Tag Archives: fiction

BOOK: “Cajun Night Before Christmas” by Trosclair

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Cajun Night Before Christmas (The Night Before Christmas Series)Cajun Night Before Christmas by Trosclair
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Pelican Books

As it happens, I was just in New Orleans during Christmas and stumbled onto this book, which is well regarded regionally but pretty much unheard of beyond. It is essentially the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” (a.k.a. “Twas the Night Before Christmas,”) but conveyed in the Cajun dialect, featuring a Santa that is a bit scruffier and who is transported by alligators rather than reindeer. It adds a bit of humor as well as regional flavor to the poem. As one would expect, it’s illustrated in the style of a children’s story book.

If you find yourself in bayou country during the holiday season, I’d highly recommend you give it a read.

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BOOK: “The Answer Is No” by Fredrik Backman

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The Answer Is NoThe Answer Is No by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site -Amazon

This short story / novella is hilarious. It’s the tale of a happily asocial protagonist, Lucas, who wants nothing more than to live a solitary apartment-dwelling existence, but who is pulled ever deeper into social interaction through an absurd series of events in his apartment complex. The story mixes a heavy dose of bureaucratic absurdism into this plot of curmudgeon interrupted.

I’d highly recommend this book for readers of humorous fiction.

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BOOK: “The American Claimant” by Mark Twain

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The American ClaimantThe American Claimant by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Free at Project Gutenberg

This is one of Twain’s lesser-known books, but it’s not for lack of Twain’s signature humor and cleverness. Like “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” it shines a light (often satirically) on what it means to be American via a fish-out-of-water storyline. In this case, there is no “magic teleportation” of a character to an alternate world. Here, a progressive British aristocrat ends up in working class America, while a flighty American who dabbles in get-rich-quick schemes — Mulberry Sellers (the titular “American Claimant”) — ends up playing at being an aristocrat, but in America.

As the book highlights the difference between class-conscious Britain and egalitarian America, it shows that deep down America isn’t always as egalitarian as it projects to be. This insight is largely conveyed through the experience of “Howard Tracy” (the pseudonym of Viscount Berkeley, the progressive aristocrat who gives up his title to assume an identity in blue-collar America, only to find that it is not the utopia of equality he’d come to believe it to be.)

If you enjoy humorous stories, I’d highly recommend this book. It may take a moment to get into the story, but — ultimately — it’s an enjoyable read.

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BOOK: “The Emperor in Hell” [Book 5 of the “Journey to the West” Series] ed. by Jeff Pepper; trans. by Xiao Hui Wang

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The Emperor in Hell: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary LevelThe Emperor in Hell: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Imagin8 Press

This is the fifth volume in a series that abridges and simplifies the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West, so that it can be read by a language learner with about a HSK 3 grasp of Chinese. It tells the story from Chapters 10 and 11 of the original novel. Like the preceding volume, this one doesn’t deal with Sun Wu Kong (i.e. the Monkey King — protagonist of the novel overall,) and doesn’t even deal with the monk Xuanzang — the protagonist of the true story on which the novel was based.) These chapters tell a story that feels like a diversion, though it will be involved in the segue back to the actions of the main cast.

In this book, the Jing River Dragon King gets in trouble when he makes a bet with a fortune-teller. The Dragon King has to cheat to save his pride, but this runs him afoul of the Jade Emperor. The Dragon King appeals to the human Emperor, Taizong, who agrees to help. When wires get crossed, Taizong ends up in the underworld for judgement. With the help of others and with promises made, Taizong is allowed to return to earth.

It’s an interesting story and gives some insight into Chinese mythology. As is always the case with a book such as this, events of the story must be cut or rushed. Readers may vary in their views about whether the right material was cut or thinned.

I continue to enjoy this series. This book was a little more challenging to read than earlier volumes, not because the vocabulary was harder. I think it was more that contextual cues were fewer, owing to it not being so tightly tied to the overall story.

If you’re just learning to read Chinese, I’d recommend this series as an interesting story made readable to a language learner.

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BOOK: “Stories and Myths of Eight Immortals” Trans. by Li Yanjia and Nathaniel Hu

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Stories and Myths of Eight ImmortalsStories and Myths of Eight Immortals by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Available online – Internet Archives

This is a fine collection of stories about the adventures of the Eight Immortals (mostly as individuals, but with a few stories that feature the whole group.) There are twenty-eight chapters, but a few less than that of stories because the first chapter is an introduction to the Eight Immortals, and there are a couple of chapters at the end that discuss the origins of cultural artifacts associated with the Eight Immortals.

The stories are pulled from varied sources. I would give the stories a five, but this edition is loaded with grammatical mistakes — to the point of being distracting and unpleasant to read. It reads not like a present-day Google Translate translation, but rather as if it was being spoken by someone with an uneven (remedial to elegant) grasp of English. [Not everywhere, but enough to be problematic.]

The stories themselves are engaging, often have moral, and are quick reads (mostly a page, a few more than three pages.)

If you can tolerate reading through patches of bad grammar, this is not a bad collection of stories and information about the Eight Immortals, but if it’s too much to stomach, you might want to look elsewhere. The stories themselves are widely available, though not necessarily in English and, if so, not necessarily collected into a single volume. With editing, this would be an excellent collection of stories.

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BOOK: “The Dragon King’s Daughter” Trans. by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang

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The Dragon King's Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty StoriesThe Dragon King’s Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty Stories by Gladys Yang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Google Book Site

This thin anthology contains ten stories from varied writers of the Tang Dynasty. The stories include a mix of speculative fiction, political fiction, and love stories — some being cross-genre pieces that mix elements of more than one of these categories.

I found a wide variation in how engaging the stories were. The best of them were quite good. The Spendthrift and the Alchemist, The White Monkey, and the titular The Dragon King’s Daughter were among my favorites. Each of those stories included a supernatural element, but also a thought-provoking premise.

If you enjoy Tang Dynasty literature and would like to try some of this golden literary age’s short fiction, this book is a quick and pleasant read.

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BOOK: “The Young Monk” [Vol. 4 of the “Journey to the West” Series] ed. by Jeff Pepper / trans. by Xiao Hui Wang

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The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to the West Book 4)The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Imagin8

This book, Volume 4 of the Journey to the West series, takes a turn from the books thus far. While the first three volumes (Ch. 1-7) focus on Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, this volume leaves him under the mountain where the last volume left him, and — instead — focuses on the origin story of Xuanzang — the monk who is sent by the Buddha to India to get scriptures in the original book — based on the real-world monk who did travel to India to complete the selection of Buddhist scriptures available to Chinese Buddhists.

The monk’s story might not sound like it would be as thrilling as that of the superpowered immortal monkey, but it’s a gripping tale. The story begins before Xuanzang is born and ends in his eighteenth year. So, before he is assigned to travel West to get scriptures.

As I’ve said in earlier reviews, I really like the approach of this series. It has Simplified Chinese script, pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary of terms used, and it’s organized so as to facilitate reading by a language learner.

I continue to recommend this series for language learners who need a linguistically simplified text to be able to read.

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BOOK: “Islands in the Stream” by Ernest Hemingway

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Islands in the StreamIslands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Simon & Schuster

This novel was actually published almost a decade after Hemingway’s death. It was found among his papers, a complete — but rough — draft.

The book’s protagonist is Thomas Hudson, a divorced painter living alone in the Caribbean. The story is told in three parts. In the first, Hudson’s solitary existence is brightened by a visit from his three sons (one from one ex- and the other two from a second.) The second part is the story of a prolonged bender in Cuba. The final section follows Hudson and his crew as they track the survivors of a sunken German U-boat as said Germans try to island-hop their way to safety. The three sections are each quite different in tone. The last part reads like genre fiction (i.e. commercial fiction,) while the former two are character driven literary fiction (but of quite different tones.)

The book is mostly about loss and grief and the varied ways with which it is dealt, and the process through which the griever proceeds.

I enjoyed this book. While, like a life, it may be a bit messy, I found it compelling. I’d recommend it for those who enjoy Hemingway.

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BOOK: “The Immortal Peaches” [Vol. 3 of “Journey to the West”] Ed. by Jeff Pepper / Trans. by Xiao Hui Wang

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The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to the West Book 3)The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Imagin8

This is the third volume in this Journey to the West series aimed at language learners. It covers Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the book, which includes events from Sun Wukong’s return to heaven acknowledged with the title “Great Sage Equal to Heaven” through the conflicts that result from his lack of control and decorum to Buddha’s bet with Monkey King.

I’ve enjoyed this series. The pinyin is interspersed with an abridged and linguistically simplified Chinese telling of the story on a paragraph basis, and the English translation is at the end. This allows one relatively quick access to the pinyin without continually cheating by stray glance. Also, one can determine whether one wants to read the English translation before or after reading the Chinese, as is appropriate to one’s level and language learning strategy. The book also has a glossary of all the Chinese words it uses, and the words beyond the most basic (beyond HSK3, or so) are footnoted. (I read on kindle, so looking up translations of any words is as quick as highlighting them.)

This is a great language learning tool, featuring one of Chinese literature’s most engrossing stories. I’d highly recommend it for those learning Mandarin Chinese with Simplified script.

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PLAY: “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams

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A Streetcar Named DesireA Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available online – Internet Archive

I’ve never seen the play, nor the movie. Of course, this is one of those works that has so scrawled itself across pop-culture that it’s impossible to go in without some reference from it kicking around in one’s brain, be it the pained shout of “STELLA!” or character names like “Blanche DuBois” or “Stanley Kowalski.” Even the name of the plantation on which the fallen socialite sisters grew up, Belle Reve, has been lent to a prison for supernatural villains in the world of DC Comics.

At the play’s heart are two sisters raised in a wealthy Southern family. One, Stella, has adapted well to the family’s fall from grace. Stella has married a fellow who is rough around the edges (to say the least,) Stanley, but Stella is satisfied that Stanley is a dependable provider — even if he does rough her up a bit now and again. The other sister, Blanche, hasn’t coped nearly so well. Blanche lies perpetually to try to shield herself from reality — and to present a more appealing reality to others. It is when Blanche, having nowhere else to go, moves into the small New Orleans apartment of Stanley and Stella that the tension is set to form the play’s story.

I enjoyed reading this play. It’s well-paced and effectively mixes comedy and drama. It’s in character building where the play shines. The main characters are well-defined and behave quite believably within the context of each one’s neuroses and vices. The constant conflict between Blanche and Stanley drives the story.

I’d highly recommend this for readers of plays and / or of American Literature.

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