Half-German, Half-Chinese, Half-Canadian, all-bad at math, currently living to her consternation in the People's Republic of China.
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A collection of speeches from c. the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history expounding on political philosophy
One of the canonical works of Confucianism.
Chivalry & Sorcery 5th Edition is a comprehensive medieval fantasy role-playing game renowned for its …
I initially only had the PDF and that was too much a chore to read (I hate using phones or such for reading). I finally got the hardcover in July of 2024 and read it over the summer.
Chivalry & Sorcery 5th Edition is a comprehensive medieval fantasy role-playing game renowned for its intricate and realistic approach. The …
The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal …
This is a decently funny light romp. It's comedic (and more intelligent about it than you'd expect) but it's also basically forgettable afterward. I enjoyed the time I spent reading it and it was well worth the half-price I paid for it at a bookstore's sidewalk sale.
BOOK TWO OF THE CLASSIC GORMENGHAST TRILOGY
Titus Groan is seven. Heir to the crumbling …
Content warning Spoils the fate of a character, but not the whole plot.
I read Titus Groan and fell in love with the darkly whimsical world it contained. It is definitively a very dark book, however, with very little light in it. One of the only spots of light, in fact, is the cheerful (but profoundly thick and clueless) Fuchsia.
Naturally upon finishing the first book, I proceeded with Gormenghast after a short recovery period. If anything this following work is even darker and it was becoming overwhelming to read. I was finally defeated when Fuchsia died and the last ember of light in Gormenghast was extinguished and actually put the book down and stopped reading.
A decade later I re-read Titus Groan and with some trepidation Gormenghast. This time I read through to the end without becoming overwhelmed and reached the end (as well as the end of the follow-up Titus Alone).
These books are some of the absolute very few I dragged with me when I moved to China, so that should be a clue as to the esteem I hold them in. Peake has a vocabulary that rivals the Oxford English Dictionary's board of editors, and he uses it to good (if sometimes mind-spraining) effect. The books are part whimsy, part horror, part comedy, and part tragedy. But all quality and well worth reading.
One of the canonical works of Confucianism.
One of the most important works of Confucian canon.
"On the other hand, Elegies of the South may be said to be the earliest …
"It is impossible to translate poetry, but worth the effort."
A trilingual translation work with side-by-side Classical Chinese, Modern Vernacular Chinese, and English makes this a valuable study guide. The translator, by his own confession in the preface, was less interested in having literal meaning translated than in keeping a hint of the beauty of the original language. This is a tension that all translations of poetry must resolve, and in this translator's view other English translations fall on the literal side of the equation so he thought to counter with a translation that keeps as close as possible to the core meaning while highlighting the beauty of the language as it is used in the original work, choosing the latter when the goals conflicted.
The translation is solid, from my own paltry efforts to read the Chinese, but it features an error that is bothersome to me, hence the …
"It is impossible to translate poetry, but worth the effort."
A trilingual translation work with side-by-side Classical Chinese, Modern Vernacular Chinese, and English makes this a valuable study guide. The translator, by his own confession in the preface, was less interested in having literal meaning translated than in keeping a hint of the beauty of the original language. This is a tension that all translations of poetry must resolve, and in this translator's view other English translations fall on the literal side of the equation so he thought to counter with a translation that keeps as close as possible to the core meaning while highlighting the beauty of the language as it is used in the original work, choosing the latter when the goals conflicted.
The translation is solid, from my own paltry efforts to read the Chinese, but it features an error that is bothersome to me, hence the loss of a star. The original work makes use of the character 兮 (xī), which is a meaningless symbol pronounced that was used in ancient texts in much the way that 啊 (ā) is used in modern texts or "uh" or "oh" or the like is used in English.
There's a problem with this.
This symbol was pronounced "xī" in Classical Chinese ... but it wasn't meant to be read aloud like that in poetry. Classical Chinese lacked punctuation, so pauses in text had to be indicated in some way when writing it, and 兮 was the character chosen since it had no meaning. When reading the original work, upon seeing 兮 the reader is expected to briefly pause: 兮 is, for all practical purposes, a comma in this work!
But the translation inserts "oh" wherever 兮 appears in the original text which is, well, literally every line or every second line (it varies) depending on the poem. And I just found it a bit distracting.
"On the other hand, Elegies of the South may be said to be the earliest …
Side-by-side Classical Chinese, Modern Vernacular Chinese, and English make this a valuable study guide.