(no subject)

Woke at 5 yesterday morning and lay awake puzzling the following Arang point until I fell asleep again.
( Why I wish I understood Korean )

Reading Wednesday

What I've just read:
Yiyun Li, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. Beautifully written stories (even I can tell that, who have no ear for prose) that I loved in spite of the high lit requirement that nothing actually *happen* in a high lit story. My favourites were the title story and the novella, Kindness, which mirrored each other in their protagonists: but even to say what the protagonists are is to spoil the stories by attaching labels.

Li's characters remind me a bit of Banana Yoshimoto's, being touched by a grace I rarely find in descriptions of western characters. Oddly, because the grace I mean is the spiritual and Christian kind. "They were lonely and sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could, with great care, make a world that would accommodate their loneliness."

What I'm reading now:
Upstairs: Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House. Downstairs: Paul Cornell, London Falling. Travelling: Catherine Webb, The Obsidian Dagger. The one that came in and shoved the others out: Justine Larbalestier, Liar.

What I'll read next:
The other three books listed above; Jonathan Spence, Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man.