Posted by dan-bailey 17 hours ago
Ask HN: What are you reading?
Playing Off the Rail: A Pool Hustler's Journey by David McCumber (1996) - hustling in the golden era of pool in the usa
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emergency-with-geo...
It's an autobiographical history which recounts the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history.
I went into this knowing little to no Chinese history, and it has opened my eyes to this fascinating country. I hope to visit China for the first time in 2027. Before I go, I'm doing a deep dive into Chinese history. Open to recommendations on what to read next!
<River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze> -> one of my fav all the time. a forigner teach in this small chinese city, and he write what he observes.
for more ancient chinese history:
<1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline> -> one of the most popular china's history book for these years. highly recommnded.
i read a lot but i doubt many of them has a non-chinese version. the above ones are the ones i can think of now.
also <The Search for Modern China> is highly recommmend, but i foget if i have read it or not.
oh also another book on how chinese characters are made, 《China: Empire of Living Symbols》。 writen by a Sweden author Cecilia Lindqvist. i love it very much
Fiction: just finished The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott; about to read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (for the 2nd or 3rd time)
- Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov
- Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
- The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han
Currently I am reading an Austrian economics classic - Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt