Michael Tsai Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Michael Tsai

Learned about an internet celebrity, “Chris Chan”. Reminds me of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”, but for the 21st century.

Michael Tsai

Hm, I could write a crossover between Jean-Paul Sartre and No Exit, plus the Wachowskis and Matrix, connected by the thread (portals) of mirrors. Pure and broken, their presence and their absence

Michael Tsai

There's a scene from The Sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway where a tavern manager accumulates a bunch of pictures with vapid tourists over the years. After seeing how worthless those pictures are he eventually stores them in a drawer, before finally discarding them

Michael Tsai

In “Total Recall”, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character goes to Mars. At the hotel, he is registered as a guest named “Brubaker”. Where else is this moment referenced in fiction? Of “Brubaker” being the first man on Mars?

Michael Tsai

A far earlier example of this, way before even televisions - the great poet Mikhail Lermontov, who died in a duel at age 26. In a manner almost exactly the same as the death of his greatest character in his greatest novel, "A Hero of (Our) Time"