Books

I've managed to read some books while here, so I thought I'd write a short post about them.

So Far from the Bamboo Grove - I just read this the other day while I didn't have much to do. That title may be slightly wrong. It's an autobiographical account of a Japanese girl escaping Korea at the end of WWII. It's not bad, though the English is a little stilted. Kind of interesting and pretty depressing.

Farenheit 451 - This book, like everything I have ever read by Bradbury, sucks. It's basically the old idea of a government that censors everything played out with crappy one-dimensional characters for a few hundred pages. Bradbury only gets points for having the censorship start with the population, not the government, because they are tired of intellectuals and only want to watch mindless tv. The main problem with the book is that he can't help waxing poetic at every little detail, and he's not even a good poet, so it is even worse, and really out of character for the narrator, a fireman.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - I'm still reading this massive Chinese epic. I'm only about 10% of the way done, but it is pretty sweet. The reading is a bit hard because it is basically about feudal China and the customs and terminology are all strange. Fortunately, some people know what is going on and post explanations. There's almost non-stop warfare and banquets, but if you don't worry too much about remembering who is who (there are thousands of characters), it is a fast read.

Cryptonomicon - (by Neal Stephenson) A weird book, but very well written, for as far into it as I've gotten. It's strange because the story keeps skipping back and forth between different times and places, but it has already featured Alan Turing, so that's neat.

Frog and Toad - There were three of these books left in my apartment by my predecessor. I think it's probably the whole series, but I don't know and I don't care enough to look it up. Classics all around, and the most vivid account of life as an Amphibian you will ever see.