Literary works

"We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?" by Edward Young

Excerpt from Love in the Time of Cholera The author and translator are both impressive. You simply cannot imagine where the story will go. This book's scene descriptions are very vivid, and its portrayals of characters' psychology are very authentic (it's that feeling in your mind you can't describe, and then the author describes it).

The Little Prince Many people say rereading it as an adult brings different insights. I read it three times in total and didn't glean any particularly special truths ( When I was a little kid I read the children's edition; when I was a bigger kid I assumed the children's edition had been abridged (many children's editions are like that), which is why it's thin, so I bought a very thick copy at the bookstore. When I got home I found it was a trilingual Chinese-French-English edition; the Chinese part was identical to the children's edition, and it was twice as expensive.

The Catcher in the Rye Told in first person about a high school dropout wandering around outside. I read it two or three times and didn't arrive at any grand truths, but I just really liked it. The whole book probably only has one page without profanity. The vocabulary in the original English isn't difficult.

One Hundred Years of Solitude Reality + magical realism; the overall plot is fairly interesting. While reading, remember to sort out the character relationships, otherwise later on you won't be able to tell who's who.

The Alchemist So-so.

Captain Grant's Children / Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea / The Mysterious Island Jules Verne trilogy. Maybe due to translation issues, some descriptions feel a bit childish, like something written by a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, but the flaws don't overshadow the merits — the plot is good.

Oliver Twist So-so, not recommended.

Educated It's the author's own coming-of-age story. Her family had very little contact with society; her father distrusted the government and prepared for the end of the world every day, and her sadistic brother was alternately kind and cruel to her. Overall it's mediocre, though not without merits. When her father learned she was going to study in England, this was his reaction:

"If you were in America," he said quietly, "wherever you are, we could come and find you. I've buried a thousand gallons of gasoline underground. When the end of the world comes I can come get you, bring you home, keep you safe. But if you go to the other side of the ocean..."