原味人文風情:It's been a busy year, but I found time to read a number of great books. Here's a few I think you might enjoy.
今年是很忙碌的一年,但我抽空看了一些很棒的書。這里有幾本我覺得你可能會喜歡。
Evicted by Matthew Desmond. It's a brilliant book in terms of a sense of the chaos when you get evicted and they put your stuff out on the curb. The intertangled issues of mental health, drug abuse, it made me wanna really understand the various government programs a lot better.You get a really good picture of how it's a very tough life.
馬修·德斯蒙德的《被驅逐者》。當你被趕出去然后東西被扔到路邊時,對于那種混亂感的描述,這本書十分匠心獨具。錯綜復雜的心理健康、毒品濫用問題,它讓我想真正更深入地了解政府的各種計劃。你可以清楚認識到那是怎樣艱苦的生活。
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It's a book about the Vietnam War. And he writes about this extremely conflicted person who works for the Vietnamese army but is a Communist agent. There's this person who is a traitor and a murderer, and, you know, the whole messiness and futility is represented by the main character. It's a very sad story.
阮越清的《同情者》。這是本關于越戰的書。作者寫了一位矛盾極為沖突的人物,他替越軍效力,但又是個共諜。他既是叛徒又是殺人兇手的人物,所有混亂失序和失敗都透過主角呈現出來。這是個非常悲傷的故事。
I also read The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. It's a very quick read. She does a good job of trying to be a good daughter and a good mother, trying to understand her parents and what went through, and sort of appreciate the turmoil that the last three generations that lived in Vietnam went through.
我還看了Thi Bui的《我們能做到最好的》。這本書很快就能讀完。她是個稱職的女兒和母親,試著了解她的父母和他們的經歷,然后在某種程度上去體會住在越南的祖先三代遭遇過的動蕩。
Next is Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil.It's a sweeping explanation of human progress through the lens of energy. You can't have civilization without energy. You know, we went from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to the Industrial Age. Taking you through that whole progression...it's definitely a masterpiece.
下一本是瓦茨拉夫·斯米爾的《能源和文明》。這本書從能源角度針對人類進展作出全面的解釋。沒有能源就沒有文明。你知道,我們從狩獵采集變成農業,再進到工業時代。它帶你走過那整段進展...這絕對是杰作。

Finally, Believe Me by Eddie Izzard. If you've seen Eddie's stuff and you like it, you should read the book. He's very humble. He had 10 years as a street performer with essentially no success, but he slowly but surely got slightly better and learned different things. And so, in terms of ability to learn things and see clever connections, he's just a genius guy.
最后,艾迪·伊扎德的《相信我》。如果你有看過艾迪的作品然后很喜歡的話,你就應該讀這本書。他很謙虛。他有過十年當街頭藝人但苦無成就的經歷,不過他緩慢卻穩定地成長,并學到許多不同的事物。因此,在學習事物和看見之間巧妙聯結的這種能力上,他是個天賦異稟的人。
So, those are some of my favorites. I hope you find them as compelling as I did.
那么,那些就是其中幾本我很喜歡的書。希望你們會和我一樣覺得這些書很吸引人。