Monday, April 5, 2021

Interior Chinatown

Charles Yu
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2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"One of the funniest books of the year. . . . A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire." —The Washington Post

From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

"Fresh and beautiful. . . . Interior Chinatown represents yet another stellar destination in the journey of a sui generis author of seemingly limitless skill and ambition.” —The New York Times Book Review

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

思考之法

梁光耀
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作為萬物之靈,人的獨特之處就是有思考能力,但思考必須學習和培養才有所成。
作者認為,有三種思考對個人的發展和成功最為基本和重要,一種是批判思考,另一種是創意思考,還有一種是積極思考。

本書所講的思考之法,共有六法,前四法屬於批判思考,即語理分析、邏輯方法、科學方法和謬誤剖析,可以歸納為兩個重點:思考清晰和推論正確;後兩法則對應着創意思考和積極思考,跟批判思考不同,創意思考和積極思考的重點不在於「思考方法」,而在於心態,如放鬆、幽默、樂觀及勇氣等。人類文明的發展實有賴於這三種思考,積極進取、批判和創造。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)


Monday, March 29, 2021

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Lori Gottlieb
online access from ProQuest Ebook Central Perpetual Titles
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

"An irresistibly addictive tour of the human condition."--Kirkus, starred review

"Wise, warm, smart, and funny. You must read this book."--Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet

From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world--where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).


One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is rev­olutionary in its candor, offering a deeply per­sonal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

大武山下

龍應台
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★ 本書為龍應台的首部長篇小說,超越政治與社會議題,直探生命的本質。
★ 本書所描述的動、植物多為台灣特有種與原生種,是龍應台最貼近土地的創作。
★ 本書插畫為龍應台親筆手繪,呈現創作軌跡與多元的創作能量。


龍應台以孩童似的無止盡的好奇、田野調查者追根究柢的執著、文學家時而空靈婉轉、時而深沉大氣的文字,刻畫出大武山的世界,既是煙火人間,又是冷月無聲。

自覺身心「脫臼」的不知名作家,彷彿命運牽引,回到闊別五十年的鄉間,與一位停格在十四歲的失蹤少女相遇。一段光影交織的魔幻旅程,讓生命和土地、植物、動物、歷史,相互因緣見證。一樁塵封的謀殺案,把遺憾和思念、擁抱和捨下,層層打開,像打開一條密密折疊、藏著香氣的手帕。

深山有野獸,小鎮有鬼神,
植物有記憶,動物有靈魂,
《大武山下》,是一次對於愛和生命的思辨跋涉……

「書中所有的人物都是虛構的,唯一真實的是人物的精神,所以不必對號入座。只是下回走進任何一個鄉間小鎮,你知道,馬路上走著的、市場裡蹲著的、田裡頭跪著的,斗笠和包頭布蒙著的,皮膚黑到你分不出眉目的,每一個人,都有他生命的輕和重、痛和快,情感負荷的低迴和動盪。」 ──龍應台

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, March 22, 2021

Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist


“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

社會‧作家‧文本: 南來文人的香港書寫

沈海燕
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南來文人與香港文化

一九四九年後的香港文學與一九四九年前的香港文學有很大的差別,「和平文藝」產生的影響,不論好壞,都是值得注意的,因為它確是帶來了影響。——劉以鬯〈香港文學中的「和平文藝」〉

一九三、四○年代,中國一批文人在《和平日報》工作,並於1949 年前後南來香港,從事文藝創作。共同擁有「和平文藝」這個背景的諸位南來文人,稱為「和平文人」。劉以鬯一再確認「和平文藝」對1949年後的香港文學具重要影響。

若要勾勒一九五、六○年代的香港文壇面貌,不能不論及報紙連載,更要兼顧作家、作品及刊登園地等三方面。《星島晚報‧ 星晚》編輯歐陽天,號召一眾「和平文人」相繼發表重要的連載小說︰徐訏〈彼岸〉、易文〈閨怨〉、南宮搏〈李後主〉,劉以鬯〈酒徒〉、〈寺內〉和〈對倒〉等。佳作不但提高報紙銷售量,更可結集出版,改編為電影,香港文化產業的緊密相連由此可見。歐陽天、徐訏和劉以鬯在「星晚」的連載小說具跨界特點,是研究當時文化產業的重要例子。

(摘錄自cp1897.com.hk)