ASMR Book Haul (Soft Spoken with Whispering) 🦢

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]Hey, it's good, good, good to see you.

[00:00:05]Hello, hello, and welcome to this little video, little change of scenery tonight.

[00:00:14]Back in our old haunt, which means there might be a little more background noise than usual, but I just wanted to mix it up. So, here we are.

[00:00:28]the bed. We have Debbie here.

[00:00:33]We have Eloise there, the spotted whale.

[00:00:39]And we're going to get into it. So, tonight I wanted to share with you four books. One, two, three, four. four books that I got somewhat recently and I got them a little bit ago, but I broke my TBR, like my new reads, into two chunks. So, I went through the first chunk and had it on my shelf, and then I brought out the second chunk, put it on my shelf, and this is what I'm newly considering my TBR, my new books, my book haul.

[00:01:24]Even though I technically bought these a couple of months ago with some holiday money, some holiday money, some gift money.

[00:01:36]So, we have a novel, a story collection, non-fiction, like an essay, and another novel.

[00:01:51]So let's get into it.

[00:01:55]The first book is B A R bear foot. Barefoot Knock door.

[00:02:20]Barefoot doctor has a really beautiful green cover with yellow green grass growing on it.

[00:02:38]Here we can see the name of the author translated from the Chinese by Karen Germmont Gernan Grant and Chening.

[00:03:02]I bought this book. Well, I really love Sunoy, first of all, but second of all, I bought this book at the recommendation of a friend and I haven't read her in a while. If you're not aware, she's a Chinese writer.

[00:03:23]She writes novels and short stories, and she is startlingly strange in her writing. Um, sometimes it can feel disjointed. It can feel out of this world.

[00:03:41]It can feel often very um unsettling, but not in the typical way. Unsettling in a more existential way, I'd say. Um, she's a very special writer. There's no one else quite like her.

[00:04:03]So here on the back it says in Y village herbalist Mrs. E lives with her husband at the foot of Neolan Mountain where she gathers herbs to treat the villagers by day and studies medicine by night.

[00:04:20]As younger villagers observe Mrs. E and begin imitating her work, for example, planting gardens and studying the art of healing. They discover that the line dividing life from death is porous and that the mountain is more mysterious than they knew. Drawing on her own experiences as a barefoot doctor, Tancho offers a novel that delights in the in between spaces between the living and the dead, healer and sick, nature and us.

[00:04:53]I'm really looking forward to it. And I have to say I'm not like fully I I don't fully know what a barefoot doctor is. I've not heard that term before.

[00:05:07]I mean, I can venture, I guess, but based on the description of the story, but I'm really not sure. There are 22 chapters in this um such as Uncle Ma, deceased uncle Leang Shan, Something Unpleasant, Auntie Yosi and her eccentric daughter-in-law, Gray's abnormal behavior, the turning point in Mia's life, Mia and Lohan go into action, etc., etc. Yeah, really looking forward to it especially because my friend liked it so much in fact and liked it so much that he um decided to teach this book in its course.

[00:06:02]So yeah, I'm really excited to read it.

[00:06:08]Second Second, second, second, second.

[00:06:15]We have another book by Sanu. You guessed it.

[00:06:22]You guessed it.

[00:06:27]This one is called Mother River.

[00:06:41]This really beautiful amorphous shape here in which there is blue and pink water as though at sunrise or sunset and some low mountains or rocks around it.

[00:07:06]There's a cat outside.

[00:07:09]And as promised, this is by translated by Karen.

[00:07:22]I can't tell if this is an RN or an M. I think it's an RN. You know, in some fonts it's hard to tell the difference.

[00:07:31]Karen Kun and Chen something so same as the other.

[00:07:39]Tell me that's not one of the best covers ever.

[00:07:47]I believe this one is a story collection. Here it says from the winner of the 2015 best translated book award.

[00:08:02]I'm not sure what book she won that with, but doesn't say.

[00:08:08]Okay. In Mother River, Tancho, one of China's most daring and visionary writers, invites us into a surreal landscape where reality is as fluid as a river itself.

[00:08:22]This collection of 13 stories weaves together vivid dreamlike narratives that challenge our perceptions of time, identity, and existence.

[00:08:33]Through her signature blend of the absurd and the profound, Sancho explores the fragile boundaries between the known and unknown, between humanity and nature. In these tales, a man tries to chase down an elusive golden peacock. A woman communicates with mysterious shifting forms of light. And the river that runs through a small village seems to pulse with memories of its own.

[00:09:00]Surreal, provocative, and unique, Mother River reinforces Sanu's status as one of the most rewarding and complex writers working today and a perennial favorite to win the Nobel Prize.

[00:09:16]So, between the descriptions of these two books, I think you can get a decent idea of just how strange her writing is.

[00:09:26]There are books by her I really love. I will say um I tried to read Five Spice Street and could not get through it at the time. I haven't tried to pick it up again recently. Maybe I'd have a better time with it now.

[00:09:45]I'm not even a more experienced reader or anything. It's just uh maybe it just wasn't the right time.

[00:09:53]So, she she can be challenging to read at times just because she takes so many risks, but it's amazing and really unnerving in a really special way. So, I love that. I don't See if we can find a list of the stories in here.

[00:10:20]Here we have contents.

[00:10:24]Mother River, Stone Village, Smog City, The Drummer Boy, The Neighborhood, The Young Man Who Loved to Think Deeply, Something to do with poetry, The Inside Story, The Lion King, and The Edge of the Marsh.

[00:10:53]night in the goddess of love in translators acknowledgements.

[00:11:17]I just think this is such a beautiful cover. It's not why I got it because I also love the But love it. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

[00:11:29]Okay, the third book I have for you tonight, it's not by Sanu. I promise it's not.

[00:11:39]It's not only Sanu tonight.

[00:11:42]The third book, this one's like an extended essay that I hear reads really nicely and it's quite long, you know. I love.

[00:11:54]So, this one is called This Little Art by Kate Bricks. Kate Briggs.

[00:12:12]I'm rewatching Twin Peaks right now, so that just makes me think of Bobby Briggs. Bobby Bricks. Bobby Bricks.

[00:12:22]this little arty bricks.

[00:12:37]So, like I said, it's quite long.

[00:12:44]A fair amount of footnotes. Yeah, it's like 350 pages.

[00:12:49]It's not incredibly big.

[00:12:54]So, it's a good amount of text um for being considered I think it's considered an essay, but it's a good amount of text.

[00:13:06]Okay, I'm like jumping ahead. I want to look at the contents, but let me read the back to you first.

[00:13:15]confirmation of an essay because it begins an essay with the reach and momentum of a novel love. Kate Briggs's This Little Art is a genrebending song for the practice of literary translation offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking on reading, writing, and living with the works of others.

[00:13:39]Taking her own experience of translating Roland Bar's lecture notes as a starting point, the author threads various stories together to give us this portrait of translation as a compelling, complex and intensely relational activity.

[00:13:57]She recounts the story of Helen Lope Porter's translations of Thomas Man and theirostuous vilification.

[00:14:06]She writes about the loving relationship between Andre Sheet and his translator Dorothy Busy. She recalls how Robinson Crusoe laboriously made a table for him for the first time on an undiscerted island. With this little art, a beautifully layered account of the subjective translated experience, Kate Briggs emerges as a truly remarkable writer, distinctive, wise, frank, funny, and utterly original.

[00:14:38]So, if you don't already know, I love translated literature. I love love translated literature.

[00:14:54]If I can read literature in another language, I will.

[00:15:01]But one can only learn so many languages.

[00:15:04]And so I just think that translated translated literature when done well is such a gift and is so beautiful. It's so beautiful that we're able to access different voices, different points of view, different literary traditions, different cultural fabrics, um, and narrative traditions through the work of others, through the work of the translators.

[00:15:40]So I'm drawn often to translated literature.

[00:15:44]I think there is obviously so much good literature and so much good writing available in English and good stories being published in English currently all the time. However, because I live in the States, I feel like I'm more prone to get caught up in like the hype cycle of like the season's latest book and the big marketing pushes from big publishing houses. And more often than not, I just don't find those books to be very good. There are books in English being published, but I just I don't like hyped books in a way. And so with translated literature, not only am I getting unique stories from um different literary traditions to my own, which is always edifying and mind and perspective expanding sometimes mind bending in the case of Sancho for example um I forgot how that sentence started so I don't know how to end it um yeah not only am I experiencing art from elsewhere in a way that I find is very edifying but um because translated literatur is translated.

[00:17:31]I find that there's this like vote of confidence in it. I think for a translating literature doesn't pay much.

[00:17:38]Let me spoil that for you first of all. So, uh for someone to write something that moved many people or one person enough to then translate it, which is painstaking work that doesn't particularly well.

[00:18:00]I I find um those stories tend to be stories that are well written and that are um more likely to stand the test of time.

[00:18:15]They tend to be very good. And so yeah, I'm just drawn to translated literature not exclusively, but it is definitely something I like very much.

[00:18:30]So some geese outside, lots of stuff outside.

[00:18:35]All this to say, I was very curious about this book because it's by someone who translates literature about the act of translating literature.

[00:18:48]which again like I said can be very painstaking certainly a lot of work can be very challenging and um it yeah it just is quite a labor a labor of love really a labor of love and of love for art okay I'm definitely rambling now but all this to say I I can't wait to read this I'm very excited to read Okay, finally the fourth book.

[00:19:23]The fourth book is another novel.

[00:19:28]This one is Belto written on a musical staff here.

[00:19:43]by Ann.

[00:19:48]The only thing I've read by well, the only thing I've attempted to read by Ann is the Dutch House, which I thought was like pretty well written and yet it failed to move me, failed to interest me and so I just stopped reading it. Um, just a personal just my personal experience. Um, I've heard the opening the Commonwealth is amazing, so I do want to pick that one up. But yeah, I just really did not like The Dutch House. I DNFED.

[00:20:26]But at the end of last year when I was with my family, my brother-in-law was reading this book, Belto, and um he was reading it cuz my sister had read it and really loved it.

[00:20:43]And I think it's about art and the power of art. And I just thought I'm going to give it a try because if my brother-in-law liked it, um maybe I mean, he reads and he has good taste, but it just struck me that like maybe this had wider appeal or that it would reel me in a little bit more than the Dutch House did.

[00:21:10]So, let's see.

[00:21:16]Somewhere in South America at the home of the country's vice president a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosu Kawa Roxan CS opera's most revered soprano has memorized the international guests with her artistry. It is a perfect evening until a band of gun wielding gorillas takes the entire party hostage.

[00:21:45]But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different.

[00:21:52]A moment of great beauty as gorillas and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

[00:22:07]This quote's calling it um like a love letter to art and beauty and a subtly sly comedy of manners, grace, beauty, elegance, magic.

[00:22:22]Yeah. So looking forward to it. I'll let you know how it goes. This edition, this copy has decled edges, which is not my favorite.

[00:22:36]The texture feels nice, but it's when I go to flip through a book that I'm like, it's so chunky.

[00:22:51]I would love to hear what you're reading now or have read recently, especially if you liked it, of course, but feel free too to share what you didn't like. I mean, that's a part of the reading experience is yeah, being able to explore and express what you did and did not like and why, honing your taste, um, and having conversations with people who um, may agree with you or may have felt differently about it. It's all a part of it, you know.

[00:23:37]I hope that you are doing super super super well and if you're not that is okay too.

[00:23:47]I will talk to you very soon and until then good night. Good night.

[00:23:54]Good night.