Sick! ...and capsule reviews

I don't know whether it was a virus or bad food (probably the latter), but I was horribly sick for about 6 hours on Thursday. I slept for about 20 hours and was pretty much ok when I got up. Everyone here had Friday off for some Catholic holiday, so I had the day to relax, recover, and finish reading River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler.

Excellent book. I usually like books for thematics, new ideas, or interesting characters, but I can't say that this book had a whole lot of any of those things. It has tons of interesting cultural observations on how we differ from the Chinese, and how some Chinese differ from other Chinese. The real reason I enjoyed reading this book is just because it was so well written. Peter Hessler illustrates the land and people of Fuling so well that you feel like you've visited yourself. Of course, I'm also biased towards this book because, like Hessler, I'm also a foreigner in a foreign land... I highly recommend this to everyone. Thanks for the book, Pete!

I also finished another book called Red Gold a few weeks ago and I didn't post my capsule review... mostly because I didn't really like it too much. Pete says that it's only because I don't have what it takes to be a WWII secret agent. So be it... Can't recommend this one. Didn't find any kind of concrete story, likable character, or interesting theme.

Next on the list is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. After only a few pages I'm sucked in and it feels kinda like the movie Pi. Excited to get home and continue reading this one.

One more capsule review: An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore's movie about global warming. Great movie. The world is dying - check this movie out!