Recent holiday readings

For some reason my wife mentioned the Dowager Empress and Pu-yi scene from The Last Emperor and I showed the kids the clip from the film —and it sent me down a rabbit-hole for my holiday readings last Christmas.

I started with Anchee Ming’s two-novel series: a brisk read, entertaining, but leaves you wondering if it’s convincing.

And so I went on to a non-fiction look at the same person: a revisionist look and also, ultimately, leaves you far from convinced that the Dowager Empress was a conservative reformer overtaken by events.

Which led me back to wanting to immerse myself more in the era and so led to a triple-barreled indulgence in Janie Chang’s novels:

Which somehow provoked nostalgia for an old favorite and so I explored one of her novels which I hadn’t read yet:

Which somehow led to this very enjoyable read:

Currently, I’ve branched out to science fiction and while I haven’t finished it, this is a very interesting read so far.

I hope to catch up with my writings here starting with the next newsletter.