Chan Fry > Recent Status Updates

I've actually read xxi pages, but those don't count I guess, since I'm only up to page 1. At a staggering 1,033 pages (actual content), this will be the 8th longest book I've ever read — assuming I finish it.

So far, I'm wondering what all the fuss was about. I've picked up that one society is ultra concerned with class/status and is anti-women, and the other isn't, but other than that, neither society has been described at all, and I think only two characters have been named and neither described very well.

This isn't as easy a read as Clements' "Brief History Of Japan", but it seems to contain more actual information. The organization of chapters and even paragraphs feels a lot like a textbook, but not a mass-produced textbook — more like the kind that would be written by an obscure professor at your university and you're required to read it even if it isn't amazing.

This is fun to read, so far (like all Kuang's books). I should also mention that it's BEAUTIFULLY constructed — the physical book, I mean. The author (publisher?) went through noticeable effort to make this into a want-to-own hardcover.

Interesting that Goodreads switched me to the "kindle edition" without asking. (And by "interesting" I mean "infuriating".)

I'm actually enjoying this for the most part. But certain sections should be used in writing classes to show how NOT to use "her" when there are multiple persons of the same gender being discussed. You can't just keep saying "her" and "herself" (without clarification) repeatedly, when referring to three or four different women. Or "Miss Dashwood", when there are very clearly two of them in the conversation.

So far, in 55 pages or so, I've learned that the main characters (all the characters, really) are too wealthy for their own good, and the young women are VERY interested in men.

It's interesting so far... Having looked at hundreds of home floor plans in the past couple of years, I almost immediately spotted the "unusual" aspects of the homes shown so far, but I think the conclusions the characters draw from these unusual aspects are fairly childish. I'll wait and see what happens.

A few chapters were oddly disjointed (unedited?!), but otherwise this is a fun read so far.

Worth it so far.

It was three bucks at Ollie's, so I'll give it a try.

Fairly slow opening. Correction: VERY slow opening. I assume I added this to my "want to read" list because of the Hugo nomination, but nothing in the first 26 pages is hinting "award winning" yet. (Correction: not quite 26 pages, because chapter one starts on page 13 for some reason.)

I dislike skipping around in a series, but this one was just sitting there on the library shelf.

This leans a little toward the "motivational speaker" / self-help side of things the farther I go, but not so much that I'll DNF it.

Both Sinbad and Aladdin were far different from the abridged children's versions I read 45 years ago... For example, Sinbad isn't even a sailor! He's just a wealthy merchant who hired ships to transport his goods. And Aladdin is Chinese?! Anyway, I'm enjoying most of the stories.

Some notes: (1) Goodreads says this version is leatherbound and first published in "800" and has 672 pages. Instead, this version was first published in 2011, has 651 pages, and is hardback (not leather). (2) Holy cow, something was very wrong with this Richard Burton guy and I wonder if anyone less racist ever took a stab at translating the original. (3) I have more, but GR says I'm running out of characters.

I think I'm enjoying the anecdotes between poems more than the poems themselves.