I watch the BookTube videos of a guy in Boston named Steve Donoghue. He is a real reading enthusiast and works as a book critic, has worked in several large bookstores, and has a house just crammed with books that he is always adding to, giving away, and rearranging. Lately he has started his annual bookshelf inventory. Though I don’t always agree with his opinions, he never scorns any genre and is always enlightening about the books he discusses. Sometimes he reminds me of books that I have forgotten about, but more often he covers books that I immediately feel an interest in. Lately he showed a Penguin Classic book, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a selection from a multi-volume work by Pu Songling (1640 -1715) a collection of odd, weird, and supernatural stories, selected and translated by John Minford. Most of them are only a page or two long, and they are supplied with many classic woodblocks. I ordered it and it got here Tuesday. I only meant to dip into it to see what it was like (I am already reading The Gulag Archipelago and only about a fifth of the way through), but it was like eating peanuts and I was up to page 142 when I went to bed last night. Thanks, Steve, for the recommendation! “Exquisite and amusing miniatures regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.” – Amazon.
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