Reddit Reddit reviews Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel

We found 6 Reddit comments about Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Literature & Fiction
Books
Genre Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction
Cultural Heritage Fiction
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel
romantic awakening
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6 Reddit comments about Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel:

u/UlamsAces · 24 pointsr/JordanPeterson

Outstanding. On a related note, here's a fantastic novel that takes place in Mao's China: https://www.amazon.com/Balzac-Little-Chinese-Seamstress-Novel/dp/0385722206

u/tomcarter · 8 pointsr/China

As the mod of r/chinabookclub/, I must say this is the first time ever I have seen someone request a "fun" book about the Cultural Revolution. I think the word you intended was "engaging" or "gripping." In which case there are many. Literally hundreds.


For fiction, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is very readable and heartwarming. And it was also made into a movie by my #1 crush Zhou Xun, which you can watch after to compare.


For non-fiction, try Anchee Min's Red Azalea her memoir as a school girl who comes of age and discovers sexuality during the Down to the Countryside movement.

u/specialkake · 7 pointsr/Favors

I was going to leave it as a little mini-puzzle, but: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

u/SmallFruitbat · 6 pointsr/YAwriters

I think voice and tone are the main markers of YA, and those are incredibly hard to nail down.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The Ranger's Apprentice, My Sister's Keeper, Miserere, The Midwife's Apprentice, The Catcher in the Rye, the His Dark Materials trilogy, Ella Enchanted, Catherine, Called Birdy, Fangirl, the Mistborn trilogy, Girls Like Us, various Tamora Pierce books, and Incarceron are all books that could be considered YA in some markets, but not in others (some are marketed up as adult literature, others down as children's books).

If you went solely by "characters being teenagers for most of the book" to define YA, (and even threw in caveats like "coming of age" and "no explicit sex") you'd get titles like Wild Ginger, The Poisonwood Bible, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Into the Forest, or The Year of the Flood on the YA shelves, possibly disappointing a lot of people who aren't interested in such a dreary world view and often a pervading sense of melancholy (which is perhaps coming from the slower pace, even if things are happening all the time?).

Endings seem to play a role too: those adult examples were all unhappy ends that could make the characters' entire journey seem pointless. YA doesn't necessarily shy away from the unhappy ending (The Fault in Our Stars, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, and Feed come to mind), but there's always a spark of hope and the books were more upbeat up until that point.

YA doesn't necessarily shy away from cynicism or ennui and/or despair either: there was plenty of that to go around in The Hunger Games, Looking for Alaska, Graceling, Delirium, and The Archived, but those tended to be character traits coming from character voice rather than the tone of the narration itself.

Bonus MG vs YA distinction: Does he liiiiike her and maybe kiss her or marry her or are they dating or secretly lusting?

tl,dr: Gut feeling. I know it when I read it, and I don't always agree with the official designation on the spine.

u/some_random_kaluna · 1 pointr/history

So here's some of the textbooks I read (and still own) from my Asian History courses at college. All are worth reading over, but you'll also want teachers to help you, to talk with historians from China, and eventually just to go to China and see a lot of stuff for yourself.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, by Patricia Ebrey.

Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, edited by Patricia Ebrey.

Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung, written by the man himself.

Fiction:

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie.

The Outlaws of the Marsh, by Shi Nai'An and Sidney Shapiro.

The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu.

These are a relatively good start to help you get a grounding in China's history. Everyone in this thread has also given some good suggestions. And visit /r/askhistorians; they'll have some better sources you can check out.

u/SlothMold · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Wild Ginger come to mind, both set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.