈凯歌 when he was still good.

[laurenth]

I've  embarked on an unexpected journey. Out of curiosity, I opened a 武侠 novel  that happened to sit on my shelf, waiting for someone else to fetch it. As I'm perfectly aware that I cannot possibly read wuxia novels at my level, I was just being curious. Yet, I soon realised I had read 10 pages. I discovered that this novel, in fact, was easier than a textbook for 3rd graders I had been reading before that - not to mention more fun.

 

The novel is  古龙's 流星·蝴蝶·剑 . I know Gu Long has a reputation for being the easiest among wuxia writers, and that that particular novel is one of Gu Long's easiest, according to this series of articles on hacking Chinese. (See also this series on the same site).

 

I mainly use a paper version.

There are two or three versions on the Android App store, but they are mostly rubbish.

 

I've found also found an electronic version here.However it contains quite a few OCR typos; some 汉字 are missing, making some sentences impossible to understand; and the layout of the page disappears, as do many punctuation marks. Yet, both of these features are relevant, as the paper version often plays with the parallelism of dialogues, making the structure easier to understand.

 

As my edition of the book has 564 pages, as I'm a slow reader, as this is my first experience in wuxia land, and as this IS Chinese after all, I expect it will take me at least 3 to 4 months to complete the book - if I manage it.

 

--

 

In the first chapter, after an explanation of the metaphors behind the title of the novel, we are introduced to the hired assassin 孟星魂. When he was a kid, during a time of war and famine, he was saved from starvation, together with three other children, by a certain 高老大 (she's a 她). The latter takes care of the kids, resorting to all sorts of means:

为了养活这四个孩，为了养活她自已，她儿乎做过任何事。 她偷，她抢她骗，她甚至出卖过自已。

 

After that,

从他六岁开始，这双手就常常握着他的手，她是他的朋友，他的长姐，也是他的母亲。

 

As 高老大's fortunes rise, the kids start working for her as assassins. But when 高老大  asks 孟星魂 to fix a certain 孙玉伯, 孟星魂 announces that he's sick and tired of this life, and that he wants to quit.

 

高老大 then offers a closer relationship. Although 孟星魂 is obviously open to the proposal,  he refuses on the ground that:

 

她永远是他的姐姐，是他的母亲，也是他的朋友，他不能破坏她在他心目中的这种地位。因为这地位永远没有别人能代替。

 

After that, 孟星魂 meets an old acquaintance, 叶翔, who used to live the same life as an assassin. But 叶翔, sick and tired of killing, quit this life and  became a drunkard

 

He tells  孟星魂 he should quit too, before it's too late, and also says that only one man can help them: 老伯。

 

Than, we are introduced to a series of characters who have  two things in common: first, their life has been destroyed through humiliation, rape, murder, etc. And, second, they all believe there's only one person who can help them seek revenge, and that one person is the mysterious 老伯, about whom we know nothing at this stage, except his name.

 

他只恨自己为什么一直没有想到这个人，世上只有这个人才是他儿子的救星。

只有他，没有别人。

 

And on page 39, we learn that 老伯is in fact...

 

--

 

At this stage, I still don't know who the main character will be or where the novel is headed. It might as well be, just like in 水浒传, a huge gallery composed of many unforgettable characters that are reunited only after a couple hundred pages.

 

The dialogues are vivid and the text is full of interesting one-liners such as:

    活下去谁能在乎活下去

 

There are a few words, not too many, that seem genre specific or slightly archaic. But overall the vocab is surprisingly easy.

 

The atmosphere is romantic, dark and violent. I like it.

[skylee]

Thanks, laurenth. You've managed to make 古龍 sound interesting.

I have read a couple of his books when I was young, but either because I didn't like them or there were better options, like 金庸 and 亦舒，I have not read any more of his books, no matter how famous they are. I don't mean to read them now either, but your version is interesting.

[laurenth]

Thanks Skylee. Frankly, I don't know anything about Gu Long, so I come with an open mind I don't know anything about wuxia either, for that matter. From what I've heard 金庸 is way above my level. So Gu Long it will be.

[laurenth]

I posted more info about 古龙's 流星·蝴蝶·剑 in a new dedicated thread.Hopefully I'll post more writeups over there as I go on reading.

[Meng Lelan]

I posted more info about 古龙's 流星·蝴蝶·剑 in a new dedicated thread.Hopefully I'll post more writeups over there as I go on reading.

 

 

 

Thanks for doing this. I have here the paper trad character edition that I am packing up for the internship for leisure reading and hope to see your writeups. 

[Geiko]

After finishing 饥饿游戏三部曲, today I began 找死专卖店, the translation of the French novel "Le magasin des suicides", by Jean Teulé. I'm still at chapter 3, but it looks great!: the book isn't too long (163 pages), chapters are very short, the language is fairly easy and it's a funny story. I discovered it by chance while browsing Dangdang, and it seems perfect for me!