It's been a long while, but then I have been reading some very long books. Chief among which has been Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guangzhong. It's an abridged translation but it's still very, very long. This was a follow-up to Emperor of the Seas by Jack Weatherford (about Kublai Khan) which seems to have kicked me off on a Chinese history rabbit hole. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is itself a late medieval work but tells of ancient times. It covers several decades, countless wars and battles, and dozens of figures, all of which I knew absolutely nothing about and still am pretty lost, but the opening line is as timeless as ever: "Empires arise from chaos and empires collapse back into chaos. This we have known since time began." What do loyalty and honor look like when all the options are bad? How do you tell the Will of Heaven from just killing the most people?
Also on the China theme, but at yet another time (please do not ask me to stick to one thing), was Return to Dragon Mountain (Memoirs of a late Ming man) by Jonathan D. Spence. I actually started this one a few years back but at that point I could not stomach the early chapters about his pre-collapse life of luxury when he would dedicate months to optimizing his cup of tea. I have come to terms with it, however. Some people must struggle just to survive, and some people are Chinese bureaucrats in 1625. He had plenty of struggling later on to make up for it, living in the drafty ruins of his former library and trying to find enough quiet and rice to finish his book.
Bad Therapy by Abigail Schrier. I mostly read this as a counterpoint to the Resilience Myth and Myth of Normal books I read last year. Schrier and Mate agree on two things: kids shouldn't have smart phones and parents should trust their instincts. I'm pretty sure as humans in social interactions we don't have much in the way of instincts to go on; what feel like instincts are deeply colored by our experiences, exposures and culture to a degree we can never objectively evaluate. Which is no doubt why Schrier and Mate have opposite ideas about how parents will act when they are acting on their instincts. Also I think both of them overestimate (due to life stage, Schrier's children are too young and Mate's too old) how much parents can ultimately intervene between their children and the larger culture; at some point they will have to live now, not 100 years ago. Schrier does have some good points that psychotherapy, though undoubtedly having helpful applications, has not been an unmitigated boon, and is particularly untested and uncertain when applied to children. Overall it does seem like the more we think and talk and raise awareness about mental health, the more miserable everybody is. (And I say this as someone who has been using therapy and found it helpful for many years.) I don't think the picture is as bleak as she paints, though. As both a parent and employer of a significant number of Gen Z, I find them as reasonably functional as human beings as anyone is at that age. We have no doubt screwed them up a great deal, but then we always do.
Talking about other fascinating beings, though, I thoroughly enjoyed The Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich about the social lives and problem-solving abilities of ravens. I also appreciated the amount of time Mr. Heinrich spent squatting in the snow under branch shelters to bring us these accounts.
Taliesin by Stephen Lawhead. Duchess finished her Christmas stocking book at the airport and left it for me to read. I've always wanted to read Lawhead's take on Arthur, although the introduction of Atlantis definitely threw me for a loop. I did enjoy it but found the pacing uneven and some things didn't seem to add up. I do look forward to reading the rest but feel that I am still looking for an Arthur retelling that is as good as the title of The Once and Future King is.
Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston. This one, the beginning of a prequel series to Ender's Game, was Deux's stocking book but I found it a little too grim for bed time reading. There's only so many corpses in dismembered spaceships I can handle right before bed. Still I've found it pretty engaging and have carried on with the next few books, albeit earlier in the day.
For before bed reading I have instead been revisiting Bookworld with the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.
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