Evelyn > Recent Status Updates

Man, already the descriptions of Northern Ontario and the Canadian Shield feel so refreshing. It's nice to read a book set in my own country 🥺 Feels rare.

Oh you just know that's not from an elk

I'm gonna need a source for Kuang's version of Apollo and Coronis (and her father Phlegyas) because every myth I know of about them involves Coronis getting preganant with Asclepius, and then cheating on Apollo with a mortal while pregnant with Apollo's son, which causes Apollo to fly into a jealous rage which (in varied ways depending on the teller) leads to her death. THAT is why Phlegyas torches Apollo's temple.

"It was not this drama but the fact that anyone would leave Cambridge for CANADA that got the department in a tizzy. Did Canada even have universities, or did everyone just ski and eat maple syrup and run away from bears all year round?" Not the stray Canada slander 😭 wtf did we do

Took a break from this for... a few weeks I guess-! I found Desire so gross but it turns out if I had just stuck it out to like the next page then we would through it lol

"She believed that academia was a meritocracy, that hard work was its own reward. She believed that department pettiness could not touch you, so long as you kept your head down and did not complain. She believed that when professors snapped at you, when they belittled and misused you, it was because they cared. And she believed, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that she was all right..." [ah academia...]

Every time elitist-Eliot writes about the Irish or Jewish people, who he thought represented the decay of his society, I want to hit him over the head. I'm mad that some of his poems have beautiful lines, bc in others he sounds like a racist snob who worships England and the "old world's" art and myths ttp where he not only incessantly name drops but blames others for his dissatisfaction with his present culture

The Last Obon - This one was so good! Old family traditions being reignited, old memories, and ghosts. The older generation that didn't always make sure the traditions were remembered, the next generation trying to put it together the best they can remember, and the youngest generation with their own ideas based on what they've been taught in school (sometimes ignorant about specifics, sometimes more knowledgeable)

The Harajuku House - ohh an interesting one! ghostly memories from the post-war occupation

Childhood Friends - I keep being surprised when some of these stories suddenly take a really explicit turn lol. I mean "they slept together" would suffice - it's not like the short story needs all the details. It doesn't add anything! Anyways, this one was fine.

The Pet Civet - well that escalated quickly (and for what)

"A Special Day" - Ohh I really liked this one! A dream-like experience at a gallery. Felt fantastical. I wonder what was going on...

Kirara's Paper Plane - Didn't really enjoy this one 😕

Global Positioning System - "an emotion he was tempted to call happiness welled up inside him" 😭 so good!!

The Life Story of a Sewing Machine - sweet way of doing little vignettes of different people's lives before, during, and after the war.

"When My Wife was a Shiitake" - the ending 😭

"Things Remembered and Things Forgotten" - 😲 I had to go back and read parts again

Me earlier: why is he like this
Me now: I'm realizing why the author made him like this 👀

I didn't expect so many gloomy or honestly aimless endings, but I read an analysis about that being the point, as the times Lao She was writing in was "when the urban intelligentsia and working classes... were under unbearable emotional and financial pressures. The pessimistic message of the collection is that the search for a 'way out' is likely to be a futile one" (Beth McKillop). Oof. At least some have ok endings

"... it's unhealthy to write before eating" yes sir!

"He remembered Beijing and a rising sun" I'm only a few pages past the last mention.....

"Will thought of Beijing, of how the pale morning light had fallen on the ruins of the Old Summer Palace" NOT AGAIN. It would be a dangerous game to take a shot every time the sun/light was mentioned in this book. Two shots every time the sun over the Old Summer Palace is thought about. I swear to god think of something else.

Oh my god how many times are we gonna read "remembered the sun as it rose over the Old Summer Palace" or the variant "how the sun rose over Beijing". 170 pages in and it's already been said so many times....

"It might always be like this, the two of them facing each other with knives drawn"
"Alex," Irene said, and it was a sigh... "Can we work together this one time?"
Oh my god insufferable how Irene is acting like they both had mutual issues with each other from the start, when she was literally the only one being openly hostile.... no shit Alex is hostile back now. But now it's "*sigh* we always fight" 😔 YEAH??

So far this isn't what I was looking forward to it being... The characters have like 1 personality trait each, which means their POV chapters are always the same. Sometimes I feel like the chapters are just repeating themselves. Lines definitely repeat "This is how it happened" "This was history" "This was-" 🙄 the attempt to be profound but it's just repetitive + some takes in here lack some necessary nuance

Ohhh the characters breaking out of the script to call things out is fun! I thought Black and White was a show within the book, but it's all blending with the script of his life now???

Mixed feelings about the collection so far. Some stories are interesting, some are short "I heard a rumor" types, and some are just not of interest to me or are just too odd. You can also definitely tell the bias towards telling more sexual stories, when really I want ghost stories.

Two Crippled Men - I had my suspicions

The Twins - it's interesting the different ways the people in these stories devise creating the "perfect crime". The false confidence that they are the smartest will always be their undoing though.

The Hell of Mirrors - BSD!Rampo peering through/into the ramune bottle's marble feels a bit different now... interesting