Andrew > Recent Status Updates

Who knows when I'll finish this tbh

To my knowledge, this book does not exist in English so I’m forced to read it in Chinese. It’s for the better, I wanted to easy way out and download an English copy but no, it does not exist. Whoop dee doo. It’s time to hit the texts!

The great thing about my undisciplined, slow approach is that my only deadline I have to make is when I die. And I will definitely be able to finish this before I die. And before that, I can fully enjoy the process of reading this without any sort of care in the world.

Alright this is officially awkward to continue reading and I will probably have to keep reading it, because his works attracted me for some reason and now I know a source of the emotional force of his work is minor sex trafficking, I deserve the right to feel uncomfortable and interrogate those feelings that attracted me to his books in the first place.

The idea of reading this as an evening pleasure read is strange, but I technically am reading this for school

I should say that each page flip leaves me even more uncertain what Cormac McCarthy is trying to achieve. I am fascinated by his choice to coddle with scientists and mathematicians at SFI and I want to know what he made of that time. I am 200+ pages in, and I’m going to be honest, I have no fucking clue. Stylistically this is still the Cormac we know and love, but this is totally not what I expected. Much to think.

I should say that each page flip leaves me even more uncertain what Cormac McCarthy is trying to achieve. I am fascinated by his choice to coddle with scientists and mathematicians at SFI and I want to know what he made of that time. I am 200+ pages in, and I’m going to be honest, I have no fucking clue. Stylistically this is still the Cormac we know and love, but this is totally not what I expected. Much to think.

Elusive, mysterious, innovative. A fascinating reading experience.

Lovely.

Interesting fact, 1-3 is something that is given to a 10th grade Chinese high school student. The teacher goes over it over the course of 2 class sessions. So I know my ability to interpret Classical Chinese text is at least 10th grade level!

Finished Tombs of Atuan. Just as lovely and gripping as the first book.

Very enjoyable and amusing. Finished Book 1.

These passages are long and demanding. Nonetheless, very rewarding to read.

Conceptually, not ridiculously difficult, though harder than The Analects. Reading it, on the other hand, takes ages. I've spent one hour alone parsing the first statement. My philistinistic take is that in an age of extreme ideologies that were no doubt flourishing at the time, it took a great deal of energy to not be that. I'm trying to repress my instincts to refer to this piece as a glorification of centrism.

Fucking brilliant book

See, much of my knowledge of papal history comes from…the Castlevania anime. Having not exactly been raised with the strongest intuition for Christian culture, this book is a bit denser than usual for me. That said, a very rewarding read. Eco knows how to wax lyrical about the book and the library. Begone, foul pop books about a mysterious library that soothes your soul! Get yourself some Eco instead!

It looks like it’s going to take me a year to complete The Analects at this rate. Hopefully 6 months, since I’m expecting my reading speed to improve with time. But man, this stuff is hard even with a teacher to guide me through.

Very enthralling to read. I’m having fun.

Like I never left. Fantastic series.

Enthralling. Would not want to live this man’s life at all.

“Let me say something else…. I want to express my respect for the author. As fairy tales, these are very good” lmfaoooo okay bro just pat yourself on the back for something you wrote

The first book is still his best work. It was an interesting thesis about post-Mao Chinese society encapsulated in a first contact story. The second book had a different approach and featured a weirdly romanticized modern concubine romance. This book is interesting the way a science fiction thriller is entertaining. Yes, it's fun to read. But it doesn't have the edge of the first book.

Done with Book 2.

As with anything worth studying, you can go as deep as you want to go.

Since fluency in Classical Chinese and some basic philology is key for me, I have about 30 pages of notes on the first two scrolls/books by now. Fortunately, since I'm well acquainted with the intuition behind Chinese, this is actually the perfect level of difficulty. Not too easy, not ridiculously hard.

Just got into another mental argument with my dad where I absolutely own my dad. Extremely non-Confucian moment.

Classical Chinese is a wonderfully interesting thing. Arguing with my dad in my head, less so.

I don't know why I stopped reading this. This book was beautiful. I lost myself in Jacobsen's Denmark, and I should return to it soon.