Hai from Shanghai
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Showing posts tagged novels
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”It was hard, really, to put any kind of definite face on China. The old Soviet Union, with its squat, warty leaders banging their shoes on the U.N. podium and threatening thermonuclear extinction, all those vodka-swollen, porcine faces squinting from under sable hats atop Lenin’s Tomb as nuclear missiles rolled by like floats in a parade from hell — those Commies at least looked scary. But on the rare occasion when the nine members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the men who ruled 1.3 billion people — one-fifth of the world’s population — lined up for a group photo, they looked like a delegation of identical, overpaid dentists.
From They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, by Christopher Buckley, which was reviewed in the Times last Friday. Looking forward to reading this one!
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Finally finished Waiting, by Ha Jin.
The title is apt. It’s basically 300+ pages of a man and woman chastely waiting for the man to extricate himself from a loveless marriage so that they can marry. More thrilling plots have been devised, but I’d recommend it for readers who revel in detailed observations and sensory language. I suspect it won the National Book Award largely for just those qualities — details about daily life in 1960s - ’80s China must have seemed especially novel (as it were) in 1999, when the book was published.
Likes
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CYBERDOG
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SHANGHAI’S GANGNAM GRANNIES
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HOW MY ST PATRICK'S DAY ENDED
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Huskies look pretty pumped to be taking part in a training session at Feshiebridge, in Aviemore,...
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WALKING PAST THAT CD HAWKER ON DONGHU LU WHO'S ALWAYS PLAYING 'THE ROSE'
