Lisa > Recent Status Updates

[about her father] “I could not even cry in his presence for fear he would take the moment over, pit his grief against mine in a competition of who loved her more, who had more to lose.”

“Hong Kong — historically a place of refuge that had offered safe harbor to Vietnamese boat people and Tiananmen-era student leaders— had become a place that people were fleeing from. Changes were coming so fast that we could hardly even write them down before they were superseded by even worse.”

During negotiations in the early ‘80s about the return of HK to China… “The Unofficials [Hong Kong representatives] were in a peculiarly powerless and paradoxical position. To Beijing, they were nonexistent though sometimes sought for their views, while to Britain they were consulted, then ignored.”

Britain had extremely racist views of HKers. 🤦🏻‍♀️

“The history of Hong Kong of the last 150 years is quite vague in our consciousness. We don’t have heroes. We don’t have war heroes. We don’t have great statesmen. We don’t have heroic acts. We don’t have that storehouse of myths and legends as Chinese history does. So it’s really a barren rock in a metaphoric sense.” -Playwright Wong Kwok-kui

First thoughts... there really needs to be some kind of glossary or "Who's Who" list somewhere in the book. It's so hard to keep track of each character and what his job was. I get that the author is a journalist and he's already first-referenced them. But I'm not even 20 pages in and I'm a bit lost.

I'm trying to be patient, but fantasy novels get on my nerves. So far it's 200 pages of "I gotta find the bird!" OK, so find it already! The only thing keeping me reading (and the reason I decided to try it in the first place) is the OI connection.

Big fat MFE (major factual error) on page 189. Dallin Oaks is not, nor has he yet been, president of the "Mormon Church." Which is also not the correct/preferred name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The context of Oaks' quote was appropriate and respectful, but it's surprising that MFE got by so many editors' eyes.

First thought is that maybe it's time books came with ratings, too. The excessive profanity and sexual references make the heavy subject matter (addiction) in this book that much harder to digest. A good author uses profanity like a chef uses salt and pepper, but this book is way "over-seasoned."

"... I had always presumed that my head was fully in charge of everything, including telling my hands what to do. It hadn't really ever occurred to me to let things flow the opposite way. But that's what knitting did. It reversed the flow. It buckled my churning brain into the back seat and allowed my hands to drive the car for a while. It detoured me away from my anxiety, just enough to provide some relief."

On page 52. Ran out of renewals at the library.

Ran out of renewals at the library. Have to finish this later.