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aweekinthelife's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
5.0
appreciated the history and descriptions of Chinese and how complicated various formats of representing characters in typewriters/telegrams/digitally can be. usually i don't enjoy pop linguistic-y literature, so this surprised me (in the best way)! i thought the author did a great job presenting history and also explaining written language for those who might not have linguistics background.
new life goal: somehow find my way onto the Ideographic Research Group for discussing unicode characters for chinese?!
bonus: listen to the audio for the author's recitation of the classic forty four stone lions poem :) one flaw on library-borrowed audio is that i never was able to track down the companion PDF, although i didn't look THAT hard.
sea_level's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
fionak's review
3.0
Interesting but not riveting due to tangents on unrelated matters and explanations of concepts already established. DNF the last chapter cause it was due back at the library.
rover_under's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.0
The structure was interesting but I didn't really like the focus on individual innovators in the domain of the Chinese script, and a lot of time is spent building up these people and their purpose. How did the author know how the inventors they referenced were feeling in the moment? It wasn't always clear since there weren't many in-text references to diary entries or letters. For me, there seemed to be a lot of intrigue-building that distracted from the information.
I would have preferred a more sociological lens to see how each invention changed communication across China and beyond, instead of hearing more about personal scuffles between creators of rivaling language systems. I thought the narrative style worked much better when presented from the author's perspective in the last few chapters, though. I wish the rest of the book had felt as grounded.
I would have preferred a more sociological lens to see how each invention changed communication across China and beyond, instead of hearing more about personal scuffles between creators of rivaling language systems. I thought the narrative style worked much better when presented from the author's perspective in the last few chapters, though. I wish the rest of the book had felt as grounded.
aislinghamill's review against another edition
I might try and read this in paperback form one day, I felt I wasn't keeping up with the audio version, and obviously the visuals of characters are quite important in this
missannejello's review against another edition
inspiring
slow-paced
2.0
China invented movable type in the eleventh century, ~300 years before the the Gutenberg press and somehow each chapter of this book felt even longer to get to the point. The writing is bloated with speculative historical reconstructions and granular technical details. While it is a chore to read, you can’t help but marvel at the impressive advancements made in digitizing an ancient knowledge.