Danny Luo

Book List


Fiction

Title Author Thoughts Rating
The Sound and The Fury William Faulkner I wish I had read an overview of the book prior to spending months frustrated with Benjy’s section. 🌟🌟🌟
Absalom, Absalom William Faulkner A frustrated ___ attempting to relive its legendary past. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Light in August William Faulkner A mini-epic of sorts, with twisting storylines. 🌟🌟🌟
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner I can’t understand the individual sentences, the closer I read the less I understand. I can only understand paragraphs at a time. 🌟🌟
Demons
(The Possessed)		 Fyodor Dostoevsky “Every nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist.” Connections with ‘The Righteous Mind’ by Haight and the ‘rationalist delusion’. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky “The Russian people, as soon as they reach the shore, as soon as they believe it’s the shore, are so glad of it that they immediately go to the ultimate pillars.” 🌟🌟
Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky Self-destructive, self-pitying, bitter man from underground. The tone of this book cuts deep. 🌟🌟🌟
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Alexander Solzhenitsyn A convict’s worst enemy is another convict. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez Fantastical epic that spans generations. Are you an Aureliano or a José Arcadio? 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Trial Franz Kafka Shame, guilt, bureaucracy. 🌟🌟🌟
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell First two books contain fancy prose, must read with dictionary. Followed by corny mystery novel, comedic relief escape and mediocre dystopia of corporate Korea. Last book is post-apocalyptic Hawaii written in spoken vernacular, slightly more intelligible than Huck Finn. Books strung together with weak connections, ends unexcitingly with jumbled message for reader. 🌟
Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk Chaotic narrative. Abundance of great quotes. 🌟🌟🌟
Paradise Lost John Milton Finished after eight months of reading. After reading barely anything the first two months, I resolved myself to read ten minutes every morning, and began to make serious progress. Even so, epic poetry is difficult to digest. I could only read at most a few pages in one sitting.

An entincing, Romantic Satan, fallen from Heaven, plans his revenge on God and Man. Milton makes Satan relatable to the reader.

Notable quotes:
  • The mind is its own place, and in itself/
    Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
     - The Enemy
  • Then who created thee lamenting learn,/
    When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.
     - Seraph Abdiel to the Adversary
Notable passages:
  • God's Justification (III, 80-134)
  • The Lamentation of Satan (IV, 32-113)
  • Adam's Lamentation of Death (X, 720-844)
 🌟🌟🌟
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe I found rich Igbo culture and tradition, demonstrating cultural invariants — archetypes. The hypermasculine Okonkwo supresses the feminine and perishes, emasculated.

I begin to understand Achebe’s criticisms of Conrad, though I disagree with most of them.		 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad Marlow gazes at the savages:
  • "[W]hat thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. [...] there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend."
I hope to be as eloquent as Kurtz, in the face of death
  • "I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!'"
 🌟🌟🌟🌟
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce Blog Post
  • “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets”
 🌟🌟🌟
Lord of the Rings: Trilogy J. R. R. Tolkien The trilogy took me half a year to read. 🌟🌟🌟
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov One of the best openers I’ve read:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”		 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien   🌟🌟🌟
Life of Pi Yann Martel   🌟🌟🌟
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy   🌟🌟
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky “Everything is permitted.” 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde   🌟🌟🌟
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky   🌟🌟🌟🌟
A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway   🌟🌟
For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway It tolls for thee. Me obscenity en la obscenity. 🌟🌟🌟
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck   🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway   🌟🌟🌟
Dubliners James Joyce RIP Parnell. 🌟🌟🌟
East of Eden John Steinbeck timshel - contrast with The Grand Inquisitor 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes Heartwrenching 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut Did not really understand it, will not rate  
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas (père) “Je suis Edmond Dantès!” 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck   🌟🌟🌟
Catch-22 Joseph Heller Funniest book I’ve read, as well as one of the most poignant. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald   🌟🌟
Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller   🌟🌟
Great Expectations Charles Dickens   🌟
Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens   🌟🌟🌟🌟
Animal Farm George Orwell   🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger One angsty kid 🌟🌟🌟
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood   🌟🌟
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain   🌟🌟
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain   🌟🌟🌟
Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card   🌟🌟🌟🌟
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams   🌟🌟🌟
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway   🌟🌟🌟
2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke   🌟🌟🌟
1984 George Orwell   🌟🌟🌟🌟
Brave New World Aldous Huxley   🌟🌟🌟
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury “It was a pleasure to burn.” 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Lord of the Flies William Golding   🌟🌟
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee   🌟🌟


Non-fiction

Philosophy

Title Author Thoughts Rating
Symposium Plato The form of beauty surpasses any manifestation of it.  
Crito Plato    
Apology Plato    
Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche One must remember to read philosophy and not simply Nietzsche.

Thoughts		 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor E. Frankl Happiness should not be pursued, it must ensue … a reason to live. Pursue meaning. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli Be bold like Agathocles. 🌟🌟🌟
The Republic Plato   🌟🌟🌟


Science

Title Author Thoughts Rating
Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond This book should really be called: Crops, Cattle and Geography. The dominance of the West is rooted in:
  1. Prevalence of crops for domestication
  2. Prevalence of large animals for domestication
  3. Permeable geography for diffusion of domesticates and technology
  4. (European disunity for diverse risk-taking)
 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Your Inner Fish Neil Shubin Much more connected with ancient life forms than we realize. Lots of analogies between genes. Multicelluarity, body, skulls, limbs, middle ear, bipedal, brains. 🌟🌟🌟
Nudge Richard H. Thaler
Cass R. Sunstein		 Set good defaults.
Reading this after Thinking, Fast and Slow did make it seem like a simpler version of the latter.		 🌟🌟🌟
Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman “Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion—and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.”

Is the act of memory not an experience to be optimized itself?		 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt How terrifying is a teleological view of morality!
  • Moral judgments are rooted in instinct, and reason only comes as post-hoc justification.
  • Humans are (necessarily) 90% chimp and 10% bee
  • Which moral frequencies are you tuned to?
 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari   🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Grand Design Stephen Hawking   🌟🌟🌟
Physics of the Impossible Michio Kaku Interesting, but far-fetched. 🌟🌟🌟
A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking One of the books that motivated me to study physics. 🌟🌟🌟🌟


Practical

Title Author Thoughts Rating
On China Henry Kissinger For those who don’t understand China, but want to. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love Cal Newport ‘Don’t follow your passion’ 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It Chris Voss,
Tahl Raz		 An emotional approach to negotiation. Personally useful. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Jocko Willink,
Leif Babin		 There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. 🌟🌟🌟
The Big Short Michael Lewis Putting credit default swaps as ‘mortgage bonds’ in synthetic CDOs, betting on thin air, sold to fools at AIG. 🌟🌟🌟🌟


Poetry

Title Author Thoughts
Howl Allen Ginsberg  
The Hollow Men T. S. Eliot  
Hamlet William Shakespeare “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T. S. Eliot  


文学作品

书名 作者 感想 评级
红楼梦
(Dream of the Red Chamber)		 曹雪芹
(Cao Xueqin)		   正在阅读
红玫瑰与白玫瑰
(Red Rose, White Rose)		 张爱玲
(Eileen Chang)		 为了某种崇高的理想或者社会家庭压力，放弃了爱情，不敢向自己承认有过这么的想法。不肯不当好人，各种自我约束，自我牺牲，够窝囊的。

振保没有真的珍惜白玫瑰（“就是她罢”），其实主人公的选择是在红玫瑰与自尊、理想、面子和好人的形象之间。		 🌟🌟🌟🌟
金锁记
(The Golden Cangue)		 张爱玲   🌟🌟
倾城之恋
(Love in a Fallen City)		 张爱玲 战争促进了两个自私的人 🌟🌟🌟
边城
(Border Town)		 沈从文
(Shen Congwen)		 祖父的笑话够多的 🌟🌟🌟
兄弟
(Brothers)		 余华
(Yu Hua)		   🌟🌟🌟
围城
(Fortress Besieged)		 钱钟书
(Qian Zhongshu)		 洋气，读后恐婚 🌟🌟🌟🌟
红高粱家族
(Red Sorghum Clan)		 莫言
(Mo Yan)		 粗糙的文笔，频繁的时间穿梭。 🌟🌟🌟
十个词汇里的中国
(China in Ten Words)		 余华
(Yu Hua)		 “接下来挣钱的热情代替了政治的热情”

“人们对清官的期望超过对法律的信任”		 🌟🌟🌟🌟
骆驼祥子
(Rickshaw Boy)		 老舍
(Lao She)		   🌟🌟🌟🌟
阿Q正传
(The True Story of Ah Q)		 鲁迅
(Lu Xun)		 “可笑！”  
狂人日记
(A Madman’s Diary)		 鲁迅
 “我自己被人吃了，可仍然是吃人的人的兄弟！”  
似水流年 王小波
(Wang Xiaobo)		 叙述混乱有趣如第二十二军规。 🌟🌟🌟🌟
三十而立 王小波
   🌟🌟🌟
黄金时代
(The Golden Age)		 王小波
 句子如海明威。敦一敦伟大友谊。 🌟🌟🌟🌟
三体 I
(The Three-Body Problem)		 刘慈欣
(Liu Cixin)		 后面扯得有点远。 🌟🌟🌟