What Are You Reading??

"God's Chinese Son"...thanks, Pashley, I'll be looking for that. Sounds awesome. Came across the Tai Ping Rebellion in a Flashman book and would so like to read some more about them.

"God's Chinese Son"...thanks, Pashley, I'll be looking for that. Sounds awesome.

You can borrow mine. It was not as good as I expected, but worthwhile.

I'm in Fuzhou, will visit Shanghai/Suzhou and Guilin/Yangshuo areas during holiday. PM me for more detail.

Came across the Tai Ping Rebellion in a Flashman book and would so like to read some more about them.

Same place I first encountered them. Nanjing has an interesting Tai Ping Tien Guo museum.

Second bloodiest war EVER?  Golly, that's a big hole in my history reading.
  Off to Wikipedia!

Con, just read "Flashman and the Dragon" instead, it'll be more fun and quite possibly more correct than Wikipedia

Jules Hardy "Altered Land" - interesting novel about an adult who was the victim of an IRA bomb on his 13th birthday, ended up deaf.  Well written, and from his perspective and his mother's.

After 10 years of urging from my older brother, I started reading the first of King's Dark Tower novels on my flight to China a couple months ago.  Loved it.

Now, for whatever reason, every bookstore I've been to in Hangzhou that has English books has the series, but only 1, 3, 4, 5, etc...  No 2 to be found.

Beyond infuriating.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

Why? Because I should be packing.

Yesterday I read a review on ChinaSMACK of the book Niubi!: The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School. Since I'm at home in the States now, I popped over to the local Borders and picked up a copy. 

The book is absolutely hilarious. Not only does it have a ton of slang, profane, and filthy expressions, but it also includes explanations of how many of the terms came to mean what they mean. It's interesting, funny, and informative. Highly recommended!

Here's a link to it on Amazon.

This is one Chinese book I don't need!  I have a great Chinese teacher who is more than happy to tell me what I need to say - and help me practice exactly the right intonation (as opposed to tones!) to make it sound right.

Right now my reading is... not of the 'can't put it down' variety.  Business Chinese and CS4 for Digital Photographers.  Useful, but not take to bed stuff.

I'm reading an interesting book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Basically, it's about all the intangible x-factors that make a person succesful, and it's pretty thought provoking. He used numerous examples, including Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart. I have so far learned that unless you were born between January and March, you have no chance of making it in the NHL, why the most successful corperate lawyers in America are jews born between 1934 and 1935, and why you can have an IQ of over 200 and still spend your life working menial, low paying jobs.

I just finished Nineteen Eighty-Four...That book just get more and more creepy every time I read it. I think contrasting that book with Brave New World is going to be fun, as the two societies in the novels are so extremely different and yet riddled with similarities.
Time to get busy with Catch-22, followed by Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick...I am enjoying my vacation immensely

I'm reading an interesting book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Basically, it's about all the intangible x-factors that make a person succesful, and it's pretty thought provoking. He used numerous examples, including Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart. I have so far learned that unless you were born between January and March, you have no chance of making it in the NHL, why the most successful corperate lawyers in America are jews born between 1934 and 1935, and why you can have an IQ of over 200 and still spend your life working menial, low paying jobs.

Great book. All of Gladwell's writing is interesting.

I just finished Nineteen Eighty-Four...That book just get more and more creepy every time I read it. I think contrasting that book with Brave New World is going to be fun, as the two societies in the novels are so extremely different and yet riddled with similarities.
Time to get busy with Catch-22, followed by Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick...I am enjoying my vacation immensely

Great choices!  Catch-22 is a classic.  Which Philip K. Dick" novel will you be reading?  I just finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy which will gave me chills followed by nightmares.  Next up is "Let the Great World Spin".

JD Salinger died 

Great choices!  Catch-22 is a classic.  Which Philip K. Dick" novel will you be reading?  I just finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy which will gave me chills followed by nightmares.  Next up is "Let the Great World Spin".

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep...I have been downloading almost all his works these days...Been toying with the idea of a sci-fi course in the Fall Term. Just watched the movie adaptation of A Scanner Darkly...good one, but I preferred the book.