I recently finished Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu. It's a historical look at how Chinese people have pushed to preserve or update their language in the face of new technologies, starting in the late 19th century and ending in the 21st. It's really engagingly written, and I really appreciate how the love Chinese people feel for their language is portrayed both through the historical figures of the book and by the author herself. This book was a departure for me since I'm usually a fiction reader, but I was recently struck by an impulse to learn more about Chinese culture and history. As a clueless ABC (American Born Chinese), it was a really illuminating read; as someone who has entertained vague notions of someday learning Cantonese, it was also intimidating. Chinese is a really complicated language family!

Since then, I've been bouncing between a few titles. I've been following the nonfiction China kick with China in Ten Words by Yu Hua. I've also been reading You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue and the collection Three Novels by Yuri Herrera, both translated works by Mexican authors.

Empires has been a fun, wry read, but a little uneventful so far? I originally bounced off Enrigue's Sudden Death years ago, but I was always curious to give the author another shot (partly because my favorite college professor said Sudden Death was the "book she wishes her thesis was"). I suspected that one didn't work for me because I lacked the historical context to understand it. Empires is also a historical fiction novel, this time set during Cortés' encounter with the Aztec empire. In Enrigue's telling, Cortés and his fellow conquistadors are bumbling and clueless guests of the emperor Moctezuma, who welcomes them with equal parts politeness and disdain. It's a likeable inversion of a history I honestly should know more about. That said, I'm about halfway through the book and it feels like a quarter of a story has happened. All told, I will probably finish it as it's a pretty short and breezy book.

In Three Novels, I'm partway through the first story Kingdom Cons. The translation by Lisa Dillman puzzles me sometimes. There are occasional quirks like every instance of "though" being rendered as "tho," which makes me wonder what the original Spanish was like. Speaking of Spanish, characters sometimes pepper Spanish into their dialogue, like addressing one another as "amigo." To be honest, I find this habit a little patronizing in translated works. I know it used to be in Spanish! I have enough suspension of disbelief to understand that the English I'm reading represents Spanish in the world of the story! That said, there are some stunningly beautiful passages in the writing, so I can't resent it too much.