A lot of these books I will give away during the year so I'm keeping this record for myself.
Chinese Lessons, by John Pomfret. This is the best book I have read so far. Especially moving because it is about people of my generation who experienced life under the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and now Reform and Opening. "Washington Post reporter John Pomfret's . . . Chinese Lessons is a rich, first-hand account of modern Chinese history as it was lived and experienced by five of the author's 1981 classmates at Nanjing University. Pomfret was among the first generation of American college students to enroll in exchange programs with Chinese universities in the early 1980s; the New York native grew up to become The Post's Beijing bureau chief and one of the very best reporters covering China throughout the dynamic 1990s, with his writings emerging as the standard by which many of his peers judged their own work. In his hands, the journey of his classmates becomes not just an entertaining and precisely rendered account of a changing China in which consumers' aspirations ratcheted up from bicycles and wrist watches to Audis and flip-phones; it also becomes a splendid human narrative of how fragile souls weather barbaric cruelty, social shifts and the rewiring of a nation." From The Washington Post. (Amazon purchase)
Death of a Red Heroine, by Qui Xiaolong. Set in Shanghai in 1990, "this political mystery offers a peek into the tightly sealed, often crooked world of post-Tiananmen Square China. Chen Cao, a poet and T.S. Eliot translator bureaucratically assigned to be chief inspector, has to investigate the murder of Guan Hongying, a young woman celebrated as a National Model Worker, but who kept her personal life strictly and mysteriously confidential." Peppered with translations of classical Chinese poetry, it is a very different sort of crime novel. Good, somewhat slow and overlong but worth reading. This is the first in a series following the same character. The author is a translator and teaches Chinese literature at Washington University in St. Louis. (Amazon purchase, recommended by Annie and Larry)
Death of a Red Heroine, by Qui Xiaolong. Set in Shanghai in 1990, "this political mystery offers a peek into the tightly sealed, often crooked world of post-Tiananmen Square China. Chen Cao, a poet and T.S. Eliot translator bureaucratically assigned to be chief inspector, has to investigate the murder of Guan Hongying, a young woman celebrated as a National Model Worker, but who kept her personal life strictly and mysteriously confidential." Peppered with translations of classical Chinese poetry, it is a very different sort of crime novel. Good, somewhat slow and overlong but worth reading. This is the first in a series following the same character. The author is a translator and teaches Chinese literature at Washington University in St. Louis. (Amazon purchase, recommended by Annie and Larry)
The Opposite of Fate, by Amy Tan. A sort-of memoir, made up of a collection of essays and other pieces that span her literary career, some (but not all) previously published in periodicals. Some are intensely personal, such as the eulogy she delivered at her editor's funeral. Funny, captivating and candid. I really enjoyed it. (purchased in Nanjing)
Up High in the Trees, by Kiara Brinkman. This is a wonderful and inventive story told in the "deeply affecting voice" of an eight-year-old boy who probably has autism or Asperger's syndrome, although never stated, and whose mother was recently killed in an auto accident. In some ways, it is a heart-breaking (tho' very sweet) story but it is "saved from mawkishness by an arresting balance of delicacy and resiliency." I read it practically in one sitting. (Gift from Janet B)
The American Boy, by Andrew Taylor. A well-loved and prolific British crime author changes course and writes an historical novel of Regency England during the time that Edgar Allen Poe was a student at an English boarding school (1819-1820). "Madness, murder, misapplied money and macabre marriages are interspersed with coffins, corpses and cancelled codicils . . . an enjoyable and well-constructed puzzle." A great read. "Escapism bliss." (purchased in Nanjing)
The Palace Thief, by Ethan Canin. Four "tales . . . capture people at crucial moments, as they struggle to understand the strange, surprising turns their lives have taken." Good stories, if a little bleak. (loan from Tara)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The first book I have read by Marquez. Published when he was nearly 80 years old. A tender story about the sad life of an "unnamed, only slightly talented Colombian journalist and teacher, never married, never in love, living in the crumbling family manse" but whose life is redeemed during the course of his 90th year.(loan from Tara)
When We Were Bad, by Charlotte Mendelson. A great story about a brilliant and accomplished London rabbi, her writer husband and their four adult children, the oldest of which leaves his bride at the altar to run off with the officiating rabbi's wife. The Boston Globe said, "a witty, insightful, elegantly written novel about family....[Mendelson is] a wonderful writer, economical, inventive, and, when appropriate, lyrical." However, there was something a little unsatisfying at the end. (purchased at The Red Wheelbarrow, Paris)
Twopence to Cross the Mersey, by Helen Forrester. The first volume of the author's poignant yet inspirational poverty-striken childhood in Liverpool during the 1930s. I definitely want to read the others: Liverpool Miss, By the Waters of Liverpool, and Lime Street at Two. (purchased at The Red Wheelbarrow, Paris)
Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. A lyrical yet morally complex novel by a New Zealand writer. Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. "A novel that . . . affirms the acts of reading and writing as precious pursuits, as acts of survival, escape, renewal." I loved it. And want to read Great Expectations again! (purchased at The Red Wheelbarrow, Paris)
Hand to Mouth, by Paul Auster (author of The New York Trilogy, among others). An interesting memoir about Auster's early years as a young, struggling writer. Starts out OK but falls flat. I had to make myself finish it.
The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes. Another memoir by a best-selling author that I had to make myself finish. Homes was adopted as a newborn infant. This book is an account of what happened, thirty years later, when her birth parents came looking for her. The first part of the book was good (and had been previously published as an article in The New Yorker) but then it turns into an unsatisfying digression, including 15 pages of questions for a possible deposition of her biological father (who asked her to take a DNA test but then wouldn't give her a copy of the results) with no information about the resolution of the dispute. By the end of the book, I thoroughly disliked the author.
What I am reading now: The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck.
Next up: Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian
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