Archive for Travel Diary
June 3, 2007 at 10:10 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Memoir, Travel Diary
Red China Blues by Jan Wong (Memoir, Travel Diary)
When I knew I was going to be dog-sitting (and house-sitting) for my aunt this week in St. Catharines, I asked another aunt to collect any good world lit she had lying around and drop it off at the house for me so I’d have something to do this week. This book was one of them.
I first heard about Red China Blues at a sleepover, where my (Chinese) best friend and I got into an argument with our (white) friend about whether the book was a fair treatment of communism in general, or of the communist regime in China. Since we were only fourteen and none of the three of us had ever read the book, and didn’t know much about communism that we hadn’t learned from our respective parents, I was prepared to give the book a try even though at the time I wasn’t much impressed with the third-hand summary we got from our friend.
This time, though, my fourteen-year-old instincts were right on the money in recognizing a book that would only get on my nerves. Jan Wong is a Chinese-Canadian journalist, who has written for the Globe & Mail, Canada’s premier national newspaper. She was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, and was a Maoist when she first visited China in the early 70’s. She was disillusioned after witnessing some of the horrors of life under the communist government, including the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.
I didn’t get very far into Red China Blues, so I don’t want to dismiss it as worthless. I’m even interested in reading about her experiences, but I just don’t trust her as a narrator. It’s hard to explain why—something about the self-absorbtion of her account, about the way she’s so insistent about how foolish and misguided she was to be a Maoist, how deceived the world was about China in those days. Which may be true, but—and how can I put this delicately…? Get over it. I’m sort of interested in whether the book gets any better, but not enough to irritate myself by continuing with it when I have so many other great books to read this week. I may pick it up again some rainy day—it is very readable.
Tags: DNF
June 3, 2007 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Memoir, Travel Diary, World Literature
48. Sky Burial by Xinran (Travel Diary, Memoir) 161 p.
World Lit Challenge: Tibet
I’ve wanted to read this ever since I realized, not all that long ago, that the author of The Good Women of China had written another book. Sky Burial definitely lived up to my expectations.
In 1994, Xinran travels from Nanjing, where she works as a journalist, to Suzhou, in hopes of meeting a woman she has been told has a story she might be interested in hearing. She spends two days listening to Shu Wen, a Chinese woman who left for Tibet in 1958, at the age of 26, hoping to find her husband Wang Kejun, who was reported dead by the Liberation Army, for whom he worked as a doctor. She doesn’t return to China until 1994.
Books read: 48/50
Pages read: 13,556/25,000
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, World Lit Challenge, Xinran
January 20, 2007 at 4:02 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Fiction and Literature, Travel Diary
22. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (Fiction)
World Lit Challenge: International
From the inside flap:
Was there ever a book with so much sheer fun as this story of the wager of Phileas Fogg at the London Reform club and his mad flight around the globe? Who can forget the plight of Passepartout, the valet extraordinaire, who forgot to turn off the gas jet in his room and for eighty days, or 115,200 minutes, could do nothing about it but worry? Or the implacable Detective Fix, who daily expected the warrant for Mr. Fogg’s arrest to catch up with him, only to be disappointed each succeeding day? Who can forget the ride on the elephant or the escape from the Indians or the rescuer of the beautiful maiden or the hundred and one breathless incidents that make up this story?
When it was first published as a magazine serial, it is said that idlers in Paris cafés placed their biggest bets on the outcome of Mr. Fogg’s fabulous journey and that foreign correspondents cabled from France the latest news about the Fogg entourage as each new chapter of the story was released The book has long been known as one of the most delightful tales between covers.
Phileas Fogg has to be one of the most unusual adventurers the mind of a writer has ever produced.
Around the World in Eighty Days is one of those fantastic adventure stories that don’t seem to be written anymore. I didn’t expect to enjoy this book nearly as much as I did, but I can see how Jules Verne earned his reputation as an author, and how he came to be the second most-translated author (after Agatha Christie.) Everyone should read this book, just because it’s so much fun.
Perhaps later this year I’ll try one of his novels in the original French—I could definitely use the practise.
Books read: 22/50
Pages read: 5,400/15,000
World Lit Challenge: 1/50
X-posted here.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Jules Verne, World Lit Challenge
January 6, 2006 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Travel Diary
Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey
I heard about this book on CBC radio, in an interview with the author, Peter Carey, and I’ve wanted to read it ever since. I found a copy of it at Zoinks, a used bookstore I just discovered (on Bloor Street, between Christie and Ossington, for other Toronto residents.)
It’s non-fiction, for a change: a travel diary about Carey’s trip to Japan with his twelve-year-old son Charley. It’s short, but engagingly written. Carey promises his son that they won’t go looking for the “Real Japan” - things like temples, museums, and tea ceremonies - but he spends a lot of the trip trying to find hidden cultural and historical meaning Japanese pop culture. But as everyone he interviews keeps telling him, he’s wrong about Japan.
There’s a pretty good review of the book in the Christian Science Monitor:
As father and son return to New York, they seem to have achieved one of Peter’s goals, a better rapport with his son. But Peter’s own conclusion that, for all its modernity, Japan remains inaccessible to outsiders, sounds like a tired cliché.
The saving grace of his story is that it is not shared by Charley.
Cross-cultural connections by Takashi Oka, Christian Science Monitor.
I agree with the reviewer for the most part, but I don’t think that Carey is saying what he thinks he is. It seemed to me that Carey’s conclusions about the impenetrability of Japanese culture had more to do with his own fixation on finding the “real meaning” behind anime and manga, rather than any general inaccessibility to Westerners.
I gave the book a B+. It would have been more, but it felt a bit short to me, even though I enjoyed it a lot. I think the book might have been better if Carey had given a more complete account of their whole trip, rather than focusing on just a very few experiences. The things he had to say about anime and manga were really interesting, though. Definitely a worthwhile read.
Tags: Peter Carey
