Took me over a month to read Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age.
In my defense, on Saturday, April 16, around 4:30 PM, I saw a mouse in my apartment. It hid under my printer table and overnight two of my white glue traps caught it. I took it out to the dumpster. When I returned to my apartment, I saw another mouse stuck on one of my green glue traps, in front of the heating-A/C unit; the bottom half of its body was on the trap, and it was trying climb up into the crack it had come in: between the unit and the wall. Maintenance came around, Monday I think it was, to stuff steel wool in the crack. On Wednesday afternoon, I heard some squeaking. I thought maintenance might be working on an apartment above or below me. The squeaking became too annoying to ignore. It was coming from a mouse on a black glue trap under my printer table, against the wall. And that night, after I went out for about a half-hour walk, the ugliest mouse I've ever see was on a green glue trap between the dining room area and the kitchen. Its eyes were bulging out and I have a memory of colorful eyebrows, though that could be a trick of my imagination. I think it was an adult because it was bigger than the one from earlier in the afternoon, and its long tail touched my carpet. I took it out to the dumpster ASAP 'cause every minute or so it flayed, trying to get out of the trap, without any luck; and two guys from maintenance — Jeremy again and this time Wes — came around the next day, Thursday, to again plug up the gap between the wall and the heating unit, and also to jam steel wool in other places throughout the apartment. Needless to say, I wasn't reading too much that week, freaked out if more rodents were in my living space 'cause Jeremy said the two mice from Wednesday may have been in there for a few days after he plugged my the wall/heating unit gap on Monday. All told, there have been at least five or six mice in my apartment since I moved in last summer. In the fall, one came in on a Friday night and hid under my black backpack on the floor. When I lifted up the backpack, the mouse darted for the aforementioned crack in the wall. A few weeks later, when I was enjoying my mid-morning snack on a Friday, I saw something crawling under by dining room table. Overnight a mouse's (the same one from before?) lower body got stuck on a black glue trap under my printer table. The property manager said maintenance was too busy to get rid of it, so I had to take the rodent out to the dumpster. Oh, and one more mouse antidote: the other night (Wed. I think it was) I went to take the trash and recyclables out to the trash room. The door was partially blocked. I pushed it open. There was an untied trash bag and an open pizza box on the floor. Next to the pizza box was a mouse wiggling around on a white glue trap. I assumed it was from someone's apartment and they had threw it in the pizza box. So I went down the hall and threw my trash and recyclables in other smaller trash room. UPDATE: I came home on Mother's Day at night and there was one mouse caught on the trap in my bedroom under the heating/AC unit, which was a bitch to get out cuz I wear garden gloves and use pliers to pick up end of trap (had to use gloves to grab trap and move it over lip of that gap), and there was another one under my printer table in the dining room area. The latter was running towards the window, so I'm assuming it came in from the kitchen. Not sure if the one in the bedroom came in from the kitchen as well. So far, the traps have caught seven mice, then there was that one mouse that got away back in the fall on that Friday night.
Anyway, Imperial Twilight was OK, but I gave it three stars out of five at LibraryThing and my library. It's not really about the actual Imperial War, but the events leading up to it. The title is a little misleading, but I'm glad I read it. Don't know why it was such a tough read. Platt's prose isn't dense like other academics (I'm talking about you, Joseph Tainter!) and there weren't an overwhelming number of historical figures to keep track of. I dunno, maybe it comes down to length. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if it were between 300 and 400 pages, instead of 500 pages. And it's probably the only book I'll read about that war . . . would've been nice if more chapters were devoted to the battles, instead of just one chapter.
Oh well, I got an overdue library book to start reading now. It, like the two library holds waiting for me, are nonfiction. Can't wait to finish reading them so I can dive into a novel in my TBR pile. I'm thinking Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls, then I can watch the film adaption on Apple+, before I cancel it in the summer, after watching the third season of For All Mankind, which premiers sometime in June.
The merchants were "a rapacious and ravenous race of wolves," wrote his wife, "each howling after his prey."
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