fyi - I’ve never seen this offered at this price before. It’s in the Kindle Daily Deals section. Amazon’s US kindle store server seems to use Eastern Standard Time, so this deal may stick around until 1pm tomorrow.
Just finished The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It won the Hugo award.
Was up in Taipei in the summer, and asked the clerk in a bookstore if they had it. He said it was great, and pointed to a whole row of them. I asked if they had any translations in English. He looked at me, and said “it’s written in Chinese by a Chinese guy who lives in Beijing and it’s published and sold in Taiwan- why would we have it in English?!?”
Got it in English in Canada, which brought on a whole new round of laughter.
Great book. Inspiring. Makes me want to go explore the oceans for an undiscovered island and frolick around naked, or find a new tribe, or explore the stars, or go out and smell the roses, or find out what those people on the third floor are really up to.
Have you read his new snoozer Killing Commentadore? It’s taking me forever to finish it. So tail dragginly slow, recycled metaphors, and of course his handsome rich mysterious Japanese men who hang around young girls…ugh
Jay Rubin only official translation was amazing. I still can not quite comprehend how someone can take a book written in one language, in this case Japanese, and carry over the depth, feelings, emotion, etc. into another language, in this case English.
I think I have actually said aloud while turning pages…If he doesn’t fucking provide some kind of action or purpose, I’m gonna slash my–
Yes.
I don’t know their processes but I would guess that they all read and appreciate the same literature in similar ways. Carver, Chandler, Chekhov, et al.
Murakami, the author of books including Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and a perennial favourite to win a Nobel prize, will play some of his favourite songs and answer listener questions in a two-hour show to air nationwide on 22 May. Called Stay Home Special, the show is named for the Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike’s recent plea for residents to stop going outside.
“I’m hoping that the power of music can do a little to blow away some of the corona-related blues that have been piling up,” Murakami wrote.
Noice! I have shopped at one of the vinyl shops he frequents in NYC. Ahem…
There were several English copies in the big Eslite in Kaohsiung. That’s where I bought mine. I like some of that guy’s short stories (The Wandering Earth). The Three-Body Problem was alright, but the other two books in that trilogy seemed very implausible.
I’ve been reading Arthur Hailey’s Airport. They made a movie out of it in… 1970? Kind of interesting.
Haven’t read the last two. What was absorbing to me was more the experiences of Ye Wenjie when she was going through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, and the hardships of her life afterward. The bits on Trisolaris were good, too; in China in the present, not so much.
That was what I liked about the first book too, that emphasis on Mainland China. In the other two books this emphasis on China and the Chinese characters gets a little weird.
Saw Airport the movie before reading the book. Both the book and the movie are equally corny. I enjoy that kind of corniness.
Currently reading these. All have been on sale for less than US$5 each on Amazon in 2020.
The only one I can’t recommend is The Wanderers (even though it’s a bestseller and supposedly soon to be a “major motion picture”). Halfway through but I may not finish it. Even at US$1.99, ugh.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
The Good Shepard
The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal
Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West