After reading Peter Hessler's first book,
River Town, I knew I needed to read his second when it came out.
Oracle Bones is also set in China and somewhat of a memoir.
River Town featured Hessler's years as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Oracle Bones recounts some of Hessler's experiences back in China as a journalist. Parts of the books are about the people he meets, his communications with his former students, and his travels in China. Other parts are about his research into the people researching the Oracle Bones, which displayed some of the earliest writing in China. Definitely worth a read.
posted by kristin at 2:08 PM
I've had Thomas Disch's
Camp Concentration for long enough that I have no recollection of buying it. It's science fiction of the paranoia and intelligence increase through drugs fashion. Not bad, but had it been longer I might not have finished.
posted by kristin at 2:05 PM
Paul Auster's
Book of Illusions is a book I think I'll want to re-read. It's a sad book in many ways, but has moments of joy as well.
posted by kristin at 1:52 PM
I'd tried reading Robert Rankin's
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse one other time, but hadn't gotten very far. This time I enjoyed it. The contrast between this book and the classic nursery rhymes, as I read them last week for my class on children's literature, made this an even more entertaining read. (Mother Goose running a whorehouse, for example).
posted by kristin at 1:49 PM
I'd picked up
The Best American Travel Writing 2005 after noticing that the authors included Simon Winchester, William Least Heat Moon, and Peter Hessler. Overall I enjoyed reading the essays, though not all of them overwhelmed me. I think I'll look for the collections from other years.
posted by kristin at 1:46 PM
Recently I read a bunch more picture books for class. I've added them to my list again so I'll remember them, but feel a bit guilty because that means that my counter knows about them as well.
The other day I read Guy Delisle's
Pyongyang, a graphic memoir of his months spent in North Korea. As with his
Shenzhen, it was interesting reading.
Last night I finished
Cities, edited by Peter Crowther. It contained novellas by China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, Paul di Filippo and Geoff Ryman. I'd read the Mieville and di Filippo works before, but happily re-read them. The Moorcock story was a Jerry Cornelius story which I just didn't understand, even though I read
The Cornelius Chronicles eons ago. The Geoff Ryman story was a story of old age gone awry. It made me want to read more of his work.
posted by kristin at 8:30 AM 
