Nights 17-34 This week, for a long section, I’ve got notes on the structure, poetry, sex, and Magic cards in the Nights. The Nights begin with longer nights on average; this is the longest section of all, at nearly 150 pages this week (most of the rest are
Nights 1-16 Welcome to the first week’s reading! I found the first sixteen nights to be delightful. First, for those reading along: this is long! The first sixteen nights are 100 pages, and the next sixteen are 150 pages. I was expecting only 40-50 pages per week.
This intro sets the mood (the "strange nature" of the Nights) more than it describes the text’s history or later influence (these are saved for introductions to the second and third volume). The mood is “the collective dreaming of commercial folks in the great cities of the
Three Kingdoms: Introduction Before we get to the text, my edition has a 20-page introduction from 1999 by a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is a standard introduction: the book’s author, sources, themes, style, and influence. I once heard that you should wait to
Below is the schedule for this blog. I'm planning to do updates about The Arabian Nights on Mondays and Romance of the Three Kingdoms on Thursdays. The Arabian Nights 12/29/2025 - Intro 1/5/2026 - Nights 1-16 1/12/2026 - Nights 17-34 1/19/2026
They’re two big books, and both are so long that they require multiple volumes. The first is The One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), and the other is the great Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I’ve wanted to read both of them for at
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