It's a Jumble

  I did it: I started in September, and I have now read the entirety of Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone , all five volumes as published in the Penguin Classic edition (translation of vol 1-3 by David Hawkes and vol 4-5 by John Minford), each volume ~400-500 pages and in tiny font, single-spaced.   It feels like waking from a dream.   And what a dream! This strange, mesmerizing, shape-shifter of novel. It starts out like a xianxia c-drama ! (why did no one tell me that?) A sentient stone spirit (made and then abandoned by the goddess Nu-wa) falls for a Crimson Pearl Flower and waters her with sweet dew until she becomes a fairy girl. She pledges to someday repay him with her tears. The flower and stone are then both reborn in the human world to meet one another and live out their fates. And here the story shifts, for long periods of time, to something like a 19 th century English novel of manners. The stone is reincarnated as boy named Bao-yu and the f...