Just finising Bill Bryson, “I’m a stranger here myself”
Liking it muchly much
Dune: House Harkonnen
Ian Mcewan: Atonement
Italo Calvino: If on a winters night a traveller…
David Kerr: Formosa Betrayed
Where is the library, I’m just about done with all but Formosa betrayed.
Chou
Isn’t Formosa Betrayed out of print? That’s what they told me in Eslite once, so I’ve been meaning to print out Cranky’s online version. Is there an alternative?
I’m reading a digital version of Formosa Betrayed. Difficult to find a printed version here. Send me a PM with an email address and I will send it along.
Chou
I am racing through several rereads of fascinating books by V.S. Naipaul:
A Bend in the River
A Turn in the South
Among the Believers
An Essay on Argentina
Also 100 Years of Solitude (just as good with repeated reads)
Jude the Obscure
The still hilarious Vanity Fair (Thackeray not the magazine)
When I Whistle (Shusako Endo) A book I first read at Kyoto U in Japan 17 years ago (and in English) but still very moving.
And for lighter reading, Memoirs of a Geisha (reread at airport) and could not put it down for the third time. The story really sucks you into the competition among all these women. A real page turner.
Okay that’s all.
Curious about Platform. That’s not the book about the refugees from Bangladesh or some such place storming the shores of the Riviera is it? where the officialdom and people have to face down their propensity to be politically correct to question whether to nuke the boats?
It’s in-print and it’s George Kerr.
amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ … 41-4397560[/quote]
Uh, right… make that George. I also just finished “The Last American Aristocrat” The story of David K.E. Bruce. Likely that my confusion sprung from there.
Chou
Finishing " The Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearings.
One of the first “back to the land” books. The Nearings purchased land in 1932 in vermont and lived a self-sufficent sustainable life on a maple sugar farm until they moved to Maine in 1952 and started all over again. Facinating look at the reasons for self-sufficency and sustainable living.
About to start “Shanghai” the first of Christopher New’s China trilogy. My hubby says it is GREAT. I have ordered the other 2 for him as belated fathers day gifts.
Just started The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury. As it says in the blurb: “Makes Clockwork Orange look like a nice story about Beethoven.” Wild stuff.
I thought Clockwork Orange was about Beethoven…
“No time for the in and out love, just here to read the meter.” 
Fred, gotta agree with you on Naipaul’s non-fiction.
I’m still slowly picking through a collection of essays enitled “the writer and the world.” I’m “slowly picking through it” 'cuz I just don’t want it to end. He’s a pretty opiniated guy and he doesn’t mince any words. I’ve never been able to make it through any of his fiction works (don’t know why) and I’ve read most of his non-fiction stuff, but I’m hoping there is more out there that I’m not aware of.
Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys - an all time fave (does re reading count?)
Talk about garbage. Someone was talking about Nobel Literature winners and we started arguing about the worth of Gao Xingjian winning. I said it before and I will say it again: The man only won because he was Chinese. The book sucks. The translation sucks. It won as far as I know from the English translation. This just goes to show how pc the committee has become.
I threw the book across my living room repeatedly last night while I tried to stumble once again through the first few chapters. Pretentious. Sophomoric. Self-absorbed. Mindless. Not Entertaining. Ugh. Anyone with me on this?
All this bullshit like You and Me and We and Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Then I compare it with V.S. Naipaul who had to wait until AFTER Gao to get the prize and I have to say, what a difference what a difference what a difference.
I wrote the headline for TT article when the story of him winning fist ran.
It was something like: Nobel prize no indication of literary talent (but not as blunt of course)
Then there is Chapter 10 to 12 or so when he is traveling with that young woman who sleeps with him! (yeah right) some smoked out wormy piece of shit who thought that he had cancer and then when he didn’t went to find himself. Please please go find yourself, find a good place to hide and then we will come to find you. I promise we will but don’t move until we get there. It may take us a while to find you but we will come looking for you. That’s right just go hide now.
What is this some kind of French Marxist professor (tout l’amour!) bullshit and his little Lolita. “Thank heaven for little girls.” Ooh la la.
Then when he got to his spiritual climb (up the mountain, get it get it) to enlightenment, I thought I would die of boredom. Then when all comes together at the end, it proves what? what? what? All style and no substance and not very good style at that. Reading that book is like reading something a Freshman Frenchman with a writing guide wrote. Hit every chapter and include something from every writing “trick” but the ultimate story is unreadable. Anyone who found that book entertaining please let me know so I can come over and kick your ass from here to that f—ing mountain that would not go away. 
The whole concept of a Nobel committee awarding an international prize for literature is in itself ridiculous. The literature that is evaluated has to be judged based on translations, which automatically biases the reader to base their judgement on the literary traditions of the language into which it has been translated. Judging Chinese literature (or any other country’s literature) based upon the English literary tradition? The whole idea is patently absurd on its face.
I read the English version of Soul Mountain, and I thought it was readable, though it wouldn’t even stick out as one of the better books I’ve read in my life.
Curious if anyone has read the Chinese version? Have any Chinese department students or professors you know even heard of it and what do they think?
If they’re going to insist on this stupid idea of a world prize for literature, then I don’t see much of an alternative other than rotating the prize amongst different languages, each time selecting the best writer of that particular language as determined by literary scholars of that particular language.
The Chinese version (original) was also apparently not very good according to my friends who read it in the original.
The book only sold fewer than 4,000 copies in Taiwan prior to the Nobel Prize.
Often it is difficult to translate Chinese into English (so we are told) yet I read books from Arabic, Turkish, Russian and Japanese constantly that are excellent, entertaining, etc.
I think that much of Chinese literature is hyped almost as much as the history. Say it with me now elementary school students: Tang Dynasty Poets are the best the world has ever had. China has 5,000 years of history. The Great Wall can be seen from outerspace. China has the largest market and the 21st century will belong to China. yawn!
On the other hand, one should be thankful for whatever Chinese literature does exist so that some locals can read more than just business magazines and tabloid newspapers.
Hsiao Dingdong? Oh sorry…that’s Japanese. 