Our contest to win a free Nintendo Wii ends in one week, remember all you have to do is fill our student textbook survey. Its about 10 questions long and should take about five minutes. So head over to our textbooks page and take the survey!
Keeping with our Asian theme of the morning, just in time for the Olympics the Guardian suggests the top 10 books on Beijing….
1. Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
Published this year, Ma Jian describes the events that led up to the 1989 massacre in Beijing. He has found the perfect metaphor. Dai Wei, a student activist, lies paralysed years after being wounded during the army action of June 4. Those around him believe Dai Wei to be unconscious, but he can see and hear and, most importantly, remember. He is locked in - just as China is locked in - unable to speak or communicate freely, but silently remembering, unable to forget. The novel is rich in contemporary detail – doctors who gouge families for cash for treatment; bulldozers that threaten demolition of homes. Like much of the book, the intricate description of factional rivalries among students is rooted in fact. Ma Jian lives in London.
2. Please Don’t Call Me Human by Wang Shuo
As a teenager, Wang Shuo ran wild in Beijing, and he writes in the slang of the capital. In Please Don’t Call Me Human he’s at his most scathingly satirical. In a thinly veiled reference to the Olympics, his Beijing taxi driver anti-hero competes in an international competition to find the nation most able to humiliate itself, with gory and gloriously symbolic results. Wang Shuo lives in Los Angeles.
3. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
In this short story collection, Yiyun Li writes beautifully about the lives of ordinary people to tell the greater story of contemporary China. In Extra, the first story of the collection, she follows a middle-aged woman who has just been laid off from the bankrupt Beijing Red Star garment factory. The unemployed woman navigates the grim realities of modern China, first in a marriage of convenience, then as a cleaner for rich kids. Each ends tragically, but the woman catches a glimpse of love. Yiyun Li lives in the US.
4. The Uninvited by Yan Geling
This is a comic novel that gently lays bare all manner of social issues. Dan is an unemployed factory worker who discovers by accident that if he pretends to be a journalist he can attend press conferences. That means eating like a king at banquets laid on for the press, and receiving “red packets” of cash which amount to payment for writing adulatory stories. In fact he can make a comfortable living from his assumed identity. Things get more complicated as he is approached to write the stories of several people with grievances. He tries to help, with disastrous consequences. Yan Geling lives in the US.
5. The Crazed by Ha Jin
Here is another metaphor for the censorship of free expression in China, and again it is set during the student demonstrations of 1989. At a provincial university, Prof Yang suffers a stroke. His subsequent outbursts draw parallels between the cultural revolution and pre-Olympic China. This unsettles his student Jian Wan, who eventually leaves to go to Beijing to take part in the demonstrations. Ha Jin lives in the US. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award.
6. The Last Empress by Anchee Min
This is fictionalised history. Anchee Min has taken one of the most notorious women in Chinese history, the empress Dowager Cixi, and has turned her into a surprisingly accessible heroine. Drawn in by the first person narrative, the reader is taken into the heart of imperial life and witnesses first hand the life and death struggles between those who would open to the west and those who would turn China in on itself. It is a struggle that continues today in Zhongnanhai, the Communist party compound which occupies part of the old imperial palace. Anchee Min lives in California.
7. Serve the People by Yan Lianke
Yan Lianke lives in Beijing, and has said that this means he sometimes tones down what he writes. Nevertheless, Serve the People is an unashamed satire on the Communist party’s instruction to “serve the people”. A lowly cook working in the provinces takes the instruction too literally when his boss, a local party leader, leaves for Beijing, and the cook finds himself seduced by the official’s wife.
8. I Love Dollars by Zhu Wen
Zhu Wen is another writer who chooses to live in Beijing. I Love Dollars is a collection of short stories that are often absurd and have a strong undercurrent of nihilism. Zhu, tongue firmly in cheek, debates the relative values of sex, political idealism and money.
9. The Dragon’s Tail by Adam Williams
Williams’ latest historical novel, The Dragon’s Tail, follows British spy Harry Airton through the Japanese invasion, the cultural revolution, and up to the Beijing massacre of 1989. Williams’ passion for China’s modern history is rooted in his own family’s experiences as expatriates in China during the same period, and in his own experience as a long-time Beijing resident. The result is engaging, enthusiastic storytelling.
10. Beijing Doll by Chun Sue
This is all teenage angst and boredom. Chun Sue is the name both of the author and the protagonist, and this is thinly veiled autobiography. Chun is pessimistic, rebellious and more interested in sex than in school. The book can feel as tedious as the narrator’s life, but it is an interesting insight into a generation whose lives are as far from the Communist Youth League as from the moon. Don’t be taken in. Beijing Doll tells only part of the story. Back in the late 80s, middle-aged people rolled their eyes about young people’s shallow materialism. In 1989, millions of young people took to the streets nationwide calling for political change.
The long list for the Man Asian prize has been announced. This is the second year for the $10,000 prize which is intended to lift the international visibillity of Asian fiction.
The long list nominations are as follows:
Melting Love by Tulsi Badrinath
Ugly Tree by Hans Billimoria
Sugar Land by Ian Rosales Casocot
Banished! by Han Dong
Neti, Neti by Anjum Hasan
The To-Let House by Daisy Hasan
The Afghan Girl by Abdullah Hussein
To the Temple by Tsutomu Igarashi
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Rupa Krishnan
Leave Me Alone, Chengdu by Murong Xuecun
The Story that Must Not be Told by Kavery Nambisan
Love in the Chicken’s Neck by Sumana Roy
On the Edge of Pandemonium by Vaibhav Saini
Midnight Tales by Salma
Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Sweet Haven by Lakambini A. Sitoy
The Last Pretence by Sarayu Srivatsa
Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco
My Friend, Sancho by Amit Varma
Brothers by Yu Hua
The Music Child by Alfred A Yuson
BC, the province where AbeBooks HQ is located is turning 150 this year so to celebrate we did a quick little search for the most expensive books about British Columbia that AbeBooks has ever sold.
It turns out that the most expensive book about BC that we have ever sold is also the most expensive book that a resident of Victoria (the city we are located) has ever bought!
David Thompson’s Narrative of his Explorations in Western America 1784-1812
First edition, 1916 copy of this Champlain Society publication, limited to only 550 copies. A first hand narrative from Thompson’s explorations of the Western Canada to the Pacific, including rarely found information of the local native tribes of the region sold for $4,250
Happy Birthday BC!
If you ever feel guilty for having not read one of the classics, you’re not alone…
There are so many books and so little time, with hundreds of thousands of novels to choose from you could never read them all. So how do you choose?
This guardian blogger suggests that you need only read page 69 of any novel to determine if you will enjoy it… I was always a first chapter kind of guy myself.
On in an absolutely dire situation, the back cover!
First there were the near riots when the Olympic flame was making its way though Paris and then there were the reports of opressionwhile China tried to clean up its act.
Whispers of crisis in Beijing are nothing new to the Olympic Games. The Olympics have been plagued with accusations of lying, cheating, doping, racism, terrorism and warmongering almost since their modern inception.
Check out AbeBooks tribute to scandal at the Olympics.
J.G. Ballard’s 1984 novel Empire of the Sun is currently one most searched for books on the internet.
The reason for the sudden search surge on a 24 year old book is probably due to Christian Bale’s (who acted in the Steven Spielberg adaptation of the book) current woes.
The book itself, however, is quite a treat and deserves a little attention having won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was selected as one of the 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 in “The Modern Library.”
Over the next few weeks we are going to be posting tips to help students find the cheapest textbooks on AbeBooks.
Today I want to explain why the early bird gets the cheapest textbooks. Just like with your local collage bookstore the cheapest books on AbeBooks are the used textbooks. These used textbooks are often 50% to 80% cheaper then their new counterparts, and are you best bet for saving the most money; which means everyone else will be gunning for the used copies as well.
Even though its only July check to see if your reading lists have been posted, the earlier you can order your textbooks the more money you will save.
The other bonus about buying early is you can order with standard shipping which also costs less!
Michael Savage, the aptly named conservative political commentator and author who hosts the nationally syndicated talk show The Savage Nation has attracted widespread criticism for his latest controversial remarks - this time condemning the American medical community’s over diagnosis of autism in children. Describing ‘99 percent of children with autism as brats’ is nothing new for Savage, originally born Michael Weiner, who has made a career on his bold persona. Comments such as this one may be why Savage is often described as the most hate conservative in America.
Michael Savage is best known for the book The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assualt on Our Borders, Language, and Culture. For those who want to see more books written by this edgy writer and social commentator, here is his full bibliography available at AbeBooks:
Whether you think he is a genius or an idiot, there’s no doubting that he speaks his mind and certainly is interesting. He also wrote numerous books under his given name, Michael Weiner, these books are generally less politically charged and focus on subjects to do with health and nutrition - don’t worry, they’re still full of controversial theories.
Apparently they can now predict a successful marriage after one day of scientific observation, with 91% accuracy…. and you’ll never guess what the guy did next.
He wrote a book. My guess is he’ll be on Oprah by next Thursday.
John McCain mentioned some of his current reading list at a recent fund-raiser…
“I am a voracious reader. I read all the time,” with three or four books with him all the time. He specifically mentioned a new book he called “Smyrna,” about the conflict between Greeks and Turks in 1922, plus “The Coldest Winter,” by David Halberstam, about the Korean War. And Robert Kagan’s recent book, “The Return of History and the End of Dreams” and finally this: “I read anything by Hemingway all the time. He’s my favorite author.”
The Society of Authors has released what it considers the 50 most important translations into English in the past 50 years.
The top 10 titles were….
1. Raymond Queneau – Exercises in Style (Barbara Wright, 1958)
2. Primo Levi – If This is a Man (Stuart Woolf, 1959)
3. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – The Leopard
4. Günter Grass – The Tin Drum (Ralph Manheim, 1962)
5. Jorge Luis Borges – Labyrinths (Donald Yates, James Irby, 1962)
6. Leonardo Sciascia – Day of the Owl (Archibald Colquhoun, 1963)
7. Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Ralph Parker, 1963)
8. Yukio Mishima – Death in Midsummer (Seidensticker, Keene, Morris, Sargent, 1965)
9. Heinrich Böll – The Clown (Leila Vennewitz, 1965)
10.Octavio Paz – Labyrinth of Solitude (Lysander Kemp, 1967)
For the remaining 40 you can check out the Society of Authors page.
On this day July 18th 1937, Hunter Stockton Thompson, creator of the highly involved reporting style known as Gonzo journalism was born. As the publisher of his own newspaper by age 10, Thompson quickly launched into a life of drinking, vandalism, drug use and pyromania that turned him into one of the most unusual bestselling authors of the past century.
Most of us know him best for his 1972 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was made into an acclaimed movie starring Johnny Depp and brought the eccentric and wild lifestyle Thompson lived to mainstream attention. Hunter S Thompson’s books are extremely collectible. His first book, Hells Angels, was an 1967 bestseller. A signed first edition copy of Hells Angels is available for $12,500.
After the success of Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson followed up with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, a commentary on the Nixon-McGovern presidential election. The signed first edition of this book appears on Abebooks for $6,500.
Among the other notable books written by Hunter S Thompson are The Curse of Lono Memorial Package and Screwjack. A lifelong enthusiast and promoter of mind altering substances and firearms, Thompson died in 2005 from a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He would have been 71 today.
David Sedaris did an interview with the CBC while popping into Canada on his book tour for When you are Engulfed in Flames.