pachinko
bangkok/london. agnostic in everything. lover of science, language and a good puzzle.
15787 points
pachinko commented on a post
"That Haber could have thus got out of communication with himself was rather hard for Orr to conceive; his own mind was so resistant to such divisions that he was slow to recognize them in others. But he had learned that they existed. He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in."
2pachinko commented on pachinko's update
pachinko is interested in reading...
One Billion Years to the End of the World
Arkady Strugatsky
0pachinko commented on pachinko's update
pachinko commented on pachinko's update
pachinko TBR'd a book
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Leo Tolstoy
5pachinko TBR'd a book
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Leo Tolstoy
5pachinko commented on pachinko's update
pachinko commented on a post
We have officially started our July buddy reads for Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble, and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke!! If you are just now seeing this and want to join in - it's not too late! I believe all three groups are unstructured in the buddy reads, so anytime you want to join this month, we would love to have you!!
September Buddy Read Requests
Is there a book in the quest you want to read soon and would love to have some friends read it with you?? Just fill out the quick google form linked here!!
If you have already made a request, but it hasn't been picked yet, you don't have to fill out the form again (I have a spreadsheet with a running list of requests), but if you fill it out again, it just lets me know you are still interested in it!
Quest Updates
To make recommendations a little easier for everyone, I made a public shelf that has all of the recommendations received (up until about 2 days ago) on it so you don't have to dig through the comments on the Quest Recommendation post linked here. Note: I am only going through the recommendations post 1-2 times per month so I can keep my organization system clean, so if you don't get an acknowledgment from me right away - don't panic! Once I have your recommendation in my system, I'll leave you a reply comment so you know it's been received!!
Link to the public shelf linked here
August 2026 Buddy Reads!
Quick note: Since we fill out fresh forms each month, but I keep track of the previous months requests, in theory, we will eventually repeat books, so if August doesn't work for you, you aren't missing out on the only opportunity! I would encourage you to fill the form out again though so it gets another vote in the future!
The top 3 buddy read requests (in alphabetical order) for August 2026 are:
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
- IQ84 by Haruki Murakami (No one volunteered to coordinate yet, if you are willing to help coordinate, just let me know in your comment!)
- The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (No one volunteered to coordinate yet, if you are willing to help coordinate, just let me know in your comment!)
If you want to sign up for any of these buddy reads, find the pinned comment below and reply to that comment so the coordinator (if there is one) can easily find your interest and remind you about the group buddy read right before it starts!
Coordinators & What Happen If There Isn't One?
Coordinators role: There can be multiple coordinators on a book, but there are two key tasks: Reminding people from the comments below before the buddy read is about to begin that it's happening the best way I have seen that done is to comment on each participant's most recent library update with the reminder. You only need to do this once. Make a post in the book's forum about the buddy read Once you have the details set (if you are picking a different start date than 8/1/26 or if you want to read a certain number of chapters/pages per week, etc). and direct them to this post (direct URL to this post to make copy and pasting easier: https://pagebound.co/posts/481290)
Coordinators - If there is only one of you and you want me to help with one of the tasks, just let me know!! After giving everyone a reminder - you do not need to do anything else! You can definitely help facilitate conversations in the forum if you want to, but there is no expectation to!
What if there isn't a coordinator? The buddy read will so go on as planned starting on 8/1/26, you just may not get a reminder about it. I will try to remind everyone via the quest forum, though!
Informational Links
Link to original buddy reads matching post for background information linked here Link to FAQ about buddy reads linked here
If you have any other questions though, don't hesitate to ask!
38pachinko commented on pachinko's update
pachinko TBR'd a book
The Street of Crocodiles
Bruno Schulz
1pachinko TBR'd a book
The Street of Crocodiles
Bruno Schulz
1pachinko commented on moski's update
moski finished a book
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
3pachinko commented on paigehf's review of Piranesi
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6pachinko commented on pachinko's review of Taiwan Travelogue
"A novel is a piece of amber, one that coagulates both the "real" past and the “made-up" ideals. It is something that can be visited again and again in its unparalleled beauty."
this is an especially difficult book to review. as a work of literature, it's an extremely well-crafted and nuanced representation of how colonisation embeds prejudice and power imbalance deep into even the most unassuming and mundane aspects of life.
i don't think i've ever read a book where so little is said or described directly and so much lives in the subtext and tension, only seen in fleeting glimpses. faint as the wafting aroma of braised pork rice on the warm breeze, subtle, simmering, hidden behind a gentle and courteous mask. however, this means that the surface is so languid and impassive as to be nearly motionless, for at least the first half of the book. the 'sapphic romance' elements were period-typical repressed and i found the ending lacking. i'm all for a plotless novel, but this was pushing it even for me. that said, the characters were complex and the descriptions of food were so mouthwatering that i actually ended up cooking some of the dishes.
metafictional elements are hard to pull off, but here they are essential, clever and executed with sophistication, without pretence. the fictional and "real" introductions, afterwords, translator’s notes and footnotes draw attention to the act of translation itself as an enactment of power – the shaping an reshaping of a story – provoking hard questions on authorship, agency and authenticity. each intervention slightly alters the story we end up reading, like the many layers of influences on countries like Taiwan that have been shaped by so many different powers throughout history.
overall, slow but thoughtful. poetic in a rather spare way that i find is quite common in works translated from Chinese. one to take your time with, when you're in the right mood for it, or when you're about to have a massive meal. a good book club read.
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