brannonkrkhuang's reviews
455 reviews

The Complete Stories of Lu Xun by Gladys Yang, Lu Xun, Yang Xianyi, 魯迅

5.0

This Lu Xun is a legend. The Penguin Classics translation is awful, don’t let it fool you. This is the one you want. Read it.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Did not finish book. Stopped at 11%.

Getting me to read a book about Africa from the pov of racist southern Baptists was always going to be a tough sell. Too much not enough happening.

NW by Zadie Smith
Did not finish book. Stopped at 10%.

I’m glad she gave taxi money to Shar. Fuck the haters. I don’t need to read anymore.

The Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie
Did not finish book. Stopped at 21%.

Was very excited to read this, but unfortunately find the book to be a bit grueling to get through. I do recommend The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine if you, like me, are looking for books about Palestine, but couldn’t get into this one. 

Free Palestine - From the river to the sea. ❤️

Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou

5.0

Really enthralling and deranged stuff here. Had a great time.

Stories of the Sahara by Sanmao

5.0

I can’t stop reading excellent books apparently, and this one is excellent too.

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

5.0

Allende never misses. Another banger!

My Life as a Rat by Joyce Carol Oates

3.0

Really solid opening, but it kinda loses me with the nazi math teacher and then loses me even more with the rich guy and his daughter’s dog. Feels directionless, and like three separate stories that all got forced into happening to one character.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Illustrated by Gertrude Stein
Did not finish book. Stopped at 13%.

This book is about a bunch of famous painters and writers hanging out in Paris and I am not interested in this subject. This is perfect for Paris and art geeks, though! I’ll give Stein another try later - probably give Three Lives.

My Struggle, Book Six by Karl Ove Knausgård

0.25

This is possibly just the worst thing I’ve ever read. Karl Ove must have been reading a lot of modernist literature while writing this, and then allowed it to take over his style, because I see him mentioning James Joyce, and I see him trying his absolute hardest to be all intellectual and philosophical, but he utterly fails. When he tries to sound smart, he sounds like a kid trying to sound smart. His takes are painfully stupid. He spends pages asking himself what a name is. “It’s the uniting of reality and unreality into the idea of the concept and blah blah blah.” He spends pages describing picking up his kids toys. He spends pages discussing the word, “gales.” He spends practically four hundred pages geeking out about Hitler. He thinks that every country in Africa is incapable of running a government or schools, which is demonstrably false. He thinks Africa should be cut off from the rest of the world to “preserve their culture.” He hates the rules and morals of society and wishes he could do what he wants (what does he want to do that would be so bad from a moral perspective I wonder???) but then he admits that he hates it when people are angry or upset with him. So shut up about your little “no morals” fantasy then, my dude? He thinks that the reason the Nazis were bad was because they didn’t view themselves as “I” but as “we” and therefore every version of “we” is bad. Yeah, violent nationalism and antisemitism weren’t the problem, it was the word “we.” Any sort of solidarity with others is now a bad thing. We should all be “I”s, but we can’t of course, because I just said “we” and “we” is a bad thing, so all of us individually has to be an individual, because to be an individual is to be more moral than to be part of a “we”, even if “we” refers to the human race. Somebody who goes against modern morals by mourning the death of Hitler and sympathizing with Nazism is far more moral than those who who view themselves as “we” because that person is an individual, which is good. Karl Ove isn’t making any sense here, and he does it for over 1,000 pages. Never bothering to read from him again. How minuscule do your problems have to be for you to write a 1,100 page book and in it you complain that you can’t hear your racist national anthem anymore???