Project Bookshelf: Farrah Liu

I was always a bit of a nerd when I was growing up. Reading books in my bed, crouched on one side, gave me a left eye that is significantly more nearsighted than the right one. As I moved away from my small town, my interest in physical books has gradually declined. I brought the books I once favored with me to the big city nonetheless. Instead, I spent the majority of my leisure time lying back in the cinema, where both eyes are evenly exhausted by the screen. My journey was turbulent. The next move was from China to Canada. I had to be especially economical with what I brought. It has now been three years since I settled in Toronto. I have curated a wonderful collection of used books and carved out a spiritual corner in my little home. But I do want to highlight the two books among the stacks of my bookshelf that have traveled across the ocean with me.

La mia magnifica ossessione encapsulates my last three years in university as a cinema studies student. I have always been fascinated with Bertolucci’s cinematic oeuvre—admiring The Last Emperor in junior high was one of my fondest memories. Many a page of my academic endeavors has been devoted to the study of Bertolucci: to auteurism, to poetry, to Marxism, to eroticism, and to psychoanalytic studies. Only published in its original Italian and Chinese, this essay collection of his proves to be hopelessly poetic and endlessly stimulating.

If my university years are characterized by Bertolucci and Visconti, then my high school years are marked by Kafka and Mo Yan. Interestingly, my elementary years are contoured by the writings of Dumas and Zweig. I have owned this copy of Zweig’s A Letter from an Unknown Woman since I was ten. I recently reread it. Upon rereading it last summer, I came to the conclusion that I am no longer attracted to the operatic and the sentimental. The translation is subpar, but it was nice to relive the emotional journey.

Farrah Liu is the president at the Cinema Studies Student Union (CINSSU) and is completing her Honours BA at University of Toronto, specializing in cinema studies. She is also a Toronto-based cultural critic who has recently published in the Toronto Star.