Book Recommendations From Some of Beijing’s Resident Bookworms

With recent reports of many communities no longer allowing waimai and deliveries to enter (you've gotta treck to the gate to get anything) it looks like we are still set for Beijing’s semi-lockdown to continue, at least for the near future. However, a great way to escape lockdown, at least in your mind, is to journey off to another world through the pages of a great book.

But with so many books out there where to begin? Well, we decided to reach out to a few of Beijing’s resident bookworms and members of Spittoon Book Club to find some recommendations.

An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks

This book by neurologist Oliver Sacks consists of seven case medical case histories of individuals with rather unusual neurological conditions such as an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident. 

Book Club regular Bill told me “I’m reading An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks right now, though I don’t really have a good lockdown-based reason to be reading it; just that I found it in a bookstore and had read it way back and was blown away by it. I’m particularly drawn to the vivid way that he describes his patients and how he intertwines this with fascinating explanations of how the human brain functions. I also love how he writes.  Even though this is technically ‘science writing’, his prose is so sharp and clean that I feel he could have been an excellent novelist had he chosen that path.”

Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse by Otsuichi

In this rather dark tale, a nine-year-old girl gives an account of her life after death, in what can be thought to be as a unique version of The Lovely Bones. 

This recommendation came from Gaudi, who has been in lockdown for ten days. She told me that the theme of Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse is “imperceptible evil from unexpected people in normal life.” She said that she connected with this book because “locking down forced me to interact with strangers dwelling in same building and people in the white uniforms. The unkindness of some people shocked me.” 

She also recommended 

• Death and the Maiden (Der Tod und das Mädchen) by Elfriede Jelinek because "the life indoors of 10 days against my will drives me a little crazy and sensitive to all the wrong things on us during the time, Death and the Maiden has a very similar aura."
• Emancipation Through Knowledge by Karl Popper (a chapter from his book In Search of a Better World) “Everything about the virus in reality is too crazy for me to understand...I need Popper to help me to remember what science is.”

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

This classic novel tells the story or the March sisters and their struggle to survive in New England during the Civil War.

Taz told me he decided to read this book “because a friend was discussing it and I had no clue what she was saying. After 100 pages into the book, it has suddenly become more interesting, and I see myself getting arrested soon.”

His other recommendations are:

• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter because it “was recommended for a Book Club reading. I couldn't finish it by deadline, but maybe I will keep visiting it.”
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie – “I wanted to read Rushdie again. I took some time deciding which one and then zeroed in on this book that I was reading in 2004, but left it midway and then never found time to revisit [until now]”

The Plague by Albert Camus

This book published in 1947 narrates the story of a plague that is sweeping across the French Algerian city of Oran. 

Recommended by future Spittoon Book Club leader Carol Richman, she simply states that “If anyone hasn’t read it, now is the right time.” Camus used a cholera epidemic that killed a large proportion of Oran's population in 1849 as his source material. Given the world we are currently living in this is certainly a book relevant for our time.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Another pandemic-based novel, Station Eleven begins with an actor having a heart attack and dying while performing King Lear on stage, the same evening a deadly virus first begins spreading in North America.

Spittoon regular and comedian Louis Dowling simply states that Station Eleven is “a great lockdown book”. The novel moves back and forth in time from exploring the actor’s youth to twenty years into the future in a post-apocalyptic world.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

This novel tells the story of Nao, a 16 year old Japanese girl living in Tokyo who keeps a diary and Ruth, a Japanese American writer who finds the diary inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox that washes up near her home on an island off the coast of British Columbia. 

Lastly, I wanted to give my own personal recommendation for a book that I read recently. A Tale for the Time Being, as you might guess from the name deals with the concept of time, how time passes and what “time being” means. As we are currently stuck in semi-lockdown for the “time being” it feels like quite an appropriate book to read. The novel is funny, heartwarming and tragic all at the same time and definitely well worth a read. 

READ: 3 Movies That Beijing Residents Love

Images: Amazon, Katie Coy