[362] Echo House – Ward Just

” Everyone talked about the cover story, a masterpiece of the journalist’s art, the inside-out account of a legal warrior who sought nothing more than single justice from Washington’s pig-stubborn bureaucracy and image-addicted political class. When the lambs were thrown to the wolves, Alec Behl who defended the lambs, with no sanctimonious hocus-pocus, only a [...]

Sontag to Borges

After the strenuous Interpretation of Meaning in graduate school, I haven’t read Susan Sontag. Equal parts of awe and intimidation keep me away. Recently, while evaluating collection at work, I stumbled upon Where the Stress Falls: Essays, which instantaneously absorbed me. In a letter that addresses Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian giant of 20th-century literature, [...]

Film Proposals?

If you could see one book turned into the perfect movie–one that would capture everything you love, the characters, the look, the feel, the story—what book would you choose? I’m big fan of films adopted from novels with quiet majesty. I would always welcome a film that emulates the style of The Remains of the [...]

Passages from Eighteen Springs – Eileen Chang

I have translated several passages from Chinese text. You can read the review here. 「話說到這裏，已經到了她那個秘密的邊緣上。世鈞是根本不相信她有什麼瞞人的事，但是這時候突然有一種靜默的空氣，使他不能不承認這秘密的存在。但是她如果不告訴他，他決不願意問的。而且說老實話，他簡直有點不願意知道。難道叔惠所猜測的竟是可能的—這情形好像比叔惠所想的更壞。而她表面上是這樣單純可愛的一個人，簡直不能想像。」 [2] The conversation nudges to the direction of her secret. Shujun never believes such a secret exists, but he can’t help feeling an air of suspense suggestive of its existence. If she doesn’t volunteer, he wouldn’t ask. The truth is [...]

[361] Eighteen Springs 半生緣 – Eileen Chang

Eighteen Springs [半生緣] is a love tragedy set in 1930s Shanghai. Manjing, a young woman from a once-well-off family, works in a factory, where she meets Shujun, the son of a wealthy Nanjing merchant. Despite Shujun’s reservation about Manjing’s family, which seems to him harboring some secret (indeed, her older sister, Manlu, works as a [...]

Running in the Family?

Do the members of your family read? Do you think it was passed down to you? (or, if you want you can answer this: Who do you think influenced you as a reader?) Nobody in my family reads like I do. Neither of my parents were avid readers, although they managed to read when they [...]

Library Sale

The last day of the Friends of San Francisco Public Library book sale had a surprise for book lovers—Everything is $1 each. I wasn’t going ballistic, just keeping an eye on target authors, ones you recommend and ones with whom I fall in love. Raise the Red Lantern Su Tong The Painter of Shanghai Jennifer [...]

Translating Eileen Chang

The second book for Chinese Literature Challenge is the work of another Chinese literary master in the early 20th century. An Affair of Half a Life (also known as Eighteen Springs) has never been translated into English. It’s one of Eileen Chang’s few long novels. Owing to her poignant, complicated domestic background, Eileen Chang’s prose [...]

Judge by the Covers

This week’s topic mandates some deep reflection: CAN you judge a book by its cover? The adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover is true, it seems, about just about everything but books. But facing with thousands of books on display, unless you come prepared with an acquisition list, how do you [...]

[360] Crossing to Safety – Wallace Stegner

How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the [...]