Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Summer writing project (Day Twenty-Two)

I spent some time today going over my paper, taking notes on Google Keep, and adding some ideas and quotes to my draft. My plan is to work on the body of the paper and then decide on whether I want to go back to my original introduction (if it seems to fit) or write another introduction that fits better. 

I mentioned looking for a statistic a few days ago--I found a usable one today in a book I've had for a while. A long time ago, someone asked me if I read all the books I was buying. I believe my reply was that I read some of them all the way through, but some of them I just dip into for research purposes. This time was a case of dipping into a book I've never read for a statistic. (The book was Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan, edited by Edwin A. Winckler and Susan Greenhalgh, if you're interested.)

Speaking of actually reading books that I've had for years, I've decided that I'll (finally) read John Robert Shepherd's Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800 next. I bought the book at Cave's Books in Taichung over 20 years ago (it's a Taiwanese Southern Materials edition rather than the Stanford UP edition), dragged it to Syracuse with me, then back to Taiwan in 2002, and then to Boston in 2011. (It should probably have its own frequent flyer card.) Some people were talking about it on Twitter last week, and I thought, "I have that book!" I'm a little embarrassed to admit I haven't read it yet, so I'm going to make up for lost time...

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