What are you reading?

[skylee]

I am reading "The girl who kicked the hornet's nest". I have finished about 1/4 of it and hope to finish it asap so I can move on to something else.

Re IQ84, I have bought parts 1 and 2 in Beijing (because they were so inexpensive). Does anyone know if there is a part 3 coming?

[skylee]

Re 大江大海一九四九, which was mentioned in posts #484-486 and #492. I have posted a link to a very good pdf version on another thread.Those who are interested could take a look.

[Lu]

Just finished 'Socialism is great!'. The author/main character is very likable, with her hard work and her quirks and her persevering in going her own way, that made it a fun read. The writing is not particularly good, though (having just read What is the What my standards for (auto)biographical literature have gone way up. Turns out a heartbreaking story about one brave hero can be real literature, so why settle for less). Let's hope Zhang Lijia keeps pursuing her dreams, but not write any more books.

[feihong]

Just finished 饥饿游戏 yesterday. I thought it was OK, but not exactly a page-turner since the action doesn't actually start until the very last chapter (which ends on a cliffhanger). I believe the book is written for teenagers, so it was easier than some adult novels but not particularly easy for me. I probably added close to 200 new characters to my Anki deck.

[Lu]

Recently finished 'The Rape of Nanking'. What an awful, awful book. Well-written though, well-researched (as far as I can tell). I was surprised that it was written so recently (1996), I always thought it was from the 1960s or somewhere around then, probably because of the way Nanjing is spelled in the title.

[Kenny同志]

I’ve been reading The Autobiography of Mark Twain and am half way through it. It doesn’t interest me very much, though I admit Mark’s linguistically gifted. Overall, it’s not a bad book.

[abcdefg]

I’m about halfway through “Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China” by Leslie Chang. It gives a nonjudgmental look into the lives and minds of the young, mostly female, migrant workers in Dongguan. A good read because it doesn’t try to sell a particular point of view or convince the reader of some pre-formed conclusion.

It turns out the author is married to Peter Hessler, who I also like very much from his excellent book, “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze.”

It’s mentioned in a previous post in this thread (#201967 -- I think by @Lu.) The book is in English, though I did pick up a few new words, like the name for multi-level marketing schemes (穿销 = chuánxiāo) and 狂离 (kuánglí) which is a term the girls used for quitting your job without giving notice or collecting back pay ("crazy departure.")

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Edit: I typed a wrong character for MLM. Should be 传销。Thanks @feihong.

[skylee]

I have finished "The girl who kicked the hornet's nest" and have started to read "The Historian".

[skylee]

I read "The Princess De Montpensier" last night because I was interested in the film. It is a short story that can be finished in an hour or two (a nice alternative to 700-page best sellers). The story can be found on gutenberg.org.

I have gone back to reading the Historian.

PS - This is my 9000th post.

[bande]

I've read a few books, but unfortunately i've been lazy and haven't posted. I recently finished Your East Land My West Land by wang lixiong. Hopefully, by avoiding the chinese characters for it, this post will avoid the great firewall. It was a mammoth read, and it does have flaws since it's basically three works put together. Still, it's probably the only chinese perspective of its kind on Xin Jiang, so it's well worth reading just for that. Also, I enjoy reading his style of writing. Compared with other modern writers, his style just seems clearer. After the good impression of reading this work, I also purchased his books on Tibet including the one with Wooser. It was a bit of a depressing read though, so I'm distracting myself with a few other reads before then. Also, the book is banned in China, and so the only print editions are in traditional characters, so it's a slight pain if you're used to reading simplified. The next book I've finished is 影响力 by 罗伯特西奥迪尼。As you probably guessed by the author's name, this book was a chinese translation of the american book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. I enjoyed reading the book in english, so I was happy to come across the book in chinese. There's some minor censorship, but it hardly detracts from the book as a whole. The book details psychological strategies that can be used to get us to do what our rational selves don't want to do and how to defend against those strategies. The final book that I recently finished is 管理新思维 ，which is a translation of the E myth manager one of the popular american small business books. It's a useful source of business vocabulary.

[gougou]

There's some minor censorship,

Interesting, could you give a few examples?

[hbuchtel]

《黄龙祥看针灸》or "Acupuncture: Harmonization in the Music of Life" by Huang Long-xiang

Filled with short exploratory articles about acupuncture. The author uses many analogies to explain acupoints and channels, and clears up some common misunderstandings about the origins of acupuncture/moxibustion. It seems a lot of the content was inspired by the struggles of standardizing acupoint locations (for WHO, I believe...).

There are no case histories given and it is short on clinical content generally, but the author does explain his use of different palpable arteries to determine the choice of acupoints - something I haven't seen anywhere else.

[bande]

In response to the censorship question, I guess I should make the point that I'm misunderstanding the translation. While I don't have the english version at my current address, the author Cialdini was using the story of POW's during the Korean War to illustrate the power of continuity. In putonghua the section was titled 承诺和一致. The story involved American POW's who were being held in Chinese camps. As opposed to the Korean camps, the Chinese camps used the strategy of having the POW's of writing written statements of why their behavior was bad. Some of the POW's may have started out just writing the statements because it would get them preferential treatment, but then they had the affect of changing viewpoints about the war, happiness, and general impressions of American society. Anyway, my memory of the English text is a little hazy and I won't be able to reread it till the holidays. Anyway, in the translation the conflict was between A国 and B国 with the third party running the successful camps being C国. I've seen this convention before in a spy series. So I was under the general impression that the average reader probably couldn't figure out who the three countries were, but may this is a common enough convention that most people can crack the code.

[bhchao]

I am reading Monsoon by Robert Kaplan. Kaplan, correspondent from The Atlantic, writes about the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean countries of Southeast Asia, and the influence of China in the region.

Kaplan discusses why it is important for the US to pursue engagement with countries such as Burma, the most strategic country vis-a-vis China where an oil pipeline is being built into Yunnan.

The book discusses how Vietnam, India, Thailand, and Indonesia desire the US to play a greater role in the region to counter China's influence.

What's interesting is the case of Burma. The book argues that democracy won't solve Burma's problems overnight because of the ethnic complexity inside the country. A decentralized system that reconciles and draws the participation of all ethnic tribes in Burma, with a high degree of autonomy for each ethnic state, is necessary for the country to thrive. The book says the US should start engaging the military junta in Burma, because in the event of a collapse, there is no authority in place to prevent ethnic strife.

[semantic nuance]

Just finished Jean-Louis Fournier's Où on va, papa in Chinese version 爸爸我們去哪裡? It doesn't have any platitudes. He portrays his story of two sons different from the so-called 'normal' kids with a self-mocking attitude. I kind of like his way of dealing with overwhelming pains that go no where. He spares any advice on the difficult situations. I especially respect his honesty towards life with his 2 boys.

[imron]

Am about 40 pages in to《圈子圈套》 by 王强, which I figure would make a good Book of the Month for anyone who's interested.

It's all about office intrigue and politics among high-tech companies in Beijing (and other parts of China).

Chock full of fun so far.

[skylee]

I am reading the Southern Vampire Mysteries series. It's good fun.

[Lu]

Reading Jonathan Spence's 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace', interestingly published in 1981. Am seeing a lot of parallels with the current situation.

[bande]

I've finished three books that may be off interest to others. The first is 如何认识上万人 不要by 黄纯灿. This book is a fairly unremarkable member of the self-help genre. Any one who's read Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, etc will see similarities in content. Still, it's not translated, so I was interested to read such a work from a mainland author, and the language itself wasn't too difficult. The second book is 杜拉克谈经理人的未来挑战, which is the taiwanese translation of Peter Drucker's Managing in a time of great change. It wasn't a bad read for a management book. The prose wasn't too difficult and it helped reinforce some business vocabulary. The third book is 责任与担当，杜拉克谈专业经理人。This book is surprise a translation of Drucker' s on the Profession of Management. It's also a pretty simple read, and helps reinforce business vocabulary.

[gato]

Reading a history of the Chinese Communist Party:

http://www.aisixiang.com/data/16343.html

《中国共产革命七十年》 by 陈永发