I finished this yesterday, I read it in less than a week, because I seriously couldn't put it down. I compare it to Into Thin Air only because of how compelling the story was for me...that was another one I couldn't put down. Highly recommended.
If you ever find yourself in Yorkshire, UK - check out the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It has hundreds of great sculptures from global artists but one of them is an amazing circle of zodiac heads by Ai Weiwei in bronze, all mounted on tall posts. They’re beautiful to take in in person.Book 11
Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis & Gianluca Costantini
I got to see an Ai Weiwei exhibit in Indianapolis before tailgating a Bob Dylan show in Noblesville while on tour back in the summer of 2013. The exhibit was much more immersive and profound than I'd expected - so much so that my tourmates, our local host and I wound up staying much longer than planned and missed My Morning Jacket and all but the last two songs of Wilco as a result. Disappointing, but worth it. Similarly, this graphic memoir moved me more than expected and took me to fascinating spaces. Sequenced through a lens of the Chinese zodiac this memoir is far more of a philosophical journey than it is a straightforward biographical narrative, laced with great doses of hope, humour and beauty. I reckon I'll be picking this one up for the shelf so I can revisit it many more times.
I've read a bit of Russian lit (Anna Karenina is on my all time top 10) but never any Turgenev. This one just made my list. Thanks!Book 3: The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo
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Book club read right here; we voted on this one out of a selection of three early-to-mid-century detective novels. This one's the first of a series revolving around a rumpled amateur detective named Kosuke Kindaichi, who went on to appear in mover 70 more novels. I've only read a couple Japanese novels, but it seems like the tone here is in line with those: the prose is very direct, and as a result, the story is a very straight-forward description of the murder scene, the detective arriving and (very) briefly reviewing the details we've been given, then outlining exactly what happened. At one point the author includes a map of the scene, then politely reminds the reader to refer to it during crucial segments. I'm a bit skeptical of the physics, but this was an enjoyable enough read.
Book 4: Fathers and Children, by Ivan Turgenev
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Holy effing ess. I'm late to the game on Russian lit (my big introduction came with Saunders' Swim in a Pond in the Rain a couple years back) but so far these 19th century mfers are batting 100 (1000?) with me. I'm struggling a bit to capture what I enjoyed so much about this book as I get further from it, but there's a real clarity of place and character with which I'm really vibing. Turgenev picks his characters apart with such tenacity; as a middle-aged(ish) person seeing the push-pull between my generation and those ahead and behind me, a lot of the self-manufactured conflict between the younger and older characters hits home. Great stuff.
Book 5: Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
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This one's a reread in anticipation of the Netflix series coming at the end of next month; it'd been 8 years since I first read it and I wanted to brush up. I'm concerned that Benioff and Weiss are trying to add a lot of badass action and tense drama to a deeply geeky book. This book gets a lot of deserved flak for being dry and containing a lot of paper-thin characters, but there's an emotional spine to this book and series which deserves more love. It's definitely tripping over itself to get into the scientific weeds (the sophon-folding sequence near the end of the book is a tough hang and I didn't even try to pay full attention to it this time around), but larger questions of humanity, love, and existentialism hover over the proceedings, especially in the next two books. I'll probably tackle those this summer and fall, respectively.
I'll admit rereading it was a bit less exciting especially as I'd argue book 1 turns out to be the story Liu is telling in order to tell the stories in books 2 and 3, but the experience of reading Three-Body for the first time will always sit with me.Three-Body Problem is sitting on my digital "to be read" pile
Anna Karenina is a mountain I will climb one day. Probably not this year, but maybe this coming winter; I'm currently in the middle of my Honkin' Big Great Literary Work read and will need to breathe a little.I've read a bit of Russian lit (Anna Karenina is on my all time top 10) but never any Turgenev. This one just made my list. Thanks!
Understandable. I mix it up from fiction to non-fiction, but also heavy to light.Anna Karenina is a mountain I will climb one day. Probably not this year, but maybe this coming winter; I'm currently in the middle of my Honkin' Big Great Literary Work read and will need to breathe a little.
I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I need that dopamine hit of reading something quickly; if I stack 500+ page books one after the other, the more likely I am to put one down through no fault of the work itself. Heck, if I'm still on a 200-page book after a couple weeks I start asking myself what I'm doing here.Understandable. I mix it up from fiction to non-fiction, but also heavy to light.
That's where the 33 1/3 series comes in handy!I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I need that dopamine hit of reading something quickly; if I stack 500+ page books one after the other, the more likely I am to put one down through no fault of the work itself. Heck, if I'm still on a 200-page book after a couple weeks I start asking myself what I'm doing here.