| Reader | Group | Book Title | Book Author | Book Review or Favorite Quotes |
| Jinhua Li | Faculty | Taipei Story | R. F. Kuang | This American Chinese author R. F. Kuang’s (匡灵秀) seventh book, and another intriguing read after her poignant fiction Yellowface, a horror story of how race, ethnicity, gender, and the cutthroat competition of the publishing industry do to a talented young writer. Taipei Story attracts me on many levels: it tells a coming-home story of Lily Chen, an American freshmen as well as second generation Chinese immigrants, as she enrolls in an intensive summer Chinese language program in Taipei. As someone who has led study abroad programs every summer in the last 10 years, I am instantly attracted to what Lily will find in Taipei, and how her summer Chinese program shapes her identity in unexpected ways. Written in Lily’s first person point of view, Taipei Story invites me into the inner worlds of some of my students, most of whom, although not a second generation Chinese immigrants like Lily, encounter the same cultural challenges and negotiate the same scenarios that Lily finds herself in. Some of these are familiar and unsurprising, such as food, friendship, and family traditions, but it is how Lily process them that keeps the story engaging. I will not reveal too much of the book, and I recommend it to any one who has lived in an unfamiliar city or studied a foreign language. |
| Anonymous | Staff | The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | “It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.” The fox, tamed by the Little Prince, taught him the definition of “uniqueness” in love, and also taught us the importance of responsibility, action, and ritual in love—just as “if you come at four in the afternoon, then from three o’clock I shall begin to feel happy.” In all relationships, love is not merely a feeling; it is also an active choice and a deliberate act. |
| Ningyu Wang | Undergraduate student | 记一忘三二 | 李娟 | One of China’s most renowned contemporary best-selling authors, Li Jia often portrays her life in Altay and the small details of her life in Xinjiang. This book records countless delightful moments from her household—stories about her mother, cats, and dogs, such as the “Wild Cat Club” at home, her mother’s travel adventures and her boastful manner, as well as the warm, affectionate interactions between people and animals. This collection of short stories focuses on intimate domestic scenes, rich with nostalgic charm. |
| Jinghan Sun | Undergraduate student | 中国近代史 | 蒋廷黻 | 在世界上，一切国家能接受近代文化者必致富强，不能者必遭惨败，毫无例外。 |
| Anonymous | Staff | 为机器立心-迈向通用人工智能的中国路线 | 朱松纯 | 写得非常精彩且有见地的书，对大语言模型研究和通用人工智能的发展方向提供了许多思考路径、实践样本和启发。虽然专业，但很好理解，可读性相当强。 |
| Coco Zhang | Undergraduate student | Against the Machine | Paul Kingsnorth | What Kingsnorth does well is consolidating the information needed to convey his points. A pessimistic author by nature, the roots of his beliefs are formed by commitment to the Green movement in his youth, followed by a disillusionment to it later in life. Now a converted Orthodox Christian, religion is a prominent sentiment throughout the book, as he draws on his experiences practicing Wicca and Zen Buddhism to explain how he sees the inevitable future of humanity. One of the book’s more contentious arguments concerns the trans rights movement. Rather than viewing it as an innate expression of human identity guided to physical fruition by an increasingly progressive society, Kingsnorth frames it as a symptom of the Machine. He argues that progressivism and liberalism are byproducts, as “The left’s levelling project always begins with the destruction of previous lifeways… but what it ends up doing, with a delicious irony, is creating the desert in which [capitalism] can grow fat.” This is likely to strike readers as uncharitable, if not reductive, to social movements as a whole. In his critique, left-wing movements, ranging from the 4th revolution and eco-fascism to pure socialism, however well-intentioned, clear-cut old structures, communities, and roots in the name of progress. In contrast to popular sentiment, radical activism leaves behind gaps that the market is happy to fill, because ultimately, “progressive” means progress, and the direction of the Machine is always forward, ever forward. |
| Coco Zhang | Undergraduate student | Creation Lake | Rachel Kushner | One of the first personal things we get to know about the character is that she wore skinny jeans and suspenders to lure in one of her victims, and I think that’s a pretty good sum of who she is as a person in the book. I came into it with the premise that Bruno would become an all-encompassing entity who consumes this super-smart international spy via guilt-tripping or some way or the other, but he just seems to me like an old man speaking to the air through his emails. It was like the author dug up some really cool facts about homosapiens and just wanted a character to say what she thought but never developed him beyond those messages. The main character is similarly bland and goes through marginal growth, but any development she does have doesn’t matter to the reader because she’s already made it clear that she doesn’t need nor want our sympathy, having the ability to be fluent in four languages (but of course, preserving the American accent because God Bless this cultural haven of a country). It’s also unclear to me how she even forms such a severe parasocial and almost delusional attachment to Bruno, so much so that she almost self-sabatoges her mission. The connection is there throughout the book but as much as the main character loves to talk about herself she doesn’t tell us what parallel there actually is with Bruno and her own spiralling. The plot is actually interesting, and I was admittedly hooked about 3/5 through, not just reading it purely because I wanted to finish the book. But there are so many characters that are thrown at you, and each of them, while given a distinguishing backstory or characteristic, is so forgetful that if they aren’t mentioned for five pages, they just reappear without much meaning. The prose has its moments, and the writing does feel like a fresh take on the eco-conscious themes. I haven’t seen an author analyze the movement from the point of view of a character trying to actively sabotage it. It had a lot of potential to be very satisfying, but the ending feels almost as if Kushner wanted to preserve the main character rather than give her a complete ending or retribution of sorts. Extremely promising but unfortunately rather bland execution. |
| V | Undergraduate student | 第七天 | 余华 | 我对他说，走过去吧，那里树叶会向你招手，石头会向你微笑，河水会向你问候。那里没有贫贱也没有富贵，那里没有悲伤也没有疼痛，没有仇没有恨……那里人人死而平等。 |
| Anonymous | Staff | 易卦: 类万物数学模型 | 欧阳维诚著 | “古者庖牺氏之王天下也，仰则观象于天，俯则观法于地，观鸟兽之文与地之宜，近取诸身，远取诸物，于是始作八卦，以通神明之德，以类万物之情。” |
| Durian | Staff | 春宵苦短，少女前进吧 | 森见登美彦 | 阅读这本书是一种很特别的体验：它不靠“大情节”抓你，而是靠一种“有人贴着你耳边絮絮叨叨”的语气，把你拽进京都的夜里，然后一路把你灌醉（PS不是酒精那种，是气氛那种）。 这本书最好玩的点在于： 如果你喜欢那种“结构严丝合缝、反转不断”的小说，它可能会让你觉得散；但如果你刚好需要一本书把你从日常的闷里拎出来，让你相信“夜晚还可以这样过、世界还能这样打开”，那它就很灵。 读完之后我最强烈的感受是： |
