Reading Thread 2: Pagemasters

I started "The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe." I'm only on the second section and I already really like this man. He's pretty funny even when the situation is grim, and I love how humble he is and "you gotta do what you gotta do" attitude he has as well as the anecdotes of every day life in Nanjing during the war.

I haven't gotten to the bad parts yet, so far they're hearing about Shanghai being bombed, people are trying to leave Nanjing, and they're worried since Shanghai is supposed to protect Nanjing yet it looks like it's near death. I can't even imagine Shanghai being bombed. o__o Anyway, he's a good man and he makes me smile. He's kind of nerdy. For example, September 24th's entry was:

"In the long hours of crouching in the dugout during the recent bombardment, I turned on Radio Shanghai to take my mind off things with a little music, and they were playing Beethoven's Funeral March, then to make matters worse they announced to their listeners, "This music is kindly dedicated to you by the Shanghai Funeral Directors."

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Oh brother XD I love that he's from Hamburg too and I can't believe I'm reading the diaries of someone who completely experienced the Nanjing Massacre and saved so many.

I'm also re-reading/finishing "Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture" for my law paper, and I don't know how I missed the essay, "Essential Regrets: The Structure of Tragic Consciousness in Three Kingdoms," it was a fantastic and somewhat depressing essay about the tragic qualities of each the main characters, and it ends with Zhuge Liang's section "From Divine to Human: Hero Fatigue." It's really true, no one succeeds in Three Kingdoms.

The essays Zhugey wrote to the emperor 21 years after he started his career (a couple of which I have now on a wooden scroll)... like the author said, "The tone of the memorial is sad, desperate, weary and full of nostalgia of the past." This line stuck out to me: "I now depart on a distant campaign. Blinded by my tears falling on this petition, I write I know not what." Another quote to keep in my heart!

From "Cosmic Foreordination"--"Kongming's heroism and tragedy are his defiance of the state of being human" wahh~

Changes in Kongming's temperament from his early confidence, optimism, humor and sometimes playful and cruel mischief to impatience and easily aroused anger after the failure of his first expedition against the Wei are reflections of the hero's frustration. Kongming's frustration comes not only from unsuccessful battles against Sima Yi, but also from his realization that he is running out of time........ Three Kingdoms is a monumental tragic novel. Its heroes' commitments and actions are based on high ethical principles, and their tragic failures are testaments to their moral courage. These elements make the novel powerful and moving with lasting impact on its readers."

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*WEEPS*
I should concentrate on that final paper XD It's so interesting, this other article about the Confucian notion of appropriateness presenting major dilemmas in the novel, which because of this grasps the true complexity of human ethical life, I didn't see it that way before.

The book also goes into Three Kingdoms' influence in art and drama, how its affecting culture in the twenty-first century, its reception in other Asian countries, current 21st century studies of it, and its existence in contemporary East Asia.

Finished here lately:
The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt
And "The Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci", by the man himself.

Now just about to finish with: "Trails of the Troubadours" by "Raimon de Loi" as he so called himself.

flowersofnight wrote:

Finished here lately:
The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt

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Any good? It sounds kinda cool.

Recently finished:
Pride and Prejudice I revisited this on a whim, and I actually liked it, wtf. I guess I have to take back my previous opinion of Jane Austen stuff.

Lord of the Flies With all the recent influx of YA survival/warfare novels, I decided to check out the one that started it all.

The Hobbit And another revisit, since I never made it past the first few pages as a kid. I think I may give LOTR another shot in the future.

I lucked out yesterday and found an almost new copy Wizard's First Rule at Goodwill. Unfortunately it's one of those unwieldy brick-sized paperbacks that you have to practically pry open with a crowbar. Anyway, just started that this morning.

Cerceaux wrote:

flowersofnight wrote:

Finished here lately:
The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt

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Any good? It sounds kinda cool.

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I dunno, sure, if you're into old-timey adventure pulp fiction. It's not sophisticated high fantasy or anything - the protagonist becomes a hero, gets the girl, fights the evil villain, etc.

^^^ "High fantasy" just means something that is set on a fictional world with a bunch of magical nonsense and creatures and the hero (usually some common farmboy or blacksmith who learns he has a Destiny) has to save his world by fighting some evil warlock or whatever. Before he can do this though, he must first amass a diverse party of D&D classes (including an old wizard to mentor him and a comic-relief rogue) and go on a bullshit quest to find some magical Macguffin device.

It doesn't mean that it's necessarily high-brow or well-written or anything. In fact, it's usually not.

Cerceaux wrote:

I lucked out yesterday and found an almost new copy Wizard's First Rule at Gooodwill. Unfortunately it's one of those unwieldy brick-sized paperbacks that you have to practically pry open with a crowbar. Anyway, just started that this morning.

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Yeah, I should've warned you that it's like 800 pages long - yet my dad read it in one day. Apparently inhaling silly fantasy novels at a ludicrous pace is his superpower.

Like the book Flowers mentioned, it's not literature-level fantasy, but a fun pulpy adventure, so it's not exactly a slow, ponderous read.

Iskanderia wrote:

It doesn't mean that it's necessarily high-brow or well-written or anything. In fact, it's usually not.

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Oh yeah, I know that. But I mean, in terms of plot complicatedness and characterization and such, the old-time stories were much more straightforward and un-nuanced than what you're likely to find in today's fantasy epic doorstops.

I'm reading a cute little book called

Looking Behind the Mask - When American Women Marry Japanese Men
by Nancy Brown Diggs

I'm not really getting much out of it, but then I didn't expect to.
All I can say for certain is that my friend's marriage to a bandman is by far the exception, not the norm...but I think we knew that already. That jackass.

faith wrote:

All I can say for certain is that my friend's marriage to a bandman is by far the exception

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I thought all Japanese husbands were losers XD

Finished this weekend with:
Le roman de Tristan et Iseut - or, "Cheaters Always Prosper" This is one of the great romances of literature?

Bought Spice & Wolf novels (by Isuna Hasekura) Vol. 1-3 recently and I'm almost done with Vol. 1. I think it's pretty entertaining and nice to read the details of the thoughts and actions of the characters as opposed to the anime.
Planning on reading one volume per month, so until the next one I'm going to read a collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen.

Finished the other day with "Le Cid" by Pierre Corneille (thanks to MissUMana for the recommendation) It was really pleasant language to read, I read a bunch of it out loud to myself in my broken accent XD

Next up: "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" by J.F.C. Hecker, 1843. Covering the Black Death, the sweating sickness, and the dancing mania

So you read the most famous play by one of the best known citizens of the city I live in! I'll tell him tomorrow as I walk by his statue, next to the theatre (where else?). I'd love to hear you say those lines, really and truly!

Middle Ages epidemics? I'm glad I didn't live here in those days, because they died by hundreds!

MissUMana wrote:

So you read the most famous play by one of the best known citizens of the city I live in! I'll tell him tomorrow as I walk by his statue

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He already knows, he's rolling in his grave after my butchering of his verse
I didn't know about the whole "Querelle du Cid" thing in the Academie Francaise either:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDet ... 1414930563

Don't worry, he's smiling in his grave because his verse lives on!

So you never heard about "La bataille d'Hernani" either? Literature and art in general were never considered light matters over here. People actually came to blows about plays, paintings, etc, etc.

Exactly 2 months later I finally finished Outlaws of the Marsh!

SOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD~!

I highly recommend it to anyone who likes those Robin Hood type stories or Chinese, or...can read...

faith wrote:

I highly recommend it to anyone who likes those Robin Hood type stories or Chinese, or...can read...

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Sorry, can't read XD

Finished lately here: "Le misanthrope" by Moliere (too lazy for accents), and "Le roman de la rose" by Guillaume de Lorris.
Oh, and: "The History of Amleth" by Saxo Grammaticus, which is one of the books Shakespeare borrowed from to create "Hamlet".

Next up:
Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy
and "Psychopathia Sexualis" by Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Finished up with "Presidentialism". Got in today:
Guerrilla Discovery
http://www.jamespublishing.com/books/gd.htm

By the author of "OBJECTION!" - the only computer game to be certified as legal continuing education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N70E1grZII
The Phoenix Wright of the '90s - I totally should play it XD

flowersofnight wrote:

The Phoenix Wright of the '90s - I totally should play it XD

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A friend of mine brought over the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting game last Monday and Naruhodo-kun is one of the playable fighters! O_O Of course he doesn't actually do ANYTHING USEFUL, except whip out his paperwork and talk about evidence... But you can smack people with legal documents, so there's that.

flowersofnight wrote:

Guerrilla Discovery
http://www.jamespublishing.com/books/gd.htm

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Finished up with this but I didn't much like it. Most of it was just forms and stuff. And the author was some militaristic weirdo who carried the "military" metaphor through the whole thing XD
"This form will turn your enemy into a bloody smear on the pavement of Mogadishu!"

Next:
Making a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan

Also tried to start Balzac's "Le pere Goriot" but literary French is way harder than the gee-whiz stars-and-planets stuff I usually read

flowersofnight wrote:

Next:
Making a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan

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Sounds interesting.

Also tried to start Balzac's "Le pere Goriot" but literary French is way harder than the gee-whiz stars-and-planets stuff I usually read

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19th century literature is the best, but I can see how it would be hard to read. Besides, "Le Père Goriot" tells such a particularly distressing story.

I only just started and tried the first chapter, but it's tricky because it's full of descriptions of streets and houses and stuff that I don't know the words for XD Like, different kinds of doors and things like that.
It's like the anime fan who knows 10000 ways to start a fight in Japanese, but not how to say hello, that's me XD