jamescat @ 2006-04-27T21:32:00

2006-04-27T13:32:01Z

Well, another entry. And only a year and a half or so later! Huzzah!

Anyway, this is my attempt to actually turn this into something I do regularly, since I need a way to keep my brain both active and locked in a writerly mode. Trying hard to finish the first draft of my first book - well, first serious book, with the prospect of reviews and scholarly comments and everything. For anyone who stumbles across this whom I haven't already blathered onto about it, it's about Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, the 'Mad Baron of Mongolia,' and his Buddhist reign of terror. First draft is due in June, and I'm working pretty much nonstop at the moment trying to pull bits together; it can get a little depressing, being mostly atrocity after atrocity. I think I'm going to write something more cheerful next time. The Faber Book of Kittens, perhaps.

jamescat @ 2005-01-28T21:06:00

2005-01-28T13:32:18Z

Well, I got one of these LiveJournal things. God only knows if I shall ever find the time to post in it much, but what the hey. The spring festival holiday is just starting here in Beijing, and so I have three weeks to do nothing but write, drink, and watch DVDs - no school and the girlfriend's in Hunan; I was faintly thinking of going to Xian to check out the Terracotta warriors, but my health hasn't been great recently and I'm not really certain I can face the joys of a fourteen-hour train ride.

Following the sterling example of jhollaway - for we are veritably hewn from the same block of Lego - I'm going to begin by itemizing the new books I read last month. Half of them I borrowed from a restaurant/library in Sanlitun (or, um, temporarily stole, the darn place being a fifty kwai cab ride away from me and only letting you taking two out at once, which is clearly inadequate for a man of my needs.)

THE JUNGLE IS NEUTRAL, by Spencer Chapman - British officer stays behind in Malaya, scrags innumerable Japanese. Interesting in that the author clearly has a) tremendous personal decency and b) absolutely no problem with killing. Very pro-Chinese and Malay, refers to the Japanese as little yellow apes.

EXALTED: THE FAIR FOLK - Head-bending Rebecca Borgstrom shenanigans, feeding my Exalted addiction. I strongly suspect I will never, ever get to use it in play.

EXALTED: HOUSES OF THE BULL GOD - Absolutely super setting book for Exalted, clearly based off recent African politics. I particularly liked the details of the bureaucractic and dating histories of the war god Ahlat.

THE CORNER, by David Simon and Ed Burns - Simon wrote the amazing HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET, the inspiration for the equally excellent TV series (and Burns and Simon are now co-writing THE WIRE, my favourite TV show, which I'm currently pulling bit-by-slow-bit off E-Donkey.) This is an even greater book, a look at the lives of the locals at a typical Baltimore drug market. Great anecdotes, constantly fascinating both in social and economic terms, and incredibly bleak.

MOO, by Jane Smiley - Strictly speaking, this was a reread, but I couldn't remember anything about it - I think I read it in an hour before falling asleep in my aunt's loft in Oz about seven years ago. Comic novel about a Midwestern university. Highly praised by my favourite critic, Philip Hensher, but left me pretty eh. Clearly my knowledge of American academia of the 80s is lacking.

THE PURSUIT OF OBLIVION, by Richard Davenport-Hines - History of illegal narcotics. Interesting in revealing just how many famous figures were morphine fiends - including Enid Bagnold, author of my little sister's favourite childhood book, NATIONAL VELVET - but with a big chip on its shoulder about prohibition in all its forms. Actually weakened the case for drug liberalization, which is a strong one, by being so damn strident about it.

HARLOT'S GHOST, by Norman Mailer - Big novel about the CIA. Lots of Catholicism. I liked the internal bureaucratic shenanigans, but got pretty bored towards the end.

THE FALL OF YUGOSLAVIA, by Misha Glenny - Written in 1991, pretty accurately predicts the course of the next few years. Depressing in showing how fast people went from cautious neighbourliness to wholescale slaughter, and in demonstrating how little 'ancient ethnic hatreds' really had to do with a conflict whipped up by ambitious politians. Should be used to slap Robert Kaplan around the head a few times.

THE MATING SEASON, by P.G. Wodehouse - Delightful Jeeves and Wooster pastoral. The structure of any given Wodehouse maps pretty exactly onto A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, I suspect.

THE POISONED EMBRACE, by Lawrence Osborne - A history of sexual pessimism - the equation of death and sex in particular. Doesn't like the Gnostics, huzzah. Generally amusing but full of little inaccuracies, overstatements, and so forth.

EIGHT MONTHS ON GHASRAH STREET, by Hilary Mantel - Creepy novel about life as a foreign woman in Saudi Arabia. A little undermined because I already knew what complete and utter bastards the Saudis are.

RURAL CONTROL IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CHINA - Biiiiig 50s book on the Qing methods of internal control, covering ideological education, the local police, etc. Very elegantly written; I skipped a lot of the technical details.

I know I read more fiction than I listed here, but damned if I can remember any of it. Disposable thrillers, mostly; the kind of thing that lasts a couple of taxi-rides.