What are you reading?

[michaelS]

I think I´m going to give 三体 a try next, just finished 鬼吹灯 2

[imron]

The other one I was looking at is 《狼图腾》 by 姜戎,

See my comments here.  It starts well, but gets repetitive and boring towards the end.

 

EDIT: I decided to go with 《黄金时代》

This book gets rave reviews, but it bored me to tears.  If there's still time, I'd go with 三体

[ouyangjun]

@imron - for the price of these books on the China Amazon store it's never too late for me to switch.  I bought 黄金时代 this morning and am about 10% of the way through.  I'm going to stick with it for now, but if it ends up boring me I will just drop it and pick up 三体。I think 三体 is definitely going to be my next book after 黄金

 

Thanks for the link on the 狼图腾 book.  My wife really wants to see this movie, so I will watch it instead of read.

[ouyangjun]

@imron - quick question for you.  When you mention that 黄金时代 bored you to tears, do you mean just the 黄金时代 story, or do you mean that story and the other 4 in his 黄金时代 collection?  For example, my book not only has 黄金时代, but also has 三十而立, 似水流年, 革命时期的爱情, and 我的阴阳两界.  From what I was able to gather on Chinese internet forums, the books 似水流年 and 三十而立 also are stories about 王二, but are different stories and stand alone from the 黄金时代 story.  I'm wondering if you mean the entire collection bored you, or if you read 黄金时代 and it bored you.

 

I'm almost done with 黄金时代... I'm enjoying it so far, but the book does have its challenges for me, mainly because I don't understand all of the detailed history and the words used at the time.  For example today I was really stuck on a what 斗争差 meant... Couldn't find it in any of my dictionaries, and it wasn't until I found a forum that was discussing 黄金时代 that I found the answer... 

 

(copy and pasted is the explanation I found:  那时候有各种斗争，比方说阶级斗争，斗破鞋，是领导上在各村组织的政治活动，但是不是每个村子都有人搞破鞋。外村组织斗争的时候为了凑齐阶级矛盾和人民内部矛盾，往往要将王二和陈清扬这对破鞋借过去斗上一斗，这时王二和陈清扬便乘拖拉机去外村挨斗，就像是为挨斗而出差。)

 

EDIT:  When I say almost done, I mean almost done with the 黄金时代 story, not the collection of books within 黄金时代.

[imron]

I'm talking about the entire book, including the other stories.  Maybe it was also that by the time I got to reading this book I had already read a large number of other books about the same time period and so it held less attraction to me.

[Guest realmayo]

I thought 黄金时代 (the story itself) was hilarious! Fun anti-hero stuff.

 

Maybe all those rave reviews had hyped it up too much for you Imron before you started it?

[ouyangjun]

I just finished the 黄金时代 story by 王小波.  I enjoyed this one a lot.  It's about a 20 something student, Wang Er, who gets sent to the Yunnan countryside to be rusticated.  After being sent there he meets a local nurse who has a reputation (a possible ill deserved one at that) for being 破鞋.  The book then goes on to talk about the relationship, goes into some absurd descriptions of their sexual escapades, describes their denunciation and self criticism sessions, and some of the backwardness of that period.  

 

The story required me to do a little bit of outside research through Baidu.  Mainly because I've never studied the cultural revolution period in China, so some things did not make sense.  Like the whole 伟大友谊, 斗争差, etc.  The outside research I did while reading the book helped me understand the deeper undertones of what 王小波 was getting at.  The good thing is that there are a lot of discussion forms (specifically on douban and baidu that have native readers discussing the meaning and asking questions, so content to support the understanding is easy to come by, but is all in Chinese).  I recommend the book, from a vocab perspective it is not very difficult, the only challenge is needing to understand some of the details of the history (and using your imagination when he describes the sexual relations).

[ChineseLiker]

Chinese Lives : An Oral History of Contemporary China. its so good

[Lu]

I finally finished 一句顶一万句. It has truckloads of characters, who all have backstories and lots of things happening in their lives, and it took me months to read the book. As I approached the end I started to realise that I could finish it but I still wouldn't Get It or understand what it is About, which was a bit depressing. Had a conversation with a Chinese who had also read it and said it was about how life can move in unexpected ways: you can have one goal and work towards it, but then something happened that you had no hand in which forces you to get off course and your life takes a completely different direction. That made sense: a lot of lives are meandering in that book. Yang Baishun was going to stay in school but his father picks his brother to study instead. He was going to learn to be an A but doesn't get along with his boss, so moves to learning trade B, and then C, and then D. Jiang Qiaoling is from in city X, but is kidnapped and becomes Cao Qing'e who lives in town Y. She likes a guy, but her father marries her off to someone else. And so on.

 

I had started to read this book in the hopes that it help me write something intelligent about Liu Zhenyun, and I still might, but probably not in time to publish it where I had planned to. I suppose that's also 阴差阳错.

 

Now reading a short story a friend of mine wrote some years ago. The writing is very literary, seems good writing to me although it's not easy to read. The main character I dislike though, will suspend judgment until I've finished the whole story. After that I'm probably moving on to 三体.

[Jon Lee]

Tao de Ching by Lao Zi.  It's a compilation of essays or for me I consider them to be Chinese prayers written by Lao Zi a long time ago (in Ancient China).  It's a literary work comprised of Chinese sayings and wisdom similar to the works of Confucius.  I've read around 5 to 12 chapters already but have not fully accomplished reading the book.  Taoism is a religion very famous or popular in Asia or Asian countries.  It is similar to Confuciunism (as I said earlier) or Buddhism.  It talks about methods or "The Way" as it is more well-known for.  It regards mother nature as the essence of all things in this world.  Finally, it is considered to be one of the important Chinese works in Chinese Literature.  

[Lu]

Reading Liu Cixin's 球状闪电 (I'm not reading 三体 because as it turns out, the Liu Cixin book I bought in 2013 is 球状闪电 not 三体. For some reason 三体 wasn't for sale in Beijing at the time). Boy loses his parents to a freak occurence of ball lightning, devotes his life to undestanding this strange phenomenon. Apart from the scientific terms it's not difficult to read, but so far (30 or so pages in) the story is not particularly gripping me either. Will keep reading though, it's not bad.

[imron]

Reading Liu Cixin's 球状闪电

See previous discussion here.

[simc]

An easy junk novel: 重生之豪门媳妇

[Basil]

I'd like to belatedly announce that a couple of months ago I finished my first 繁体字 book, 余华‘s 十个字的中国。

 

Not sure if that counts as cheating. If it does, please tell me, and I'll try and remedy it sometime later this year.

[Guest realmayo]

What was it like, going to 繁体字? Was it pretty easy by the end of the book?

[Basil]

Vocab wise, 余华 is a fairly predictable writer, so he was a good place to start. I knew that it was unlikely I'd come across a word I didn't know in 简体, so I battered through the beginning, and one by one I slowly guessed what each character was. By the end of the book I had very few comprehension problems and was reading not that much slower than when reading 简体。

[michaelS]

I finished 三体 a couple of weeks ago. It was good enough that I will read the second two parts at some point.

 

One thing I'd say to any who do start it - it gets much better after 50 or so pages. The (initial) narrator is a really thinly-written character, but there are lots of sections later from other points of view and other time periods

 

I found the written style very simple compared to other books - syntax-wise, I mean. It almost felt a little like reading English. (don't ask me to explain exactly what I mean by that - maybe someone else knows what I'm talking about??)

[Geiko]

What have you been reading lately? I finally finished the Divergent trilogy, and after these series and the Hunger Games, I think I've had enough of young-adult dystopian novels for a while...  I wanted to read something different, so I analized my to-read bookshelf with CTA, and discovered that some of the Chinese novels I have were in fact easier than the English books translated into Chinese I wanted to read. I began with the easiest one, 『山楂樹之戀』，by 艾米. I had already read it in English, and also watched the film, which made the reading process even easier: I finished it in two weeks. Right now I'm reading the second easiest novel, 『活著』, and I expect to finish it in a couple of days. I know it has its own topic, but I'm really afraid of spoilers, so I'll go and have a look only after I finish it. My next read will probably be 三毛's『撒哈拉的故事』, another easy novel.

[imron]

so I analized my to-read bookshelf with CTA, and discovered that some of the Chinese novels I have were in fact easier than the English books translated into Chinese I wanted to read.

Excellent!  Glad to hear CTA is doing its job.  Starting with easier materials and progressively reading more and more difficult ones is a great way to improve without a huge amount of struggle.

[Lu]

I finished 球状闪电 yesterday, after what seemed like a very long time, but I see upthread that I started in April, so it's actually not that bad. For most of the time the story didn't really grip me, but Liu does come up with some interesting ideas and concepts and in the end it was worthwhile. I don't think I'll read 三体 in Chinese though, a trilogy seems rather daunting.

 

I was reading four books simultaneously and that's too many. Now got it down to three. Next to be finished is A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird, professional traveller in I think the 1800s who also visited China at some point. I have that book too, got it as a gift recently, but that'll have to wait until I've reduced the number of books I'm reading. Next Chinese book to be read is something by 迟子建. I got the opportunity to ask a number of knowledgable people for their literary recommendations and hers was the only name mentioned by more than one of them.