A few recent reads

It has been so loooooog since I updated my reading list. While, below is a list of what I remember to have read between my last post and now.

(1)   Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher

More of a children’s book but it is so gripping that I was tempted to stay on the pages till finish. It tells the “behind the scenes” stories of One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights. There are stories inside the story where the queen ran out of stories to tell and had to “smuggle” her helpers out of the palace to search for new ones, only to be suspected by the evil mother of the King (Sultan).
 
(2)   How to Shop for Free by Kathy Spencer.

Lured by the illusion of a better shopper, if not smarter,  I started this random read picked from our local library but didn’t get to finish. That means I am still shopping with money straight out of my own pocket.
 
(3)   Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President by Eli Saslow. 

Ten letters each night will be presented in a special folder to president Obama, to which he will also write personal replies. Each letter in this book has a personal and historical story behind it: be it health care, Afghan war, oil spill, education, or the bleak job market.
 
(4)   Lost on Planet China: One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost. 

Many foreigners have written many books on China but Troost is among the insightful and the funny ones. The book is not merely about his personal travels and encounters but is smartly embedded in careful research through his travels across China, from the booming coastal showcase cities to the less trodden west regions, all told with humor and accuracy.
 
(5)   Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows.

It is not always easy to explain to non-Chinese learners the linguistic rules and exceptions of Mandarin language. But with a bit of help from this book, the job of explanation, if needed, would be much easier. However, don’t mistake this to be a boring read for it is everything but a bore.
 
(6)   Mr. China: An Adventurous Young Man Collides with a Vast Nation on the Brink of Capitalism by Tim Clissold.

Tim is truly a China hand whether politically, culturally or socially. Of course, a China hand does not necessarily equal to a Chinese but this Clissold is quite close as evidenced in his tales on the business dealings with China’s state-run companies in the joint-venture era in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Tim and his team poured 400 million Wall Street dollars into China eager to reap the proceeds but only to be drawn into many “battles” with the Chinese partners, with some battles narrowly won and some bitterly lost.
 
(7)   Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan by Fariba Nawa.
 
Drugs are condemnable. We all learned that and teach our children to stay away from them. In this book recently published in Nov, 2011, this America-raised Afghan journalist showed us the other side of the story, where opium planting was the only way of sustenance for the poorest farmers hidden in the Afghan mountains and controlled by the warlords. But it is a balanced story where efforts are made to curtail the opium epidemic by both the international organizations and the local people. Amidst a corrupt and weak government, enmity among warlords and people’s thirst and hunger for the basic necessities to survive, Fariba depicted an Afghan that we do not often see in the media and revealed additionally her own stories that forever bonds her to her emotional homeland.