Yuhan
More enjoyable than love in the time of cholera, BUT the bar is low. I still think that people are not as horny as this author believes them to be, but whatever, maybe I live a boring life lol. The foreshadowing is amazing and the book really does make the most of it's very long time span. Blend of superstition and real life is also accurate in ways I didn't realise you could convey with words, made me feel like a child again. Despite it not being the most enjoyable book in the world, I can't say that I wouldn't recommend at least once for the experience.
TW: racism, rape and pedophilia
Very uncomfortable read. I was just about to say its a product of its time, and searched it up and it was published in 1985??!! UHHHHH OKKK
It's got comically questionable depictions of minority ethnics and innntterresting ideas about rape (damn everyone loves it apparently. Raping AND being raped?). At this point I'd taken it as a product of its time (only to find out now that it's actually pretty recent), or maybe it's more to help build characters or setting the scene by showcasing viewpoints on matters rather than portraying as fact, and then BAM INCESTUOUS PEDOPHILIA. Maybe 14 year olds were considered more adult then??... Uhhh.. Nope ok she's in school uniform and uhhhh ok cool he's playing nursery games with her to get her to UHHHH OK nvm EWWW
My flavourite quote:
(in reference to two white people having sex for the first time on their honeymoon)
"he slipped his hand under the sheet and caresses her FLAT, STRAIGHT PUBIC HAIR: the PUBIC HAIR OF A JAPANESE"
Just checked my east asian pubes and they're definitely still curly LOL why does bro think we have an elvis presley hairdo down there I'm crying 😭
Contains spoilers
man is realllyyy bad with dealing with heat. then prison teaches him how to have feelings. character development consists of this man learning how to say more than three sentences at a time.
not entirely sure what I read but it was vaguely entertaining i guess. second worst excuse for murder only after sorry officer I tripped and fell 😭
Very interesting points and well organised with summaries and exercises! Doesn't baby you like a lot of English non fic does (I'm looking at you, atomic habits), which I appreciate, but does a wonderfully good job of making me feel lectured. That might be more a reflection on the fact that most similar teaching I got in Chinese (primary school) was actually in fact being lectured at me, and so it's likely a me problem and not a problem of this book.
Mrs Liu you still owe me therapy.
Contains spoilers
Eh. Picked up one of the most popular novels hoping for something actually good but was sorely disappointed. Easy to read but little more than just horny slop, with overused tropes and very obvious "inspirations" from other popular novels in the same category.
I've read more sophistication by teenage first-time writers on wattpad. Take away the overwheling amount of sex and its not much more than a children's novel. Characters are incredibly 1D (everyone is either an angel or the exact same flavour of arsehole and then they all die wow no one could have ever seen that coming), you can see any plot twists coming half a book away, everything has to have the threat of death for no sensible reason, main characters are incredibly unoriginal Xaden somehow decides to just pick up a whole new personality after fucking , if anyone "retorts" again I'm gonna throw up, and please for the love of everything NOBODY calls their relatives "cousin" and "younger sister"
"Hey younger sister"
What the frick
Contains spoilers
I am gobbledy smacked screaming crying throwing up, this book slaps you in all the unexpected ways that real life does.
Surprisingly this book is very different to the first in its series, but absolutely not in a bad way. It's grown organically to adapt to the new setting - given that the twist in the first book completely alters the fundamental environment that the book is set in, and yet somehow manages to slap in an equally mindbending revelation in this book. I've gushed loads in my review of the first book about how real the writing is, and I think that really excels in this book as well. I'm still marvelling at how well the sense of nothing you thought mattered matters anymore after 200 years of 'time travel', yet it's not even mentioned explicitly. Dude, like, I feel like I time travelled. also loved the not-so-subtle calls to classic Chinese sci-fi that I read growing up, very fun :)).
A note that I did read the original in Chinese, and while I thought the translation of the first book was kinda difficult to read, I had a quick peek at the tranlation of this second book, and actually thought it seemed pretty fab (and I don't often say that about translated works from Chinese ahaha. I know it's difficult to produce a translation that makes a native speaker happy!).
No frickin clue where the third book is going to go, from a quick look at the contents page, it appears to take on a completely different spin again and I'm all here for it. I guess that's part of the charm, and that is just how life goes.
DNF at 53% it's a confused podcast pretending to be a book. Think I've gotten everything it's trying to say, and having this sitting in my 'currently reading' is making it look like I have relationship problems LMAO so at this point I'll just put it out of its misery.
The ideas of attachment theory are interesting, and does have value, but this book is definitely intended to be for anxious attachment peeps and is mis-marketed as being for everyone. Repetitive definitely and slightly patronising? Slightly worrying that it's one of the most popular relationship books out there
Contains spoilers
The truly questionable decisions of characters will have you slamming your head at the wall. Entertaining read, and a somewhat satisfying conclusion to the trilogy? Seems though that this third book was not originally planned, and all (?) clues and pointers were only planted in this book. Lines of the big bad also sound comically extreme and unnatural, which I could not take seriously and kinda took me out of it (sorry). Wild idea but if you think you're being stalked to be murdered, maybe don't not tell your family who you live with? Maybe don't leave the house by yourself? Maybe don't tell the police who phoned you up to check if you were still being stalked that nahhh everything's fine dw about it anymore?who would have thought dude im screaaaaaaaaaaammmming
Contains spoilers
This book manages to make a whole ass plague boring. Or maybe plagues are meant to be boring, and this is actually a stroke of genius done so flawlessly that I didn't appreciate it. Either way, I fell asleep.
(idk I usually enjoy philosophical discussions. I fear my experience of this book might be victim of translation (it's kinda difficult to follow what's going on at a lot of points), and maybe the concept of a documentation of a plague was novel when it was published, but after covid, all it gives is the faint familiarity of boredom.)
((at the reveal at the end that Rieux is supposed to be the narrator, umh, I always thought that they were the same anyway from the beginning???? so turns out I was reading the whole book wrong. Goes to show that I don't think I followed a thing through the whole ass book LOL))
some very interesting ideas, and the best buy vs rent argument that I've heard. Tax efficiency is also something I haven't seen many other sources put as much of an emphasis on, so the details in this book were really valuable. The first half has very engaging story elements though the latter half starts to get a bit preachy. There are some arguments that just don't make sense, like 'inflation isn't real because they're local phenomena and you can just travel to cheaper places' - I get the sentiment but like..... you still will get priced out of places even if you have cheaper places to go?? Unless you can find somewhere with 0 or negative inflation to live for the rest of your life, prices do rise.
I also understand that 'communists are gonna kill my family' makes a good narrative, but as a first gen (ish, CN parents, GB -> CN -> GB) Chinese immigrant it does grate. I am tired and sick of misinformation that leeches into a negative cultural image surrounding my heritage. plsssssssssss the number of times I have people ask me about life and politics in China to then just not believe what I say because they read or watched some biased/outdated/very-much-watered-down content somewhere ((I gen love a discussion!! but why are people correcting me on my own culture and experiences 😭))
Buckle in these are my takes:
1. I appreciate that the China I grew up in is significantly different to the one that the author grew up in, given I am approx 15-20 years younger than her. However, presenting her experiences as current day fact - I know that this is probably where her impressions have still remained! - is while unintentional, harmful in many ways.
2. Given the young age at which she immigrated, her impressions are likely largely influenced by her parents experience. Since this seems mostly to refer to times like the cultural revolution (60s-70s) and the world was just a very different place back then (of course, famously, across the globe and especially in the western world, all people regardless of their background and political affiliation were treated with kindness, equality and respect). I don't think anyone looks back at those times and thinks it was a great experience at all, and criticisms and discussions happen fairly openly nowadays in China. But you would be insane to state that that's what China is now.
3. Again, given the young age she immigrated at, portions of her impressions that extend from her own personal experiences are unlikely to be the full picture. Having immigrated at the same age to her, and then later reconnecting with those regions, wow oh boy was I wrong. I thought British insurance could actually magically fix your car at the press of a button (thanks to that LV advert). I thought that African Giant Snails were really common pets (because my teacher had one). I once told someone in China with absolute certainty that 'fuck' was not a proper english word because I having lived in Britain had never heard of it. (though seriously, why do we shield swearing so much from kids, it's not that deep) I wasn't even aware of what racism was, and was later horrified to hear how my parents had been treated in workplace in Britain in the 90s and 00s, despite being highly skilled immigrants.
There is a corner of my brain that houses my seven year old impression of Britain, and it's a wonderful place filled with exclusively summer picnics, blackberries and dolls in your shoes - it's nice to visit sometimes but it is most definitely distinct from reality.
I even have to come to terms with the fact that the China in my twelve-year-old memories no longer exists - while I believe I was conscious and old enough to form a proper worldview by then(-ish), AND despite the fact that change and growth is nowhere near as explosive as it was back then, a lot has happened in ten years. Streets are safe and sparkling clean, kids these days don't get beat up in school (they'll never understand what we went through LOL), and my grandparents are no longer invincible. The entire citycenter/shopping district has also upped and moved literally right outside my door, so literally everywhere I loved to go as a kid no longer exists but at least life is horrifically convenient now.
Anyway, all I'm trying to say is contrary to what this book will have you believe about China, pensions exist, there is a state healthcare system, and fuck me it really boggles me that people believe this, but nobody wants to kill your family for no reason.
The title is clickbait lol. Medicine adjacent literature will always hold my interest but I was worried that this was going to present an overly dismissive argument of people's suffering (and honestly picked it up to expand my worldview - one of those books if you get me) but actually, it was very well written and presented some very interesting points.
The main argument presented was essentially - people are suffering, but if their suffering is not fully understood and the diagnosis does not actually provide any benefits in understanding or treatment, does it actually do more good overall to give them a diagnosis. A multitude of different perspectives are discussed in the book, but the one I found most interesting was the case where the biological underpinnings of a diagnosis have not been understood, and so the diagnosis itself is not much more than a collection of symptoms. For the subset of these diagnoses where it's commonly perceived to be an inherent difference or just simply not recoverable, despite no scientific consensus that this is actually the case, having the diagnosis pinned to a person's identity can affect how they perceive themselves and their relationship with potential recovery.
As someone diagnosed and being treated for ADHD, I SO understand the appeals of a biological explanation, and so kinda just accepted it without digging into it too much - and to be fair, it is very much often presented as truth. Finding out from literature (not even this book lol, but it is discussed) (and also just from personal experience where things didn't quite add up) that the reality was much more complicated did feel like a bit of mourning for a loss of identity. I realised that I was starting to use it as an excuse, and regardless of what the true mechanisms for the condition is, I'd reached the point of diminishing returns of my diagnosis and it was actively stunting my growth in other areas. Either way, I'm glad that I got the diagnosis and it's helped me in many ways, but I'm also glad that I've been able to look beyond it, and I see the worry that other people may be being harmed by a well-intended but ultimately not unequivocally good-resulting simplified explanation.
Gripes about the book (because ⭐necessary⭐): clickbait title is unappetising. missells what the book is about, or maybe it's a meta 5D chess move, idk lol. Also, from some of the interviews featured in the book, it's quite clear how the author feels about the conversation. I understand that as a practicing medical professional, it must be frustrating facing people who give out (from their point of view) misinformation and endorsing medical malpractitioners. After all, especiallyas a medical professional, active harm to people must be difficult to just sit with, buuuuuuuuuttttttt maybe a more neutral viewpoint would be better for a book. That's all!