16 Apr Lost in Fiction
My days are spent researching and writing non-fiction. But when I want to expand my horizons, I’m a complete devotee of good fiction. Reading authors who have great facility with words, and to create images beyond imagination, offer great doorways into new ways of thinking.
Three books that have just crossed my reading window include: The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth, The Lost Daughter of Happiness, by Geling Yan, and The Banquet Bug, by Geling Yan.
A great gift was discovering Philip Roth. Just finishing reading The Ghost Writer, I found his erudition and spellbinding narrative making me hungry for more.
Geling Yan’s capacity to translate her cultural experiences of China explained many of my own experiences when traveling in that great country. The first book, The Lost Daughter of Happiness, takes place during the time of the gold rush, and the lack of opportunities when young women were pulled into the sex trade.
The Banquet Bug involves a dubious character who makes his livelihood attending fancy banquets and pretending to be a journalist. The frustration of the book is that he never seems able to redeem himself, though the characters around him give one hope for humanity.