Welcome to Litsy!

I did not enjoy reading this book,but I appreciate the author‘s skill in portraying the feelings of a young man born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and a French Catholic priest,as he navigates life in Paris. It is the follow up to the Pulitzer Prize winning,The Sympathizer,which I did not read. On the surface, it is about gangsters, drug deals, prostitutes, communists, and gross behavior, but underneath,it is a book of philosophy.Not for me.

“The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, READ TOO LITTLE, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity.”

Of course, this does not apply to Littens!

Times running out for this Book Club pick! Can not renew because someone is waiting! Do you know that feeling? Luckily, I found a real book copy at the Library!

I think that this series is so interesting and insightful into Vietnamese culture. The main character describes himself as two different minds and understands both sides of the divide in Vietnam. I empathize with the struggle of not understanding your own identity especially when your culture is colonized. 4/5

"On the one hand, the ugly American, who did not care what he ate so long as he ate too much of it, especially gigantic slabs of still-bleeding red meat. On the other hand, the chic Frenchman, who preferred the refined cruelty of foie gras."

This is a sequel to a previous novel, The Sympathizer. The title character of that book was a Vietnamese Communist spy during the Vietnam War; a man with two minds, as he describes himself. This amazing but unreliable narrator returns in this novel and he is now an expatriate in Paris, selling heroin for The Boss, a gangster he met in a refugee camp. The books are great, but sometimes go on philosophical tangents which can slow the story.

The follow-up to The Sympathizer and I did like this one a fair bit better (though I think I‘m in the minority with that). I enjoyed all the political/philosophical references… making me want to return to all those old university readings 🤓
#beachreads 🌊☀️
#booksandbooze

Planing your next road trip??

https://bookmarks.reviews/audiofiles-best-audiobooks-of-may-2021/?utm_source=Sai...

Eh. This is definitely one of those sequels that didn‘t need to happen. I did enjoy revisiting this world and characters, but ultimately this follow-up doesn‘t enrich the first novel. The narrative is less cohesive and the book overall felt like a self-indulgence on the part of the author. The best I can say is it doesn‘t fall into the category of sequels so bad that they make the first book worse.

@TheSpineView #Two4Tuesday
1.Tagged book, full review here.It wasn't as good as The Sympathiser which is very sad when you have a writer as talented as Viet Thanh Nguyen. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3748901075
2.The Ents, by far.So wise and majestic and so kind. They're absolutely perfect. Treebeard is so memorable.What the movies did to them was a travesty.

Bedtime reading. Good-night.

This novel is a sequel to the fabulous The Sympathizer. This book picks up where the earlier tale leaves off and underscores absurdity in a similar way. But, likely because The Sympathizer was so successful, this novel fell flat to me and sort of watered down the first novel. #ARC #netgalley

A few notes. I'm not sure I'm smart enough-- or ever could be smart enough-- to unearth all of the points that Nguyen puts forward in this text. At its heart, it's a book about colonialism, hidden under a veil of a gangster narrative. Like The Sympathizer, our narrator has a wry sensibility and surrounds himself (on purpose or accident) with philosophers-- even if they wouldn't consider themselves that way. (More in comments 👇🏼)