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River Town by Peter Hessler pgs 399

This is a great memoir about a peace corp english teacher that was one of the first American's to live in the Chinese city of Fuling. He and another teacher are the only two (waiguorens, chinese for foreigner) in the city. Even though I reside not in China but in a certain renegade province, the book was full of descriptions and details that I quickly recognized. A personal favorite that is still making me laugh is Hesslers realization that the pollution causes his snot to be black when he blows his nose. He decides that instead of focusing on how bad the pollution is and how it' s unhealthy and horrible, he will just stop looking at his snot after he blows his nose. This attitude should be somehow injected into anyone that will be living overseas. It's a great example of creative problem solving or rather........just getting over IT!

Great read if you want a taste of what Chinese culture is all about and how to thrive within it. It's also really funny.

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Reading list since January.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr Pgs 597
Period detective novel taking place in New York City in 1896. As a group of detectives and psychiatrists (called Alienists then) hunt down the first serial killer. They are the first profilers, using new psycholgical theories to track down the killer. It's a good book, I enjoyed the descriptions of New York at the turn on the last century. The inclusion of early psychological babble seemed a little forced into the story and ultimatly seems to be little help in the outcome. It is well written and does have a couple of "hair standing up on the back of your neck moments."

The Dark Tower Stehpen King
I started this series having read the first two The Gunslinger and The Dawing of the Three, because of a recomendation from my wife's uncle who can always be trusted to give good advice on books, movies, obscure tv shows. The first was a little two ......... weird to get me hooked but the second captured my attention. It's way to complicated to try and explain other than there's a parallel universe and the main character The Gunslinger is able to enter and exit into and out of our world directly into people (kinda like posession). King wrote this series over twenty years and considers it his Lord of the Rings. I'll let you know how it goes.