The Paper Menagerie

⌗ Metadata

• Author: Ken Liu
• Tags: #scifi

📖 Short Summary (1 takeaway)

🧐 Why I am reading this book

• Was in a science fiction reading binge

🙊 Great quotes

“Thus, while the Telosians do not forget, they also do not remember. They are said to never die, but it is arguable whether they ever live” (pg 194) #quotes “For a moment, as I listened to her, I felt as if I could step through the distance between us and hear an echo of the world through her ears, see the stars through her eyes: an austere clarity that my made heart leap” (pg 198) #quotes “But being the mirrors for each other’s soul has a cost: by the time they part from each other, the individuals in the mating pair have become indistinguishable. Before their merger, they each yearned for the other; as they part, they part from the self. The very quality that attracted them to each other is also, inevitably, destroying in their union” (pg 196) #quotes “The fading sunlight holds infinite beauty, though it is so close to the day’s end” #quotes

✅ Actionable item

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🗂 Detailed Summary

• State Change
  • Amazing short story that tied a fresh concept with a life old wisdom of growing up and finding yourself
  • In order to find who you truly are, you have to take steps outside of your comfort zone and experience things that seem out of “character”
• Mono no aware
  • The saying means “the pathos of things”
    • A Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence, or transience of things
    • Similar to the Latin phrase “lacrimae rerun” which means “tears of things”
• All the Flavours
  • In 1870, Chinese population was around 28% in Idaho
  • Apparently, in some Idaho mining towns they still celebrate Chinese New Year
    • Want to visit to see if its true