Friday, September 30, 2005

Along the literary front

I finished reading The Kitchen God's Wife last night. Wow! What an enjoyable book! Well written, well told, interesting social/cultural background, it was really hard putting it down every night to go to sleep. I am embarrassingly ignorant of Chinese (and Asian) culture and history, and this book gave me a good feel for both, if in a small way. I love the way Chinese stories are told, I love the idea of "ghosts", the food, the families, the struggle and the triumph. I'm probably the last woman on earth who hasn't read most of Amy Tan's books, but if you haven't read this one, I highly recommend it. Even my mom has been getting large print versions of Tan's books from the library!

Next on the agenda for my late night fare is The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. After that, I am all out of new books, again. In a month or so I'll be able to order some more. By then, Roth's The Plot Against America will be out in paperback in the U.K., so I'm looking forward to that.

My husband and I are still wading through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I'm not entirely sure what chapter we are on, but I know we are getting relatively close to the big finale. We only read a chapter a night, so it is slow going. Maybe, maybe we can get it finished over the weekend. I have a few things to say about it already, some good, some bad, but I'll wait. And I won't be passing out spoilers.

2 comments:

deviousdiva said...

The plot against America is a great book. I'm looking forward to "A Man without a Country" by Kurt Vonnegut in paperback.

Kat Coble said...

I really loved the ending to "Kitchen God's Wife". I thought that tied together everything in the book beautifully!