This Week in Booktube: August 9, 2026
(These are the Booktube videos I watched this week. As always, I encourage you also to check out each of the videos I've linked to down below. Support Booktube. And let me know what you've watched this past week.)
Abby Reads "Come, Lady Death" by Peter S Beagle | A 5P Review
CriminOlly The REAL reason I read so much
Abby Reads "Evelina" by Frances Burney | A 5P Review
Steve Donoghue Epic Comic Book Wednesday: Planet of the Apes
Not related to any of the videos, but I tried to read Orwell's Burmese Days. 2 pages in. The book is cringe to say the least and narcissistic to be more harsh. It's the kind of book that says more about the author than the things themselves (not an issue if only his fictions have never tried to be anything more than fantastical fictions). I sure need some special reasons to read this book, given that Britain and British psyche (which this book is actually about) are things I have no interest in (or at least through this book), and Myanmar is decidedly not something this book is about (unless the readership would love to care for Orwellian brilliance for creating cartoonish figures predating Hollywood - although this book may help people who love to be cynical to put it in perspective so they may realise how their cynicism could very well come across as cringe more so than any witty).
ReplyDeleteA great book to hate-read while I'm on a bus or can't use company internet for outside access. But I have to say... trying to brace through this sort of book is a kind of bravery on my own part itself.
...no, scratch that. I will throw the book away as it seems to be a cheap photocopy - as I don't want to make myself into a mood of going into a rant about how reading too many books made me a loser. (Doubt I can pass to anybody around)
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I gave this book a positive review when I read it in 2014. https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2014/10/burmese-days-by-george-orwell.html
ReplyDelete....but you've got me thinking now about whether or not I was too generous. Maybe I should reread and give it another appraisal.
So far I skimmed through the 1st chapter, it's not so bad as I thought of its first 2 pages this morning (but nothing really fascinating). Perhaps I will have my final judgement later. So far the dialogues do suggest Orwell does know the people he's depicting (and my countrymen may feel some familiar resemblance).
ReplyDeleteI really shouldn't keep spamming out quips or remarks. But it's hard to resist the temptation. If I may say after having skim-read the 2nd chapter, the book feels like it's about the Vietnamese who speaks Burmese and the Vietnamese who speaks English (for random comment readers: I am chiding my own countrymen whose nationality is Vietnamese to be assholes). As for the 3rd chapter, perhaps the best thing I have to say ultimately is that this book makes me think of how I don't want to make friends with people, as I don't see anything attractive in doing so (except for the needful of networking, killing loneliness, etc).
ReplyDeleteAs said perhaps there will be things I should retract on my 1st comment as those were unfair and imprecise. But to keep reading the book is to find less motivations to do that. (And I do suspect the reason I found some urge to take back what I said about the 1st chapter is more because it provides a stick I can use to beat my countrymen).