End of Week One TBR20 Challenge

Alas, dear reader, I have already fallen off the wagon. I Bought.Some.Books.

Yes, it’s only been ONE week.

In my defence, I was in Sydney this week. Sydney, home of the Fab Bookshop, Kinokuniya. I did consider not going to the shop at all, but it was enticingly situated between my hotel and the hotel where the conference I was attending was being held.

If you’ve not been to Kinokuniya, you’re missing a great experience. Apart from a very nice range of English language books, they also stock Japanese and Chinese language books. I always spend hours browsing the Chinese language works, which are from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. If I was in London I’d be visiting Foyles in Charing Cross Road, for instance. To me, visiting Kinokuniya when I am in Sydney is a bit like going to Foyles. But even better than going to Foyles because Kinokuniya has books in two languages I can read!!!!!!!!!!!1!! (I’m sure you get the picture, I like this shop, a lot.)

When you read accounts of people trying to overcome a drug addiction, they always tell you how going back to their familiar environments, where their also-addicted friends are, and where drug purveyors are easily accessible, makes it very likely they will weaken and fall back into old habits.

If I had not gone to the shop I might have been able to resist.

Instead, I went in, and of course all the usual justification started: I don’t get this range of books in Perth. I only buy Chinese language books when I come here. I can’t get this range of Chinese language books in Perth. These are such amazing books. I’ll just get these two [insert number here]… And so on.

Sigh.

In other, more positive news, I have managed to read TWO books I own. I had to stop reading one of the books in the list because I realised it (The Ghost Road by Pat Barker) was the third in a trilogy, and I hadn’t read the first two. My immediate impulse was to go see if I could buy/borrow the first book. I did stop myself. Instead I substituted it with Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I finished Middlesex yesterday, and enjoyed it. (Of course, yes, I now want to read more of Jeffrey Eugenides’ work, but I don’t have any so I shan’t. I am beginning to see how my book-buying practices propagate themselves.)

What I enjoyed about Middlesex:

• The span of the story – from the 1920s until the beginning of this century
• Its setting in Smyrna, Turkey and the descriptions of the Turkish-Greek culture
• Its intersex main character. (I knew almost nothing about people born with ambiguous genitalia. Now I know a little bit. Again I want to go and get more books to read about the topic. Stopping myself. Making notes instead.)

I did find it somewhat unbelievable that a relatively sheltered 14 year-old could survive as a performer in a strip club in 20th century San Francisco, but I thought that bit was still well done.

The other book I read (on the plane over to Sydney) was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I had the John Minford translation, which I found very easy to read. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about, and having read it, I suppose I can see why business leaders think it’s a worthy book. Its imagery (even if all about war) can be applied to situations where we need to think about strategy and planning, and one’s role as leader. As someone who has just been appointed to a leadership role at work, I particularly liked this:

There are Five Pitfalls
For a general:

Recklessness,

Leading to
Destruction;

Cowardice,

Leading to
Capture;

A hot temper,

Prone to
Provocation;

A delicacy of honour,

Tending to
Shame;

A concern for his men,

Leading to
Trouble.

(This is from page 50.)

One of the books I bought from Kinokuniya was The Art of War in Chinese. I bought an edition with the original Classical Chinese text, with contemporary Chinese alongside, plus extensive commentary and full colour illustrations. (How could I not??)

We went to yum cha this morning. After the meal I would normally have gone to browse in the local independent bookshop. I didn’t. (I wonder if the owner will miss me.)