Gah!

Yesterday was the first time in the year that I read a percentage point of a book just so I don’t lose my streak. I was tired, needed to get some work done, am currently in between ebooks. So I just picked up a random fantasy novel from Libby and read a few pages of it. The worst part of this is that I’m not even sure I want to actually read the book. It’s one of those pulp fiction ones where in the sidebar itself there’s the main intrigue but also the stupid love affair which the protagonist must deal with.

But maybe it’ll be good for me. A light read that maybe, just maybe will be a fast one too. Let’s see.

Finished: The Story of Hong Gildong (Korean Classic) translated by Minsoo Kang 5/5⭐️

I love reading folk classics. They’re simple yet so eloquent. This one was no different. There are some life lessons, some drama, some awesome supernatural elements. It even has a whole thing about filial piety and honoring your ancestors. I only saw this before in the Indian context, so it’s interesting that it’s actually a pan-Asian thing. We should resurrect this in societies where it doesn’t exist anymore.

There are one critique of this story. Largely to do with how repetitive it is. But can’t really blame the story for that. Folk stories have a way of saying the same thing in a hundred ways. After all, what happens when an awe-inspired Korean child asks Grandma, “and then what happened?” Grandma has to invent a whole new adventure for the little one to enjoy. So the story of Hong Gildong gets another chapter.

I found this repetitiveness in The Tale of Genji too, which I’ve tried to pick up twice, only to DNF it again and again. Luckily, the repetitions in thing Gildong’s story were fewer and more interesting.

Chomp Chomp Chomp

A short status update on what’s going on in my life.

With the little one in tow, our days have sort of become more organized, if only by force of taking care of her every day. Her mealtimes, nap times, and bath time dictate what we are doing when. In our “free” time (her naps or after we put her in bed for the night) we focus either on cooking or cleaning or resting up so we can rise for when she needs us next.

In all of this, I’ve noticed that what’s flourishing is my consumption of books. I can’t say reading any more, since 2 out of the 4 books in my “Currently reading” are audiobooks.

I’m currently listening to “Rousseau and Revolution” by Will and Ariel Durant. This is Book 10 of “The Story of Civilization” series. I do not intend on reading the entire series. I picked up this one from the Seattle Public Library (through the Libby app) because I thought it’ll be about, well, Rousseau and the French Revolution. It is, but it encompasses so much more. That’s how I learnt that the series is sort of enmeshed and can be read as one long history. The book started about the life and times of Rousseau and then veered off to tell the contemporary history of every country in Europe. Then it expanded to Turkey and Iran and even went all the way up to Nadir Shah’s conquest of Delhi. So it didn’t really stick around Europe either. I love the extremely detailed descriptions of random things. How many theaters or guild workers or beggars a particular city had in its heyday during this era. How Catherine the Great is linked to her mother-in-law, in excruciating detail. What were the exact names of all the music composed by Mozart and what some of them sounded like. When coming to the Muslim world, the authors also verbatim print out some of their favorite poems by famous poets and the reader does a good job of reading them aloud. I’m also taking the book with a grain of salt. It does a fair job of describing every civilization and country it encounters as the greatest and the finest. But most of the book is written from the perspective of European countries being more advanced, if not superior, due to the Enlightenment.

I listen to this book during the time when I’m doing the dishes. It’s kinda cool to focus on that while getting my hands dirty. I can’t control the flow of the book other than playing and pausing, so I have to just listen. It’s somewhat meditative.

Before this, I was listening to “My year of Rest and Relaxation”. It’s a pretty raucous book, filled with the suicidal and petty inner monologue of the narrator and protagonist of the book. But I grew tired of it around 70% in. I’ve reached a point where I have a hint of what’s going to happen and I’m not looking forward to it. But I am. “Rousseau…” is pretty long. I’m half way in on the 60 hour book. So perhaps I’ll return to “My year of…” before I finish the former. Otherwise, it’ll end up in the “Not Finished” pile and I don’t want to do that to this book. It’s actually pretty funny and sad and grating and great. Highly recommend!

In the “Reading” section, I’ve been reading the web novel “Worm”. It’s about “parahumans” which are humans with some kind of super powers or the other. In a world that normalizes super powers and splits these people into Heroes and Villains (and almost all of them are teenagers), the story of how a teenage girl in High School gains her powers and what she does with them is fascinating. I got to the book via the LessWrong community, so it’s got a sort of hidden agenda too – to teach us readers how it would be if all our decisions are logical and based on thinking things through instead of emotions.

It’s a great contrast to Rousseau (the man and his writings, not the book above) since he was all anti-Enlightenment, Heart-not-Mind, “don’t teach a child about religion or science till they’re a teenage, just let them play”. I have thoughts there, but that may be a whole different rant.

Worm is pretty long. Again, I’m about midway through it and I read a chapter or two before bedtime. It feels a lot like when I read War and Peace – I would keep reading whenever I got even a moment free, and the book just wouldn’t end. Apparently, the follow up books in this “parahumans” series are even longer. So unless Worm ends with some major cliffhangers or unsolved questions, I won’t be pursuing the rest of the books. Besides, I started reading it as a sort of introduction to the thinking of the LessWrong community, so I’m going to use it as the primer it was meant to be and dive back into the community after I finish.

Since I am reading and listening to all these long books which will take me months to finish, I recently decided to pick up something simple and small. I had a copy of Earthlings by Sayaka Murata sitting around and I’ve just started reading it. ~~It’s a nice and easy read.~~ Edit: As I’ve progressed through the book, I’ve come to realize that it’s going to deal with some really heavy themes. But it’s very well written and I’m not going to put it down. I love the feel of the physical book when all I’ve been consuming are audiobooks and webpages. I love Japanese and Chinese authors (along with Russian and Eastern European authors) and I love the world that Murata is creating. I have Convenience Store Woman also sitting somewhere. Will unpack that if I absolutely love this book.

It’s not all books though. We’ve been working through the latest season of The Crown and have finished House of The Dragon (except for the last episode. I don’t think we will watch that till the next season comes along) and we didn’t really like it that much. We’ve also watched a string of movies recently – Fantastic Beasts being the latest one. I loved Grindelwald in it, though the dialog writer must have blacked out through much of the movie as a lot of characters just don’t have lines . Also drunk was the dialog writer of the movie Brahamastra. The dialogs in that one were somewhere between horrible, missing, and cringy.

I’m feeling that there aren’t a lot of great movies or TV out there right now and books and audiobooks are doing the perfect job of replacing them as media. Added bonus that book reading is so individualistic. I have essentially spent days in the number of hours working through these books alone.

Hmmm. This was supposed to be a short post. Oh well, this is why blogs are fun and Twitter is not. I get to write as much or as little as I want on here and you, dear reader, can choose to skip it or read till the end. If you’ve reached here, thanks!

A journey into audiobooks

A friend told me, when my wife and I declared that we were expecting, that it’s time to accept that I’m not going to be reading a lot of books or watching a lot of TV on loud any more.

He recommended subtitles, telling me that he’s watched almost all the movies and TV in the past few months on mute or low volume.

What I’ve discovered, instead, is that I’m now suddenly a fan of audiobooks. I couldn’t bring myself to hear them earlier. But now, they’re a godsend.

What’s important, I feel, is that I’m getting the right ones to listen to.

I started with My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh, read by Julia Whelan, on Audible. I’ve still not finished it, because I’m really savoring it. But also, because I’ve discovered that I can get a lot of interesting titles from the Seattle Public Library through the Libby app.

I’ve heard Figuring by Maria Popova on Libby. Through it, I discovered a plethora of things to read. The book ends with the life story of Rachel Carson and it was fresh enough (Figuring is a massive book, worth going back to over and over for ideas and a reading list) that I decided to listen to Silent Spring by Rachel Carson on Libby. Sadly, it didn’t hold my attention. I also tried Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, but it too didn’t keep me.

So, I moved on, bouncing from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer to All the Sad Young Men by Keith Gessen. Neither was an ear worm (to me).

Finally, I’ve landed on Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green. I’m on track to finish this one. The book is interesting, the narrator is just enough crazy, and the writing is arguably tight.

I’ve noticed that I like listening to stories of and by women who take control of their lives and lead it the way they want to. The protagonists of Turtles… and My Year… are both knocked down by their fate, and suffering through it, but are able to get through them, their inner monologue aflame with the pitter patter of random and inane thoughts interspersed with deep longing and pain. The women highlighted in Figuring were all pioneers and thinkers and brilliant, and tortured but always pushing, against society, culture, and their own notions.

I thought a few years ago that I want to read more women authors and women-centric stories. I know I’m late, but this audiobook journey sure is shaping up to be just that.

What should I read next?