An abridged version would be losing what makes this novel so important to Chinese culture. The story of 红楼梦 is not the most important point (though it is important). It’s whose eyes the story is told through, his interactions with the people around him, and the daily life that reveals it that matters.

If you have ever read any kind of “fall of a family” style of story you already have read A Dream of Red Mansions. You might as well not bother with an abridged edition. The value of the novel lies precisely in the stuff that would be elided away by an abridgement.

This is a very big, very heavy, very deep novel. (How deep? You can get university degrees in just this novel in China.) And you’ll be reading it through the haze of translation and of cultural confusion. It will not be an easy read even if you get an excellent translation that’s stuffed to the gills with explanatory footnotes. (Like, for example, the poetry won’t resonate … and there is a lot of poetry in the story!) I can’t tell you if it’s worth reading because I’m not you. I can warn you, though, that reading it will be work, not light passing fancy.

In my experience (and I freely admit this is purely subjective), the term “literary fiction” is used as an academic bludgeon by people who sneer at certain styles of fiction, in particular SF, fantasy, and horror (but not only those). There is, however, no coherent definition of the term I’ve ever seen.

For instance one definition you’ll see includes “based on real-life”. Yet Naguib Mahfouz is regarded as a “literary fiction” writer, despite half his oeuvre consisting of obvious fantasy (Children of the Alley and Arabian Nights and Days for starters). Iain Banks (as opposed to Iain M. Banks, who is the same person but the “M.” means he’s wearing his SF author hat) is also a “literary fiction” writer … yet his works are full of fabulism.

One could argue that “literary fiction” is more a set of descriptive priorities (character, theme, style, psychology, the “human condition”) etc. than it is an identifying checklist and as such genre works could be literary, and non-genre works could fail as literature as well.

So, to the root question, what are your favorite non-fiction books? I’m not particularly into fiction, and to the extent I can be, it’s just not the season for me right now to get into it. The fictional books I’ve wanted to read, I have. And if I ever want to read others, I’ll read them when fiction is in season for me (whenever that happens).

Person: What non-fiction books can you recommend?

Internet: Here’s a bunch of fiction books. Don’t ask what to read, just read what you want to. Here’s some more fiction.

Don’t ever change, Internet! 🤣

道德经/老子 (Tao Te Ching in the common, but dated, latinization). It’s the perfect thing to read when you’re not distracted by microscopic online sound bites. Get two translations so you can get how differently it’s viewed by people outside the culture.

I have a related question. I have some very, very, very nice editions of books that are in pristine condition. They were held in protected cardboard boxes and the boxes did their job well while the books were in long-term storage for almost a decade. But the boxes themselves are in very rough shape. The actual surfaces are fine (except for a minor scuff mark on one, but I already know how I’m going to get rid of that). The problem is that the lids are coming apart at the corners, turning the lid into a flat piece of carboard with four flaps instead of, you know, a lid.

What would be the best way to repair those corners so that it looks at least passable to casual inspection. The boxes are cardboard covered with textured black … something paper, but not card stock, nor regular paper. Where they’re torn at the corners, the card stock, no longer contained by the black covering layer, has kind of, over the years, puffed out and gone feathery, so even if I glue the corners back together with something, they won’t be that nice textured black all the way.

Does anybody have any ideas how to repair this, or should I just embrace the look of covers which did the perfect job of protection and look like wounded warriors or something?

Torn from the headlines…

There are oh-so-many “you simply must read this!” books in my trash bins over the years I could likely open the worst bookshop in the world with them as stock.

In school I was forced practically at gunpoint to stare at poetry and regurgitate the teacher/professor’s opinions about what it means. It killed my ability to enjoy poetry for over two decades.

Reading something that doesn’t engage with you is not helpful. Ever.

I think you’ve mistakenly lost yourself on the path to the “c/stridentpolitics” group. This is “c/books”. It’s an easy mistake to make, seeing as the names are nearly identical.

There’s always room for people in this wild world whose opinions are wrong.

Wow! Really? Damn! I needed that permission decades ago! 🤭

Of course!

I know, right? It’s an amazing list!

I got your vowel movement here:

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Sweet potatoes and yams are different things.

I’ve noticed I’m getting downvotes.

This just means you’re on a site that has votes. You could say in a post “the sun rises in the east” and someone will downvote it for some asinine reason or another. If the client you’re using supports it, just hide the vote values. Life’s much easier and happier that way.

QUESTION POSED TO INTERNET: “Can anybody tell me the name of the <insert medium> that had a story about <insert general plot>?”

INTERNET:

• <insert history lesson on the tropes in asker’s question>
• Have you tried this other thing that’s in an entirely different media?
• How about this other thing that’s in a different media again?
• How about more things from different media that are not related to the question?

I rarely DNF a book, often forcing myself to keep reading even if I’m not enjoying it.

I can’t relate to this at all. Unless I have to read a book (for class, say, or for work), if the book isn’t working for me by page 50, into the DNF pile it goes and I seek something else. (Movies have 20 minutes. TV series have 3 or 4 episodes. But everything has a time limit in which they have to grab me or get disposed of.)

I have no idea, for example, outside of cultural osmosis, what happened in any Harry Potter book because I got 50 pages into the first one and just went “ugh” and tossed the book into the giveaway pile.

To go more specifically with your actual point, now, C.J. Cherryh’s oeuvre is kind of a mixed bag for me. Like you I loved the Morgaine novels. I also loved the Chanur novels I’ve read. But the “Company Wars” books are more miss than hit for me.

I never could finish Dhalgren. I gave up decades ago.

道德经 (Dào Dé Jīng / Tao Te Ching). I’ve tried and bounced off this one five times now and am in the middle of try #6. I’ve got the classical Chinese next to a modern Chinese translation with commentary next to at least three English translations and it still hurts my brain.