Welcome to Litsy!

I LOVED this book!! It was such a great snapshot in time. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950. The writing was superb…one warning…it was probably me but it took me so long to get through. That being said, I enjoyed it. It gives a really balanced look at how “New” China came into power and how the Missionaries had to leave for Formosa (Taiwan) and HK. Looked at the issues of colonialism. Plus, an affair which was not embraced…he was married.

Time for leftover trifle and my penultimate chunk of this book. I‘m basically limping through it now, y‘all. Han Suyin keeps telling me she‘s a deeply emotional person with no interest in politics, but her story feels like a philosophical exercise centred on the politics of late 40s/early 50s China. It‘s interesting in how it looks at the issues in play, but the long, pointed discourses keep me at a distance from the personal side of it.

Happy Christmas to everyone celebrating today! I woke up hungry with hours to go until the cinnamon buns happen, so out came the leftover lotus root. I talked the table into it last night and now have several new converts to the Society of Lotus Root Lovers. We only had leftovers because it was the last dish to come out and we were already stuffed.

The book‘s still good, but the dialogue‘s become quite Philosophical Monologuey. Not ideal.

I‘m working my way through my last unread purchase of 2022! It‘s interesting but not gripping, so I‘ve been reading around 30 pages a day, same as I would with nonfiction, instead of going straight through like I would with the average novel. Even though it‘s published as fiction, it really does seem like autobiography. Thus far, all the details match up with Han Suyin‘s author profile. I suspect she just changed some names & invented dialogue.

That snag of imperfection which makes and keeps us human

@BayouGirl85 @Kelly_the_Bookish_Sidekick
Third Uncle: “We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities”
Not sure if it‘s in book, but it‘s in film.
Song: “Rulers make bad lovers You better put your kingdom up for sale” Gold Dust Woman Fleetwood Mac

Fav new words from this book I had to look up in the dictionary:

*Volplane: to glide in or as if in an airplane.

*Abstemious: not self-indulgent, especially when eating and drinking.

*Seraglio: the woman‘s apartments (harem) in an Ottoman palace.

*Perfidious: deceitful and untrustworthy.

This one even had an article about the author written in 1953 taped to the back cover. Take a deep breath - can‘t you just smell the history? (2/2)

Always had a thing for old books, especially the ones covered in someone else‘s scribbles, notes, and underlines. It‘s like seeing a book through another person‘s eyes. (1/2)

But we...are more bound by custom than by law, and old customs die hard. P 158

“Politics don‘t stop love. He will say to her: ‘You are as beautiful as our new hydro-electric plant.‘ And she will reply: ‘Comrade, how progressive of you.‘”

“Hearsay was far more important than knowledge[...]for it is easier to appear knowledgeable than to become so.”

“One should never condemn what one cannot understand.”
#WordsToLiveBy

This is a semi-autobiographical novel about the forbidden love between a married British foreign correspondent and a Eurasian doctor in Hong Kong, interlaced with many aspects of historical references to China and Hong Kong. The book was made into the 1955 film, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, which also inspired a famous song by Sammy Fain.

#juneitselectrifying #loveisamanysplendoredthing

Because she wrote about their love and her loss with so light a hand. This is my parents' favorite book, so it became one of mine. They had a battered paperback with underlined passages and notes in my mother's handwriting. My sister and I went to so many Strand branches looking for a copy of this book.