thingexplainer

i was so tired yesterday that i fell asleep while reading...

What I Just Finished Reading

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
Tender, poetic, made me sad. Between the autofictional narration and the looming background of the Vietnam War, I was thinking about The Things They Carried throughout, although it isn't as pointed as The Things They Carried with regards to the autofictional part. Not that I know if this was even intentionally a response to that book.

What I'm Reading Now

Broken Stars, by several authors, translated by Ken Liu
Still very early in this. "Goodnight Melancholy", by Xia Jia, (can also be read at Clarkesworld) was odd, since I did a lot of classwork on Turing last semester. "Moonlight", by Liu Cixin, seems to be generally well received but I thought the time travel aspect was done. Although I don't know if there are many time travel stories that feel satisfying to me. Maybe the rise of cnovel/cdrama fandom has spoiled me, but I wish I could find these in the original Chinese, if only to look into a couple things I found strange.

What I'm Reading Next
It's looking like Network Effect.