Change is in the air... colder nights, the leaves are turning, I'm making soups instead of salads, and I'm drinking more tea than ice water. Ahhh - I LOVE fall.
I'm also getting ready to go on a trip to China... a two week tour with a group from the Sierra Club, and my mom. So I'm feeling the need to read appropriate material to get me informed and in the mood for the trip.
Based on a colleague's recommendation, I'm picking up Rob Giffords book "China Road" - Gifford was an NPR correspondant in China for many years, and I loved his reports, so I'm sure the book will be good. But I'm also in the mood for literature. Anybody read a good book of Chinese fiction they'd recommend. Not Chinese-American, mind you - I've read, and thoroughly enjoyed, a number of such books, but I'm looking for something written by someone living in China. Anyone?
Oh, and what are you reading right now? All reviews and recommendations welcome!
Happy Fall,
Marianne
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Comments: 13
It's ok. It's the first book in this series, but she writes it as though there should of been a previous book. There's a lot of inside jokes that are hard to understand. Eventually she let's you in on the "inside" stuff, but it's usually later when it doesn't even matter anymore. I'm not sure if I want to give up on it, or just finish to see what happens.
I see by a google search that there was a film made from it. Here is a web link: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/china/daisijie.htm
Now I must investigate more about the film.
I'm reading (on and off) King Lear in anticipation of seeing the Royal Shakespeare production at the Guthrie next weekend. Our book club is reading Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut...which I find an interesting juxtaposition in style to Shakespeare. To say the least!
Lynn M., if you write a book review about "Hidden Children of the Holocaust" - or a Gather article about the book subject - please let us know here.
Sounds like Mead's style takes some getting used to, Hollie C. I don't know anything about the series, are there a lot of books or is it a trilogy?
Finally, to answer your question Marianne I completed "Into the Wild" before cracking open and faithfully reading "On the Road" (just finished that and will write more about it later). Right now I have a few books in the wings: "Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave" edited by Ellen Sussman and "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt. Family / out-loud reading is "Mr. Popper's Penguins" which is quite funny in that pre-war way.
much time to read with a 9 month old.
Pa Chin, according to the Introduction in this edition, was an influential anarchist in China.
"Drawn largely from Pa Chin's own experience, FAMILY is the story of the Kao family compound, consisting of four generations plus servants. It is essentially a picture of the conflict between old China and the new tide rising to destroy it, as manifested in the daily lives of the Kao family, and particularly the three young Kao brothers. Here we see situations which, unique as they are to the time and place of this novel, recall many circumstances of today's world: the conflict between generations and classes, ill-fated love affairs, students' political activities, and the struggle for the liberation of women.
The complex passions aroused in FAMILY and in the reader are an indication of the universality of human experience. This novel illustrates once again the effectiveness of fiction as a vehicle for translating the experience of one culture to another very different one." (from the back of cover of my paperpack copy of FAMILY).
In the poem, "The Mask of Anarchy," English poet Percy Bysshe Shelly wrote: "VIII. Last came Anarchy: he rode / On a white horse, splashed with blood; / He was pale even to the lips, / Like Death in the Apocalypse. / IX. And he wore a kingly crown; / And in his grasp a sceptre shone; / On his brow this mark I saw-- / "I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!" / X. With a pace stately and fast, / Over English land he passed, / Trampling to a mire of blood / The adoring multitude. / " 1819 (1832). (found in ENGLISH ROMANTIC WRITERS, David Perkins, Editor. Copyright 1967. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., page 1020).
I have included this passage from, "The Mask of Anarchy," because I believe it is a poem written against anarchism. I understand the poet to be saying that doing away with governments and systems results in a more powerful imposition of chaos and violence.
Ken Burns' documentary THE WAR held my interest and imagination the past couple of weeks. While I type this sentence, I am looking at a photograph of a woman, a survivor of a World War II concentration camp. I took the photograph of her on a Sunday morning in the early 1990's. She spoke to a Unitarian fellowship that day about what her life was like during World War II when she was imprisoned for being a Jew.
THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK. William Bradford Huie. Copyright 1954. Signet Books. The New American Library, Inc.
"On a bleak January morning in 1945, Private Eddie D. Slovik, 36896415, Company G, 109th Infantry, 28th Division, United States Army, was bound to a post and shot to death . . . by a firing squad of twelve men from his own regiment. The charge for which Private Slovik paid the supreme penalty: desertion in the face of the enemy. Of the 10,000,000 who were inducted into the U.S. Army in World War II, 2,864 were tried by general court martial for this offense; 49 were sentenced to death. One was executed--Private Eddie D. Slovik. This is his story . . . the tragic story of a man crushed in the conflict between fear and duty." (from the back cover of my paperback copy of THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK).
WOMEN, A BOOK FOR MEN. James Wagenvoord, Editor. Peyton Bailey, Mary Cantwell, Linda Bird Francke, Douglas Gasner, Amy Gross, Janice Harayda, Writers. Copyright 1979. Avon Books.
I am already finding this book helpful, and I am pleasantly surprised how readable it is.
I'm reading The Most Democratic Branch by Jeffrey Rosen about our judicial branch. I recently finished a book called Memories of an Eastern Sky by Andy Zhang which is a novel based on his growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. It is a moving and lovely story. He lives in America now but the book takes place in China. Family sounds good too!
As far as Chinese lit, I recommend "The Garlic Ballads" by Mo Yan. It's on the depressing side, and there's some disturbing imagery, but it's beautifully written and quite engaging.