What are you reading?

[imron]

10 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

The book claims all past gods/deities were humans in possession of these mini-universes.

You'll like the short story The Egg, by Andy Weir (the guy who wrote 'The Martian').  It's a 5 minute read.

 

Edit: It also has a Chinese version.

Edit Edit: But having read it, I don't think it's a good translation because it's too literal in lockstep with the sentences and phrasing of the original English.

[DavyJonesLocker]

19 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

I finished Dune today. What a thrilling end... If you haven't read at yet and enjoy world building

 

In English or Chinese?

 

Remains one of my most favourite novels of all time, probably the best scifi one**. The 5 sequels are worth reading but start to lose traction a touch as you go through them. 

**Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is a tie for the top spot

 

 

[Publius]

14 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is a tie for the top spot

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Foundation series are my top two favorites. Haven't read Dune yet but have been planning to.

[Publius]

The only Chinese novels I read these days are the ones recommended by our forum members here. 

E.g., 《草房子》 by 曹文轩 mentioned in this thread. The language is easy yet beautiful. Highly recommended to anyone who's just begun to read novels.

And 《人面桃花》 by 格非 in this thread. The language is amazingly beautiful but also requires a large vocabulary and deep cultural knowledge.

[Lu]

10 hours ago, imron said:

You'll like the short story The Egg, by Andy Weir (the guy who wrote 'The Martian').

I just read it and yes I did like it! Realised halfway through that I'd read it before, during (or after?) a time where I was also taking a Buddhist meditation class while living in Beijing. The monk said that we should all love our mother, because she had given us life, and that we should love everyone as we love our mother. (A good principle to try and keep in mind while fighting to get on the metro every morning.) This story ties into that really well. Seems the Buddhists rather than the Hindus are right.

 

The Dutch translation is decidedly Flemish, but good.

[imron]

3 hours ago, Lu said:

This story ties into that really well.

I read something somewhere about why he wrote this story, and he was talking about how he wanted to come up with an idea that made life fair and this is what he came up with.

[Alex_Hart]

On 2/1/2019 at 4:54 PM, Publius said:

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Foundation series are my top two favorites. Haven't read Dune yet but have been planning to.

 

On 2/1/2019 at 4:35 PM, DavyJonesLocker said:

Remains one of my most favourite novels of all time, probably the best scifi one**. The 5 sequels are worth reading but start to lose traction a touch as you go through them. 

 

I love all these books. I've probably read Hitchhiker's three or four times now, and Asimov was my introduction to sci-fi in middle school. 

 

I'm currently making my way through Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth books; I am on the third one (The Dreaming Void) and highly recommend it to Asimov fans for its emphasis on "big" ideas, a huge time frame and the effects of technology/science on society. If you want to imagine what our future might look like, Hamilton paints a relatively optimistic one compared to many other scifi authors. I wouldn't describe him as a master of character creation or dialogue. Characters are a bit shallow and the dialogue is often rather stilted, both of which he perhaps shares with Asimov and Herbert. Dune fans might like to take a look at Dan Simmons' Hyperion series, another pretty good read combining fantasy and science fiction that will hopefully age better than Dune.

 

Other than Hamilton, I am reading Stephen Platt's Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom about the Taiping Civil War/Rebellion 太平天国. A lot of historical works on the late Qing/early Republican period are quite dry, but this book is a a joy to read. If you just want a great story, Platt gives it to you. If you want a serious academic argument, this book also has that. I don't think either detracts from the other so far, which is relatively rare.

[Balthazar]

On 2/1/2019 at 7:31 AM, imron said:

You'll like the short story The Egg, by Andy Weir (the guy who wrote 'The Martian').  It's a 5 minute read. 

 

Is it just me, or is it getting a bit solipsistic in here?

 

Nice read! Kinda reminded me of the late Smullyan's "Is God a Taoist?", a slightly longer read that I like a lot.

[laurenth]

On 2/1/2019 at 10:59 AM, Lu said:

Realised halfway through that I'd read it before

It's only normal. You wrote it. A different incarnation of you.

[murrayjames]

Lately I’ve been recording my Chinese reading adventures on a blog hosted on this very website. Because the “What are you reading?” thread has not been updated since February, however, I will also continue to post here, in hopes that other users do the same.

Since my last post, I’ve completed the following works in Chinese:

short stories
《我没有自己的名字》 by 余华
《手》 by 萧红
《牛》 by 沈从文 
《我怎样飞向了自由的天地》 by 丁玲
《夜》 by 丁玲
《虎雏》 by 沈从文 (a collection of four short stories: 《虎雏》, 《黔小景》, 《三三》, and 《医生》)
《在巴黎大戏院》 by 施蛰存

novels/novellas
《一个女剧院的生活》 by 沈从文
《在细雨中呼喊》 by 余华
《熊猫》 by 棉棉
《1988：我想和这个世界谈谈》 by 韩寒

non-fiction
《彭德怀速写》 by 丁玲
《IBM Cloud文档：Personality Insights》 by IBM
《分析Sonny Stitt即兴与演奏特点——以专辑《Only the Blues》中曲目 《Blues for Bags》为例》 by a music student
《致银河》 by 王小波 

I was introduced to several of these works through posts on this thread. Hopefully there will be many more such posts to come!

What are you reading?

[biyalan]

After more than a year of reading intermittently, I finally finished reading my first Chinese novel!! Following in the footsteps of many chinese-forums readers, it was 活着. Now I'm looking for a good second book, hopefully something less depressing. Unfortunately business intrigue is not exactly my favorite genre so I don't know that I will be reading 圈子圈套 as is frequently suggested as a second book. 

[Wurstmann]

11 minutes ago, biyalan said:

Unfortunately business intrigue is not exactly my favorite genre so I don't know that I will be reading 圈子圈套

Yeah, I dropped it because it was too boring. I think after 活着 I read 从你的全世界路过. I don't really remember, but I believe it was quite good. Also the author likes to repeat himself, so you get to practice the same things multiple times

[imron]

3 hours ago, biyalan said:

 

After more than a year of reading intermittently, I finally finished reading my first Chinese novel!!

 

Congratulations!

 

3 hours ago, biyalan said:

Now I'm looking for a good second book, 

I don't have any suggestions for which book to read, but I will suggest is that next time you should try and choose your next book before you finish your current book. This way you don't have a lapse in reading while you spend time thinking about what to read next. 

 

Choosing your next book before you finish is a great way to keep reading momentum going!

[Cyath]

I'm looking for web novel recommendations for an intermediate level Chinese speaker, preferably of the fantasy and sci fi variety. I'm not too good at the Chinese interwebs so I thought I would ask here for recommendations. 

[david387]

Just finished 呼兰河传 and now 10% into 脱落箱子, my fourth novel. I seem to be able to read 10-20 pages per day now, so maybe I am at a book a month. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

I still reading 古龙 ≪流星蝴蝶剑≫， going OK, I get a bit confused on who's who but when using Kindle , highlighting when the characters are first introduced is helpful. 

Some passages and phrases mostly likely have a historical reference but failing to understand them doesn't detract from the story too much. 

I have the same issue as always. I really  don't absorb any new words from reading alone despite what all the research likes to tell us. If it doesn't go into ANKI I won't remember. Simple as that unfortunately. 

 

However dropping every new word into anki or pleco is near pointless given I have already  2000 "new" words in my SRS decks

 

Struggle on. 

[murrayjames]

3 hours ago, david387 said:

Just finished 呼兰河传 and now 10% into 脱落箱子, my fourth novel.

 

Excellent. Congratulations!

 

3 hours ago, david387 said:

I seem to be able to read 10-20 pages per day now, so maybe I am at a book a month. 

 

That’s more than a book a month, if the books you read have fewer than 300–600 pages.

 

EDIT: That’s maybe not more than a book a month in your case. 《呼兰河传》 and 《骆驼祥子》  (that’s what you meant, right?) are fairly long novels.

[murrayjames]

On 7/7/2019 at 3:38 AM, biyalan said:

Now I'm looking for a good second book, hopefully something less depressing.

 

@biyalan What book did you choose?

[david387]

2 hours ago, murrayjames said:

EDIT: Maybe that’s not more than a book a month in your case. 《呼兰河传》 and 《骆驼祥子》  (that’s what you meant, right?) are fairly long novels.

I guess it is all relative. The first two books I read were longer. They are by Keigo Higashino, who is a Japanese author. But this author is very popular in China too, and I read the Chinese translations of these two books.

解忧杂货店 (300+)

拉普拉斯的魔女 (400+)

 

呼兰河传 was under 200 pages,. 骆驼祥子 is about 270 pages, and I got the large print double spaced edition. 

 

Finally after many many many many character lookups I feel that I could at least say it is becoming less bothersome and not nearly as frequent, but even now I must look up at least a few words per page, whether to get the meaning or just to make sure that I have the tones correct in my mind.

 

I occasionally try than Hanzitest and I seem to score around 2500. I usually pick out a few words from the book that I didn't know and use the LINE dictionary to get a few practice sentences.

 

I also have a pretty good following on the hellotalk app and I often will post a paragraph that was difficult to understand there and go through it in Chinese and English, and people give me some clarifications.

 

For example, yesterday I learned that 水簸箕 is the place where people put their feet when they're sitting on the rickshaw. It is also the word for that thing at the bottom of the gutter when the water comes down. It's kind of shaped like a dustpan. 

 

I have now eaten many of the foods mentioned in 呼兰河传, most recently 麻花

 

[murrayjames]

19 minutes ago, david387 said:

呼兰河传 was under 200 pages,. 骆驼祥子 is about 270 pages, and I got the large print double spaced edition. 

 

Huh, not as long as I thought.

 

26 minutes ago, david387 said:

even now I must look up at least a few words per page, whether to get the meaning or just to make sure that I have the tones correct in my mind.

 

Looking up a few words per page is not bad. That’s about 98 percent reading comprehension.