December 2023 Wrap-Up & Favorites

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December Wrap-Up & Favorites
Source: personal collection

Hello fellow readers, we've finally come to the end of the year. Reading-wise, I think I did okay. I had free days from work which I didn't use wisely. I ended up sleeping or just staying in bed scrolling through social media instead of going out with friends or reading books or even finishing those illustrations that I said I would work on during the end of the year holiday. Man, time goes by so fast. I'm considering putting that on my new year resolution, to be more discipline with my time and use it wisely. Anyway, these are the books I read in December 2023.

[Review] Waiting - Ha Jin

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Title of Book:
Waiting
Author: Ha Jin
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 310

In Waiting, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Ha Jin draws on his intimate knowledge of contemporary China to create a novel of unexpected richness and feeling. This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.
For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young—a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different.
Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. Waiting charms and startles us with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves us with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
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November 2023 Wrap-Up & Favorites

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November Wrap-Up & Favorites
Source: personal collection

Hello fellow reader! We're almost at the end of the year. I'm late again with my wrap-up. I finished two books in November. I almost reach my yearly reading goal which I updated twice because I reached my goal and I think I can accomplish more. However, I won't update the latest goal. That would be overly ambitious. Anyway, here's the list of books I read in November.

[Review] Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

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Title of Book:
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
Author: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Translator: Jay Rubin
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Publication Year: 2006
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 268

October 2023 Wrap-Up & Favorites

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October Wrap-Up & Favorites
Source: personal collection

Hello fellow readers! I'm catching up on wrap-up & favorite post. My homework from last month is to find things to enjoy outside of my work life. Have I succeeded? I think I have. My Italian class started again this month. I also enroll myself in an illustration class. I've never been more excited to learn something new in October.