Summary of reading: July - September 2026

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë - good writing, but the protagonists are quite something. There's barely a likable character in the whole story - they are all either crazy, evil, stupid or a combination of these. It's also remarkable to consider how small the world of some people in those times was (pre-Victorian England); whole lives spent within a tiny area, interacting with a handful of other people. And that's for members of the nobility, not some bumpkin on a remote farm.艾米莉·勃朗特的《呼啸山庄》——文笔很好，但主角们实在是一言难尽。整本书里几乎找不到一个讨人喜欢的角色——他们要么疯狂、邪恶、愚蠢，要么就是这些特质的集合体。此外，令人感叹的是，那个时代（维多利亚时代前夕的英国）一些人的世界竟是如此狭小；他们的一生都在极小的范围内度过，只与寥寥数人往来。而且这还是针对贵族阶层，并非偏远农场里的乡巴佬。
"The Pickled City: The Story of New York pickles" by Paul Van Ravenstein and Monique Mulder - yes, a book about pickles, with lots of cool photos! That's what you get while randomly browsing in the local public library while your kids are picking out their books. All you wanted to know about the history of pickles, with particular emphasis on NYC in the early 20th century and the connection to Jewish immigration to that city.保罗·范·拉文斯坦和莫妮克·穆尔德合著的《腌渍之城：纽约泡菜的故事》——没错，这是一本关于泡菜的书，里面有很多很棒的照片！这就是你在当地公共图书馆陪孩子挑书时，随手翻阅能得到的惊喜。书中涵盖了你想了解的关于泡菜历史的一切，特别着重于20世纪初的纽约，以及它与当时犹太移民涌入该市的联系。
"Rebel Island: the incredible history of Taiwan" by Jonathan Clements - a detailed history of Taiwan, focusing mostly on the early years (pre-modern times). The writing is a bit academic and dry, but it's very comprehensive. I wish the book spent more time on the modern era, though.乔纳森·克莱门茨的《叛逆之岛：台湾不可思议的历史》——这是一部详尽的台湾史，主要聚焦于早期（前现代时期）。文笔略显学术和枯燥，但内容非常全面。不过，我还是希望书里能多花些篇幅讲讲现代时期。
"The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot" by Robert Macfarlane - an ode to taking long walks (from hours to multi-day hikes). The writing is very beautiful, but much of it feels pointless; the author describes friends and obscure historical poets in a lot of detail which has little to do with the main thesis of the book. I'd say the first 1/4 of the good is very good, and the rest is unnecessary.罗伯特·麦克法兰的《古道：徒步之旅》——这是一首献给长途跋涉（从数小时到数日徒步）的颂歌。文笔非常优美，但其中大部分内容显得毫无意义；作者对朋友和一些冷门历史诗人的细节描述过多，与书的核心论点关系不大。我觉得这本书的前四分之一非常出色，剩下的部分则显得多余。
"After Rain" by William Trevor - I'm on a quest to find additional authors that write evocative short stories that stay with you, and Trevor was recommended as someone to try since my current favorites are Steinbeck and Lahiri. "After Rain" is a collection of 12 stories, mostly about love and relationships - between partners but also parents and children; the settings are usually in 1980s Ireland or England. Very good stories overall, I'm glad I tried this author and should try something else by him.威廉·特雷弗的《雨后》——我一直在寻找能写出引人入胜且令人难忘的短篇小说作家，由于我目前最喜欢的是斯坦贝克和拉希里，有人推荐我尝试一下特雷弗。《雨后》收录了12个短篇故事，大多关于爱情和人际关系——不仅是伴侣之间，也包括父母与子女之间；背景通常设在20世纪80年代的爱尔兰或英国。总体来说故事非常精彩，很高兴我尝试了这位作者，以后应该还会读他的其他作品。
"Spoonhandle" by Ruth Moore - a novel about the lives of Maine natives living through changing times, seeing their picturesque coastal area become a magnet for "summer people" - rich vacationers from the big cities. There's no single protagonist in the book and the writing is very warm and human. I enjoyed it.露丝·摩尔的《勺柄》——这部小说讲述了缅因州原住民在时代变迁中的生活，他们眼睁睁看着自己风景如画的沿海地区变成了“避暑客”——即来自大城市的富裕度假者——的聚集地。书中没有单一的主角，文字非常温暖且富有生活气息。我很喜欢这本书。
"The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money" by Brendan Greeley - a history-oriented exploration of the importance of the dollar in world economy, from its beginnings as the Joachimsthaler in 16th century Bohemia and until modern times. This book has some interesting ideas but I found it to be quite academical and not easy to digest.布伦丹·格里利的《万能美元：世界最强货币的500年》——这是一部以历史为导向的著作，探讨了美元在世界经济中的重要性，从它16世纪在波希米亚作为“约阿希姆斯塔勒”（Joachimsthaler）诞生开始，一直讲到现代。这本书有一些有趣的观点，但我发现它写得过于学术，不太容易消化。
"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky - the scope of this (very long) book is huge: explaining how human behavior works starting from basic biological principles. Our understanding of the actual biological underpinnings of behavior is so nascent, however, that the vast majority of the book focuses on the usual things - the psychological studies (including all the well known ones like prisoner's dilemma, the Stanford prison experiment, etc) and comparison with other animals. Having read several other books on this topic in the past, I haven't found much new in this one.罗伯特·M·萨波尔斯基的《行为：人类最好与最坏的生物学》——这本（非常厚的）书涵盖范围极广：从基本的生物学原理出发来解释人类行为是如何运作的。然而，我们对行为背后的实际生物学基础的理解还处于萌芽阶段，因此书中绝大部分内容还是聚焦于常规议题——心理学研究（包括所有著名的实验，如囚徒困境、斯坦福监狱实验等）以及与其他动物的比较。由于过去读过几本关于这个主题的书，我在这本书里并没有发现太多新意。
"Humorous short stories" by Anton Chekhov (read in Russian) - a collection of short stories with a humorous angle. The stories are typically very short, just 2-3 pages each, but the character building is superb. I should try reading something longer by Chekhov.安东·契诃夫的《幽默短篇小说集》（俄语原版阅读）——这是一本带有幽默色彩的短篇小说集。故事通常非常短，每篇只有2-3页，但人物塑造极其出色。我应该尝试读读契诃夫的长篇作品。
"Plainsong" by Kent Haruf - describes a year in the life of several loosely connected people in a remote farm town in eastern Colorado. A wholesome story, without a specific beginning or end - just the lives of ordinary folks.肯特·哈鲁夫的《平原之歌》——描述了科罗拉多州东部一个偏远农镇里几位关系松散的人一年的生活。这是一个纯朴的故事，没有特定的开头或结尾——只是普通人的生活片段。
"Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity" by Katherine Boo - investigative journalism of the lives of several connected families in Annawadi - one of Mumbai's most miserable slums - roughly from 2007 to 2010. The only thing more shocking than the squalor in which these people live is the degree of corruption, fraud and exploitation surrounding them. A very poignant read.凯瑟琳·布的《永恒的背后：孟买贫民窟的生命、死亡与希望》——这是一部调查新闻作品，记录了2007年至2010年左右，孟买最悲惨的贫民窟之一——安纳瓦迪（Annawadi）中几个相互关联家庭的生活。比这些人生活的肮脏环境更令人震惊的，是围绕在他们身边的腐败、欺诈和剥削程度。这是一部非常深刻的作品。
"The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin - science fiction only in the sense of 1984; it's always amusing to examine how unambitious the futuristic vision of some authors is. The book was written in the early 1970s, and it presents life thousands of years in the future as one that's pretty much identical to what it was in the early 1970s, except for close-to-speed-of-light travel. But science is not the point of this book anyway; it's more of a political or philosophical fiction, examining an anarchist-communist society and comparing it to a capitalist, "propertarian" one. Overall, this book gave me very strong vibes of the famous Soviet kids story "Dunno on the moon" (Незнайка на Луне), which I recall reading as a kid.厄休拉·K·勒古恩的《一无所有》——这只在类似《1984》的意义上才算科幻小说；审视某些作者的未来愿景是多么缺乏雄心，总是一件有趣的事。这本书写于20世纪70年代初，它呈现的数千年后的生活与70年代初几乎一模一样，除了拥有接近光速的旅行技术。但科学并不是这本书的重点；它更像是一部政治或哲学小说，审视了一个无政府共产主义社会，并将其与资本主义、“私有制”社会进行了对比。总的来说，这本书给我带来了强烈的苏联著名儿童故事《无知小子在月球》（Незнайка на Луне）的感觉，我记得小时候读过那本书。
"The Lion Women of Tehran" by Marjan Kamali - a multi-generational novel focusing on the life of young women in Iran from the early 1950s to the early 1980s, in the context of the various authoritarian governments of those eras (from Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's rule to after the Islamic revolution of 1979). Nice book showing that a good story can be told without too many unnecessary twists and classical attention-grabbing dramas.玛赞·卡马利的《德黑兰的狮子女性》——这是一部多代小说，聚焦于20世纪50年代初至80年代初伊朗年轻女性的生活，背景是那些年代各种威权政府（从穆罕默德·礼萨·巴列维的统治到1979年伊斯兰革命后）。这是一本很好的书，它证明了好的故事无需太多不必要的转折和刻意的戏剧性冲突也能讲好。

Re-reads:重读：

"The Old Way: A story of the first people" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas伊丽莎白·马歇尔·托马斯的《古道：关于第一批人类的故事》
"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri裘帕·拉希里的《疾病解说者》
"Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami村上春树的《挪威的森林》
"Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck约翰·斯坦贝克的《罐头厂街》