#ReadingTheStone
Welcome to our NotAPodcast NotAClass Saturday chats on #ReadingTheStone - an experiment in collectively reading the 18th century Chinese masterwork Story of the Stone, aka Dream of The Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (Hongloumeng). Episodes are unedited and recorded live on TwitterSpaces or Zoom - follow Twitter account @ReadingTheStone or hashtag #ReadingTheStone to participate. To listen in chronological order, please take note of 'season' and 'episode' number. Additional materials housed at readingthestone.com. With Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Wai-Yee Li, Ann Waltner, and friends.
Episodes
24 episodes
Stories for Kate Episode 3: Not quite Persuasion, but the best company
We didn't quite manage to chat at length about Persuasion as we had planned, but we definitely shared a few stories for Kate! Original grapes Eily, Jen, Yazmin, and Eileen were back, but a few of Kate's favorite Lowellians also joine...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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1:16:28
#ReadingTheStone Season 3 - Stories For Kate Episode 2: Valley Girl, like totally
The grapes return for another episode of 'Stories for Kate.' This time we do a deep dive into Martha Coolidge's 1983 indie classic Valley Girl, starring a young Deborah Foreman and Nicholas Cage. We talked about aspects of the f...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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55:06
#ReadingTheStone Season 3: Stories for Kate! Ep 1 Preamble: Foundational Romances
#ReadingTheStone Season 3: We have ventured a bit far afield from Story of the Stone and 18th century Chinese mansions for now, as Season 3 will be stories for (and about) Kate - in which we talk about her favorite books and films and ...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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36:37
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 10 Fellowship of The Stone: our post-120 wrap-up chat
[Originally recorded on March 25, 2023]"The Fellowship of the Stone" (thank you to one of the episode guests for our new sobriquet!) reconvened for a post #ReadingTheStone wrap-up episode. We welcomed a panoply of new-to-the-group frien...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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59:55
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 9 On Baoyu's Farewell, and Ours - Reaching Chapter 120
[Originally recorded on 3-11-2023] We recorded our first #ReadingTheStone Saturday chat on April 2, 2022, and now nearly 12 months later, we say farewell to Story of the Stone, as we reach Chapter 120 together. In this epi...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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1:03:00
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 8: On Haunted Near Endings - the Penultimate Episode of the Jias
[Originally recorded on 3-4-23]“Before one disaster is over, here’s another!” Pretty much sums up all the chapters lately. - DaniOur heroic trio Waiyee, Ann, and Eileen are reunited (thank you Shelly!) for the penultimate episode di...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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1:00:47
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 7 On Justice and Retribution, and Sea Otter Pelts
[Originally recorded on 2-25-2023]Waiyee and Eileen had other commitments this week, but Ann led the #ReadingTheStone group in a rich discussion of Chapters 105-109, on the dual plot strands of Baoyu's marriage and also of the Fall of t...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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56:57
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 6: On the Postlapsarian, and also surprisingly, Jia Zheng
[Originally recorded on 2-18-23]As #ReadingTheStone enters its final dozen chapters, we find ourselves ruminating over the postlapsarian state of things: the scattering and banishment of most everyone from Grand Prospect Garden, Xifeng'...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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52:10
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 5: On Love and Death in the House of Jia
[Originally recorded on 2-11-2023]The theme of this morning's #ReadingTheStone live chat began earlier, with Kate's Twitter poll on where readers fell on The Baoyu-Daiyu-Baochai ship, and whether Daiyu's quiet off-stage demise in the mi...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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57:42
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 11: On Goethe v. Proust, Private v. Public Reading, and Hexes
[Originally recorded on July 2, 2022]After a lovely first #ReadingTheStone (virtual) face-to-face meetup as part of the Duke APSI Book Club in late June, we returned to our Twitter Spaces live chats in early July, and also dove back int...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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55:46
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 4: On Daiyu's Near Demise and Recovery, and Zen Koans
[Originally recorded on 2-4-23]#ReadingTheStone discussion centered around Chapters 91-95, though we began the conversation where we left off the previous Saturday, on Daiyu willing her own demise by refusing to eat. The group discussed how...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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1:03:40
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 10: On Poetry in the Garden, Gaokao exam questions, and is Baoyu a F-boy?
[Originally recorded on 6-11-2022]Episode 10 saw us ranging widely, though we nominally discussed Chapters 17 to 21. First, we chatted about all the buzz over the 2022 PRC college entrance examination (gaokao) essay question on Dream of...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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1:01:33
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 9 On Embedded Refrains and Incipient Desire in Hongloumeng
[Conversation originally recorded on 6/4/22]Our 9th week of #ReadingTheStone was lively and wide-ranging both on Twitter and during our Saturday live conversation . Now that the imperial consort's visit has concluded, Chapter 19 seems l...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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57:09
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 8 On Grand Prospect Garden, and The Functions of Naming
[Conversation originally recorded on 5/28/22]Our eighth #ReadingTheStone conversation took us into the construction and naming of every nook and cranny inside Grand Prospect Garden, aka 大觀園 Daguanyuan, the future home of Baoyu, Daiyu, and a...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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59:35
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 3: On Tragedy, Failure, and Creativity - and Daiyu, of course
In last week's episode we agreed that the last 40 "Story of the Stone" chapters were giving final season wrap-up-all-the-loose-threads vibes, but perhaps our #ReadingTheStone chats now do that too.We circled back to the topic of one of o...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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55:06
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 2: On Daiyu's Anguished Dream, and Final Season Vibes
The #ReadingTheStone community forged ahead into Chapters 81-85 today, and we encountered so many callbacks to earlier moments to the point that some of us felt that they were giving final-season wrap-up vibes. Many threads and characters' fate...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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46:17
#ReadingTheStone Returns! S2 Episode 1 Our First Eighty Chapters of Reading Together
#ReadingTheStone had our first Saturday chat of the new year, on January 14, 2023. Last we left off, we had read up to Chapter 80 - and in this first session of the new year, we discussed the textual history of Story of the Stone, ...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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56:05
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 7: On Baoyu - no, Xifeng's - Education
#ReadingTheStone Episode 7 was supposed to be a continuation of our discussion of the education of Baoyu, the young scion of the Jia family - but Waiyee, Ann, and Eileen were diverted by questions about the 'creation' of the extraordinary...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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50:51
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 6: On Mirrors and Misguided Readers
#ReadingTheStone Saturday live chats are back after a week's hiatus, and in this episode Waiyee and Eileen discuss the history of interlinear & eyebrow commentary in Chinese fiction and possible resonances with 21st century online fanfictio...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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47:05
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 5: On Entering New Narrative Spaces
Our fifth Saturday chat continues the past week's conversation on Baoyu's sexual initiation - both in dreamland at the end of Chapter 5, and in the 'real world' at the beginning of the following chapter. Waiyee, Ann, and Eileen chat about Grann...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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51:30
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 4: On Dreams and Illusion - and Chapter 5
Eileen, Waiyee, and Ann dive into Chapter 5 of Hongloumeng - and respond to #ReadingTheStone questions about the role of dreams in Chinese literature, translating xian as immortal or fairy, the author's invention of a supernatural pantheo...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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49:10
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 3: On Character - Daiyu, Baoyu, Baochai
In this third round of Saturday chats on #ReadingTheStone, Eileen and Waiyee and special guest Ann Waltner talk about the introduction of key characters in the open four chapters of the Story Of The Stone.
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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39:36
