Culture Commentary and Miscellaneous Musings
This category contains all my book reviews.
But their Chinese was no better and no worse than mine. I had also used the Integrated Chinese textbook. I, too, knew Wang Peng. We were on the same itinerary so that we could fill in the same gaping lack, and the only thing that would resolve this was the passage of time—ten weeks in Taipei, immersed in our mother tongue—until we returned with perfect tones spilling out of our mouths, and we were no longer so bad at being Chinese.
page 3
Vampires taste like shit, by the way. Rotten, slimy, and cold. Can’t recommend.
page 388
So blind we humans are—so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone. And maybe we have, as Artie did with Rhonda Lazarre that day. But mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own. Thinking all the while that we can see.
page 59
And I remembered looking back over my shoulder as we ran away, Eddie Glackin lying there alone, not a friend in sight to hold him as he bled out, and I thought what a lonely world it was for unlovable fucks like us.
page 126
As we walked arm in arm in this merry mood, wind brushed against our cheeks–a wind strong enough to lift bougainvillea blossoms off their branches. Did that mean we, too, were characters in a shojo romance?
page 129