Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
A Many-Splendored Thing
A Many-Splendored Thing | Han Suyin
16 posts | 5 read | 4 to read
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
JanuarieTimewalker13
post image
Pickpick

I LOVED this book!! It was such a great snapshot in time. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950. The writing was superb…one warning…it was probably me but it took me so long to get through. That being said, I enjoyed it. It gives a really balanced look at how “New” China came into power and how the Missionaries had to leave for Formosa (Taiwan) and HK. Looked at the issues of colonialism. Plus, an affair which was not embraced…he was married.

JanuarieTimewalker13 #HongKong Highly recommend! This is my library copy which is first edition…probably had a dustcover at some point. Very impressed that the library had this 72 year old book! I really didn‘t do justice to the book with this review. It was a complex book..there was also the white superiority complex that played into people‘s perception of them as a couple. She was Eurasian, in book he was English, but IRL he was Australian. Ian Morrison. (edited) 2mo
JanuarieTimewalker13 She was a brilliant…a doctor educated in Europe, came back to help her people. 2mo
JanuarieTimewalker13 Book 32 for 2023…had already counted it as read in my journal. Note to Self: don‘t do that this year! (edited) 2mo
37 likes1 stack add3 comments
blurb
xicanti
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image

Time for leftover trifle and my penultimate chunk of this book. I‘m basically limping through it now, y‘all. Han Suyin keeps telling me she‘s a deeply emotional person with no interest in politics, but her story feels like a philosophical exercise centred on the politics of late 40s/early 50s China. It‘s interesting in how it looks at the issues in play, but the long, pointed discourses keep me at a distance from the personal side of it.

blurb
xicanti
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image

Happy Christmas to everyone celebrating today! I woke up hungry with hours to go until the cinnamon buns happen, so out came the leftover lotus root. I talked the table into it last night and now have several new converts to the Society of Lotus Root Lovers. We only had leftovers because it was the last dish to come out and we were already stuffed.

The book‘s still good, but the dialogue‘s become quite Philosophical Monologuey. Not ideal.

Ruthiella Happy Christmas to you! ❄️ 1y
xicanti @Ruthiella 🎄❄️❤️ 1y
CarolynM Merry Christmas 🎄 1y
xicanti @CarolynM 🌲❤️ 1y
Eggs Merry Christmas! 1y
29 likes5 comments
blurb
xicanti
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image

I‘m working my way through my last unread purchase of 2022! It‘s interesting but not gripping, so I‘ve been reading around 30 pages a day, same as I would with nonfiction, instead of going straight through like I would with the average novel. Even though it‘s published as fiction, it really does seem like autobiography. Thus far, all the details match up with Han Suyin‘s author profile. I suspect she just changed some names & invented dialogue.

tpixie Great job going through your TBR! 1y
xicanti @tpixie thanks! I‘ve made a real effort to keep it under control this year. 1y
tpixie @xicanti I‘m going to work on clearing my bookshelves this year! 🍀( adorable puppy 🐶) 1y
xicanti @tpixie good luck! It‘s a deeply satisfying thing to do. (Also, Casey thanks you for the compliment.) 1y
tpixie @xicanti 🍀🍀🍀 ❤️🐶🐶❤️ 1y
33 likes5 comments
quote
sdbruening
post image

That snag of imperfection which makes and keeps us human

quote
sdbruening
post image

blurb
JanuarieTimewalker13
post image

@BayouGirl85 @Kelly_the_Bookish_Sidekick
Third Uncle: “We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities”
Not sure if it‘s in book, but it‘s in film.
Song: “Rulers make bad lovers You better put your kingdom up for sale” Gold Dust Woman Fleetwood Mac

BayouGirl85 💙💙 3y
AlaMich Is that what those lyrics are? All the years I‘ve been listening to that song and I never really knew. 😂 3y
JanuarieTimewalker13 Hahaha, I sing the wrong lyrics all the time😄 3y
Kelly_the_Bookish_Sidekick I love that first one! 😆 3y
23 likes4 comments
blurb
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin

Fav new words from this book I had to look up in the dictionary:

*Volplane: to glide in or as if in an airplane.

*Abstemious: not self-indulgent, especially when eating and drinking.

*Seraglio: the woman‘s apartments (harem) in an Ottoman palace.

*Perfidious: deceitful and untrustworthy.

blurb
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image

This one even had an article about the author written in 1953 taped to the back cover. Take a deep breath - can‘t you just smell the history? (2/2)

blurb
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image

Always had a thing for old books, especially the ones covered in someone else‘s scribbles, notes, and underlines. It‘s like seeing a book through another person‘s eyes. (1/2)

quote
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin

But we...are more bound by custom than by law, and old customs die hard. P 158

quote
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin

“Politics don‘t stop love. He will say to her: ‘You are as beautiful as our new hydro-electric plant.‘ And she will reply: ‘Comrade, how progressive of you.‘”

quote
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin

“Hearsay was far more important than knowledge[...]for it is easier to appear knowledgeable than to become so.”

quote
LaraS
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin

“One should never condemn what one cannot understand.”
#WordsToLiveBy

Nute Truth! 3y
1 like1 comment
blurb
erzascarletbookgasm
post image

This is a semi-autobiographical novel about the forbidden love between a married British foreign correspondent and a Eurasian doctor in Hong Kong, interlaced with many aspects of historical references to China and Hong Kong. The book was made into the 1955 film, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, which also inspired a famous song by Sammy Fain.

#juneitselectrifying #loveisamanysplendoredthing

vkois88 👍👍👍 6y
53 likes1 stack add1 comment
review
mirenbflores
A Many-splendoured Thing | Suyin Han, Han Suyin
post image
Pickpick

Because she wrote about their love and her loss with so light a hand. This is my parents' favorite book, so it became one of mine. They had a battered paperback with underlined passages and notes in my mother's handwriting. My sister and I went to so many Strand branches looking for a copy of this book.

JanuarieTimewalker13 I have this DVD...love the film so much, yet JJ and WH it is said did not get along in real life...they did a great job acting! I've wanted to read the book, but never got around to it. 7y
mirenbflores @JanuarieTimewalker13 I've actually never seen the film! And if that rumor is true then we know why they were actors for a living, hahaha! 7y
JanuarieTimewalker13 @mirenbflores oh def see the film, the shots of Hong Kong are beautiful and it really is a great flick. "We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities" is one of my favorite movie lines. I was wondering if that line was in the book? 7y
mirenbflores @JanuarieTimewalker13 oh I'll check and get back to you! It's mostly the mushy stuff that stayed with me because I'm a sentimental fool 😂 7y
4 likes1 stack add5 comments