Kaito started reading Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
recommended by Three Percent Podcast
User Profile
especially interested in cities, culture, and literature in translation
This link opens in a pop-up window
Kaito's books
Currently Reading
Read
User Activity
RSS feed Back
Kaito started reading Gweilo by Martin Booth
Evocative, funny and full of life - a beautifully written and observed childhood memoir of …
Feeding the Hong Kong/Asia fantasy.
Kaito finished reading Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
The auspicious and magnificently crafted literary debut of the one and only #PicoIyer
While I think his more contemporary works are "better," the core Page Pico is still present even back in 1988.
Kaito finished reading Lost in Seoul by Michael Gregory Stephens
An easy to read and deeply fascinating perspective on Korean culture and society from the perspective of an American.
Especially memorable to me is the chapter about the ritual Kut (also romanized gut or goot). This helped prepare me (in hindsight) for a similar ceremony in the movie Việt and Nam by Trương Minh Quý.
"An abandoned package is discovered in the Paris Metro: the subway workers suspect it's a …
This "translation" presumes cultural knowledge of the setting. If you don't understand the implications of being Vietnamese in Chinatown in France, some of the charm will surely be lost on the reader.
Published as a single breathless 200 page paragraph, I am left with a whole new appreciation for organization in literature.
This work is a form of Impressionism, perhaps.
To paraphrase a harsh Goodreads review, 'I only like being in an author's head when the author thinks interesting thoughts.'
But maybe some day this will become my favorite book, which sometimes happens when I don't like something at first.
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
Bangkok wasn't dealing only in the clear-cut trade of bodies; it was trafficking also in the altogether murkier exchange of hearts. The East, as Singapore Airlines knows full well, has always been a marketplace for romance. But Thailand was dispensing it on a personal scale, and in heavy doses. It offered love in a duty-free zone: a context in which boy meets girl without having to worry about commitments, obligations, even identities. Love, that is, or something like it.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 301)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
For the girl, her Western suitor might prove the mature and sophisticated companion she had always lacked; for the man, his Eastern consort could be the attentive, demure and sumptuously compliant goddess of his dreams.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 301)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
One of the appeals of expatriation, I had always thought, was that it allowed one to treat real life as romantic; abroad, one could credit the lies one saw through at home.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 236)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
The Great Wall, established to keep out the world at large, was now being used to attract it.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 114)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
Religion was a drug to some and and drugs were a religion to others. In Kathmandu some people lapsed into a narcotic haze and called it Buddhist serenity, while others had opiate dreams and called them visions. "Drugs" and "gurus," they told themselves, were almost anagrams; the high and the holy were virtual synonyms.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 83 - 84)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
Innocence, I thought, could be its own protection; seeing no evil was halfway toward feeling no evil.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 51)
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
Only a special kind of person can remain for long in Paradise, making his peace with tranquility.
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 51)
Pico Iyer on Bali.
Kaito quoted Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures)
"mistakes can, in their way, be as revealing as epiphanies, and even a wrong impression may say as much about a place as a right one."
— Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage departures) (Page 28)