What a beautiful book.
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The Dutch House
I don’t understand how a book like The Dutch House can be so captivating. There are no overarching villain, nor fantastical world building or gimmicks. The sole driving force lies in the ability of Ann Patchett to deliver a soulful story stemming from the Cinderella-esque expulsion of two siblings, Maeve and Danny, from their family “home,” the Dutch House.
The two trudged into the future, with Danny obtaining a medical degree but ultimately eschewing it by becoming a real estate investor while Maeve became a successful CFO figure in a frozen vegetable company, while never letting go of the past, returning to the edges of the Dutch House time after time; partly out of habit, and partly to reminisce. It was in those quiet times where the author really shined and captured my attention, and drove me to keep on reading. Turns out, I have been and will always be a sucker for good prose.
I know I am facing a lot of personal issues this quarantine, and the following quote resonated:
There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.
I am at a crossroads in my life with finishing up my degree. I’ve just been through a tough breakup. I will land on solid ground though. I need to focus on not what I have lost, but rather what I can achieve:
I’d never been in the position of getting my head around what I’d been given. I only understood what I’d lost.
Celeste Ng; Switch Switching
- Recently finished reading Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You in some five days while in Florida. I’ve never read a book written by an Asian-Americnan author before, nor one where Asian-American issues are discussed at great details. A central tenant of a character, wanting to fit in but couldn’t, resonated with me. The issues I faced when I first moved here were less significant than the ones in the book (which took place in the 60s), but this concept of wanting people to figure out one’s differences from something else besides my skin color still holds today.
- The left controller stick of my Switch has been suffering greatly from drift recently, and I finally managed to fix it. The parts were quite cheap, with the tools included from Amazon. It felt quite nice again to work with my hands and really made me want to go do some small projects in the Brown design lab.
Three-Body Problem Series
I finished this series relatively quickly, probably in the span of a month total for three books. Looking back, the best book was probably the first two. There was just an air of mystery surrounding the nature of the invading aliens. Who are they? Why are they coming? What kinds of technology do they have? These questions really drives the first novel into a satisfying conclusion.
In the second and third books, where time skips anywhere from one to a few dozen years, a bleak picture of the universe is painted by Liu (the author). To no surprise, the universe of the novel is populated with lifeforms who mistrust each other and seek to destroy one another. Everything is explained quite thoroughly, but sometimes a bit too much. I wish he left some deduction for the readers to make ourselves rather than spoon feeding all the details.
There are a few more criticisms I have of the second and third books:
- The character development falls mostly flat. I really didn’t care about any of them but rather the state of humanity as a whole. In contrast, the first book contained a fascinating historical overview set in communist China which helped build the characters.
- Liu is really quite imaginative in the types of weapons that an alien with far superior technology can employ. Unfortunately, some of them seem quite farfetched. I just think if they posses the power to alter reality, there would be better ways of waging war.
- Multiple times, Liu thinks that society as a whole would “agree” on an idea. As we see in our current political situation, this really doesn’t make any sense.
The Goldfinch
What a weird novel. It gradually crosses the line from a coming-of-age story (a Bildungsroman apparently) to a crime novel.
The first portion was beautifully done, with the main character characterized in-depth alongside his partner. The novel began with a tragedy befalling our young protagonist, and a quick introduction to all the relevant main characters. Chekhov’s gun really applied in this case, where a girl described within the first some 30 (?) pages becomes the overarching love interest.
From here, the character moves to Las Vegas and probably the best part of the book. There, the character really developed and really solidifies as a character. Another tragedy befalls our little teenager and he is forced to move back to NYC.
The final act of the book is really lackluster. The author introduces far too many characters and plot points which I didn’t understand (or care to for that matter). It was just too much and an abrupt change in pace. Overall, an incredibly lengthy novel which I just don’t think is that good…