This book is a memoir of an English teacher in China, so a parallel to Peter Hessler is easily made. Mark Salzman’s book could have been the more interesting one, because he lived in China in the early 80s. Both Iron & Silk and River Town consist of loose stories, but Hessler binds them together […]
Like H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald’s work is poetic and full of wonder about the world around us. I’m not a huge bird fan or anything, but this book is about more than birds and nature. It’s a way of looking at the world, of finding magic. And like H is for Hawk, Vesper […]
There’s a timelessness to ancient texts such as the Odyssey and Greek mythology, with the themes and lessons in them still being stimulating even today. Icarus who flies too close to the sun, Odysseus who has to resist temptations, the gift of fire from Prometheus. And Madeline Miller gives a modern spin to this bundle of […]
My dad has all of Robert Goddard’s books and this was my first time reading one. I picked Pale Battalions because it’s highly rated online; because its name sounds like a Fischer Z song; and because when I asked my dad to suggest a Goddard title, he suggested the same one. Plus we’ve been to the […]
It’s the story of Margaret Sun, who was born in Shanghai in 1935 and lived through the madness of the cultural revolution, mainly in Xinjiang — China’s new frontier. And while ordinary people in extraordinary times will have fantastic stories, this isn’t a fantastic book. And I appreciate the positive and stoic attitude held by […]
I’ve just finished learning ‘Mastering Chinese, Listening & Speaking 6’ (会通汉语 – 听说6). It’s an OK language-learning book, on the upside there aren’t as many idioms as the Developing Chinese series (发展汉语). The first chapters are extremely difficult, the last few are just pure propaganda: An American lady who lives in Beijing complimenting how well […]
It’s alright. The beginning is slow and boring, the language so exaggerated that often it’s just cringy. the story doesn’t go anywhere (and when it does, you could see it coming from chapters before), and I almost gave up reading this. But either the author got into a rhythm, or I did, or the story […]
It is a book by Frederick Forsyth, but it is no ‘The Day of the Jackal’. Some parts are lecturing, some parts feel more like a summary rather than fiction, and other parts are so testostorone drenched that it feels like I’m reading a script of a Jason Stratham or Sylvester Stalone movie. That said, […]
This book isn’t easy for readers for who English is a second language (especially the middle part, or the religious ramblings), but 63 years after being published, it still feels like an important and relevant book. Science-fiction nowadays is usually about some rebellious A.I., but here it’s about nuclear warfare and humanity’s inevitable quest for […]
Before moving to Shanghai in 2018, I went through a dozen books about China to prepare myself. Several of those books belonged to the genre of ‘Westerners in China who write a book about their friends’, such as ‘Street of Eternal Happiness’ (Rob Schmitz), ‘Wish Lanterns’ (Alec Ash), and ‘Young China’ (Zak Dychtwald). It’s an […]