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Herunar  ·  3392 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: August 17th: What are you reading this week?

I just finished Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and started Ugetsu Monogatari again. Both are excellent - if anyone here is interested in medieval Japanese/Chinese culture and myths, I'd definitely recommend them. Especially since these sort of folktales tend to have a lot of historical merit as well - fiction like this really gives me (as a historian) an idea of trends people were thinking about on a day-to-day basis and how they were reacting to certain events.

Once I'm done with this current East Asian folk-lore binge that I seem to be on, I might move onto some non-fic. I've seen a couple of really good historical biographies (namely, Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of FDR and a few Western-written biographies on the Prophet Muhammad) that I want to dig into but they seem a bit daunting. I might opt for something a little smaller (though not really 'lighter') like The Things They Carried.