Tag: China

ARC, Books

Book 649: A Hero Born (Legends of the Condor Heroes #1) – Jin Yong

Geoff W

Book cover for "A Hero Born"I was already thinking about requesting this on NetGalley when I received an email from the publisher, so I thought “why not?”* I might’ve been sucked in by the advertisement that this was the Chinese The Lord of the Rings, but I can neither confirm nor deny that. (It totally was—we all know it.)

I wasn’t sure what to expect going in to the book, I honestly kept putting it off because I assumed it would be way too hard to read. When I started the book to find dozens of pages of prologue, character lists, and historical information I started to get worried this was going to be more tome-like (i.e. Dickens; This was also initially published serially in a Hong Kong newspaper) and less like the martial arts movies that made huge splashes in the late-90s/early-00s in the US (think “Hero”, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “House of Flying Daggers”, etc.).

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Books

Book 635: Severance – Ling Ma

Geoff W

I’ve been digesting this one for a little over a week as I write this (it’s posting much later than that). I very much enjoyed the work, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

The story follows first generation immigrant Candace Chen after an apocalyptic virus has decimated the human population creating habit zombies. You loose all higher function and go about doing a habit/routine until you die. The problems that Candace faces (and even creates in some occasions) are uniquely urban and (predominantly) millennial.

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Books

Book 593: Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians #3) – Kevin Kwan

Geoff W

Where do you go from crazy rich and insanely rich when you’re telling a story? Inheritance, obviously, and the intricacies, alliances, and feuds that stem from death, divorce, and childbirth.

With his trademark humor and sarcasm, Kwan takes us deeper into the lives of the mega-rich in Singapore and China. Most of the same characters we met in the first two novels (Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend) return for various cameos and story lines.

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Books

Book 592: China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians #2) – Kevin Kwan

Geoff W

As always seems to be the case, when one book comes in from being on hold at the library, ALL the books come in from being on hold. This came in at the same time that Check, Please! came in and thankfully one day after Rich People Problems so I was able to read them in order.

Picking up two years after the action of Crazy Rich Asians, we are thrown right back into the high-class glitz and glamour of the Singapore elite only to be shown how quaint they really are when compared to the new rich of China’s booming new age.

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ARC, Books

Book 588: Crashed – How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World – Adam Tooze

Geoff W

What a tome. I requested a copy of this from the publisher back in August 2018 after reading this review from the NYTimes.* It took me three months to get to it and another month-and-a-half to actually read it! And it was worth the read, now I just need to read the “Framing Crashed” posts on his website to see what else I missed!

There are some mixed reviews on Goodreads, some people think it’s boring (uh duh – hello finance, politics and history), some think they’ve written better books or articles (get out of here self-promoters, nobody wants you), and others, like myself, appreciated the staggering amount of ground covered by Tooze in this work.

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