Flinging a Severed Head

Chapters 60-61

I’m happy to report that the new minor characters that ended Chapter 59 turned into a good plot related to our main characters. They bring us to Zhang Song, whose physical description reminded me of a frog (“an angular brow . . . a tapered skull; his nose was flat, his teeth protruding; he was under five feet tall”). There might be a better comparison than frog, but that’s the first thing that came to mind. I stuck with it.

The frog-man explores whether to seek support from Cao Cao or Liu Bei. It’s a nice contrast: he has to bribe his way into a meeting with Cao Cao, but he is welcomed with respect by Liu Bei. It looks like this frog-man may be the reason that Liu Bei eventually takes over Shu.

The best scenes of this week are with Lady Sun. She is tricked into bringing Liu Bei’s son with her to Sun Quan. But Zhao Zilong and Zhang Fei seize the child away from her. Zhang Fei is so angry that he kills Zhou Shan (Sun Quan’s main man in this episode) and flings Zhou Shan’s “severed head at Lady Sun’s feet.” (p. 1060). She is appropriately outraged.

We also say goodbye to one of Cao Cao’s main advisors, Xun Yu. Cao Cao doesn’t like his advice in these chapters and lets him know it. So Xun Yu kills himself. It’s a sudden end to a character we haven’t seen much from in a while.

Poetry Writing Constraints

Chapters 78-80 Tons of plot in these chapters. Most importantly, we get the deaths of a major character (Cao Cao) and minor characters (Xiahou Dun, Hua Tuo, Liu Feng). Hua Tuo’s death is one of my favorites, given my love of lost books. His “Book of the Black

The Devil Goes Down to Arabia

Nights 681-695 After the last couple weeks, I was worried that I was tiring of the Nights. But there was some good stuff here! My enthusiasm for the Nights has been restored. We can thank al-Asma’i, who the index says was a real-life expert on the

Head is a Hot Potato

Chapters 76-77 With the biggest death of the book so far, and likely one of the biggest in the book overall, we really get the sense of the end of a great one. Sun Quan beheads Lord Guan and quickly regrets it. Sun is advised that Liu Bei will

Seriousness replaced absurdity

Nights 649-680 It’s hard for me to say why I found this story so much more tiresome than what came before it. Maybe I’m getting tired of the Nights. Maybe work is particularly stressful right now. If I were to look for an objective reason, I’d

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Poetry Writing Constraints

The Devil Goes Down to Arabia

Head is a Hot Potato

Seriousness replaced absurdity