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
May 3, 2007 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Fiction and Literature
Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (Fiction)
Since I mostly enjoyed The Undomestic Goddess, one of Kinsella’s standalone novels, I thought I’d try this. I made the effort for the first hundred pages or so, but then I pretty much gave up. I wasn’t impressed with Becky, and I didn’t find her particularly interesting or entertaining. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book this most reminds me of is Bridget Jones’s Diary, which I didn’t like much either. I don’t know, maybe chick lit just isn’t my thing.
Tags: DNF, Sophie Kinsella
January 25, 2007 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Children's Literature, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Golden Witchbreen by Mary Gentle
The distant world of Orthe is littered with the spectacular remnants of its once great civilisation. Now the Ortheans have deliberately turned away from the technology which nearly destroyed them - and from anything that links them with their past.
To Orthe comes Lynne de Lisle Christie, envoy from Earth. Her assignment: win the confidence of the planet’s leaders. All too quickly, however, she finds herself at the centre of a conflict which threatens to explode into war - and which puts her own life in peril.
I read about 100 pages, but I just wasn’t all that interested in the story or the characters. The book has an interesting premise, and a very nice first-person narratorial voice, so I may pick it up again someday.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason! Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams.
Someone at the 50bc mentioned this in a thread about children’s fiction. It sounded like the kind of charmingly oddball, Lewis Carroll-ish kind of book that would appeal to me, so I put it on hold at the library. After nine chapters, I just wasn’t very interested in reading more. I can see why people like it so much, but since it’s not doing anything for me, I’m taking it back to the library. I probably won’t pick this up again.
Tags: DNF, Mary Gentle, Norton Juster
January 23, 2007 at 1:36 am · Filed under Books Etc
My final list for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge:
- May: Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World » Jack Weatherford
- June: Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey » Alison Wearing
- July: Korea: A Walk through the Land of Miracles » Simon Winchester
- August: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World » Margaret MacMillan
- September: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage » Alfred Lansing
Tags: Book Lists, DNF
January 22, 2007 at 6:29 pm · Filed under Books Etc
I’ve decided to join the 2007 TBR Challenge, since I’ve got so many that have been waiting on my shelves for a very long time. So, here’s my list (books I or my roommate own are in bold):
- The Tiger Claw » Shauna Singh Baldwin
- He Drown She in the Sea » Shani Mootoo
- Anna Karenina » Leo Tolstoy
- London » Edward Rutherfurd
- Califia’s Daughters » Leigh Richards
- A Passage to India » E.M. Forster
- Life of Pi » Yann Martel
- A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali » Guy Courtemanche
- The Lyre of Orpheus » Robertson Davies
- Post Captain » Patrick O’Brian
- Bodily Harm » Margaret Atwood
- The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana » Umberto Eco
These are all books I’ve been meaning to read for more than six months, and I’ll read one of them every month to complete the challenge.
Alternate/extra credit books:
- Wicked » Gregory Maguire
- American Gods » Neil Gaiman
- Wyrd Sisters » Terry Pratchett
- Fall On Your Knees » Ann-Marie MacDonald
- The Piano Man’s Daughter » Timothy Findley
- Middlemarch / Silas Marner » George Eliot
- The River Midnight » Lilian Nattel
- Pamela » Samuel Richardson
- The Count of Monte Cristo » Alexandre Dumas
- The Mask of Apollo » Mary Renault
- The Spirit Ring / Dreamweaver’s Dilemma » Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Opium Clerk / The Miniaturist » Kunal Basu
Tags: Book Lists, DNF
