5 comments about My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City.

1. I did not see what the big deal was, and would not recommend it. Her language and the way she treated people is offensive, Eurocentric, condescending and narrow-minded -- typical of many travel books of this period. For those trying to learn about Tibet, there is not enough here to satisfy. This is your classic I-am-to-be-admired-because-I-left-the-comforts-of-civilization-applaud-me themed books. She is not a traveller but a trophy collector.



2. When I was reading the reviews of this book, I was struck by the one of the reviews. It was very negative, and the reviewer missed the beauty of this book entirely. I was glad that I had already read it. I read the reviews because I was curious to see if others had enjoyed the book as much as I did. I was buying it again as a present for a friend. The author was a very unusual person, and this book is very much worth the read. She wrote about customs and values honestly as she saw them. She was not a dispassionate viewer, but I also felt that she was not judgemental or superior. When customs of two peoples are as different as some of Tibet and France are, they will shock a person and that person will remark. However, I felt that she loved and respected the people she wrote about, and she did a remarkable job in recounting what she saw. She gave her readers the pleasure of a most unusual journey with her and her young companion through a country that was worth writing about.



3. In 1923 at the age of 55, Alexandra David-Neel put on the robes of a Buddhist monk and walked across Tibet for four months on a pilgrimmage to the holy city of Lhasa. No European woman had ever entered the holy city before, and the road promised many dangers, from wild animals to blizzards to bandits. Her descriptions bear witness to a spunky evolved soul whose scholarly knowledge of Buddhism served her well in her adopted role as an itinerant monk. Her writing is elegant, punctuated by an unselfconscious humor and relentless perspicacity. Truly an adventure trek of many wonders.



4. Personally, I love this book and have read it more than three times. If, for no other reason, you have an interest in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950, this book leaves for posterity a Tibet that no longer exists. The border is gone from modern maps, but even a Westerners' interpretation of their daily lives, is treasure to us all of what once was, a free and spiritually ruled Tibet.
   
   The Chinese have a built a "Disneyland" at the foot of Potalla Palace. I need to remember it before the modern attempt at Chinesification of Tibet.



5. Every warm-blooded traveler knows that to savor a journey, to experience a journey, one has to become the journey. Of course, that same traveler will also tell you that typically that also means parking one's notions of comfort at home in exchange for rewards that happily outstrip bodily discomfiture, because places of intense emotion reveal themselves only to the hardy and the intrepid.
   
   But this story chronicles a veritable traveler boot camp! To bed down on rocks, sleep on snow, go hungry, thirsty and unclean, travel by starlight, dangle from a rope over a gorge, beg for food, awaken to the snuffle of wild predators... all this by a woman, almost a 100 years ago, 55 years old and on the run. I thrill and shudder at once and envy her the journey sometimes (and not so much at other times!).
   
   I recently had a tantalizing taste of Tibet's fantasmagoric beauty - like that of a land spellbound by unscrupulous sorcery, where life is harsh, unforgiving, unbending but so endowed by natural splendor that one is unable to escape its thrall. As her adventure unfolds in this well-paced account, I could imagine her tramping through these fabled lands, forging through fog-filled valleys, melting into the moonshine or greeting a golden sunrise at the end of a hard night's trek. I regret that she doesn't pause to paint a fuller picture of what must have been spectacular scenery.
   
   It is also interesting to sketch her personality through her own pen. The portrait that emerges is that of a strong-willed, intelligent, somewhat arrogant woman of unwavering determination, gritty endurance and one who loves a challenge. I have to applaud her unconditionally for the original motivation that launched her on this endeavor. She would have made a great CEO in our times.
   
   Yes, the style is a little dated, as one reviewer commented, but why should that be surprising? This is a period piece. I find her use of Tibetan words occasionally distracting and the Introduction by Diana Rowan is downright hagiographic and entirely dispensable, or at least, deferrable until the end of the author's own story.
   
   If you are a traveler at heart this travelogue cannot fail to touch you.

5 comments about The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia.

1. I've read a bunch of his travel books now. I always find them fun to read. This one, however, I found a little more difficult than the others. To me often it was like a crazy quilt of scenes and I felt overwhelmed at times. I enjoyed learning about the Sikhs and northern India in general. But what do I know about the Biharis vs. the Bengalis? I formed pictures, but felt I didn't know what it was all about. Though after reading what he writes about India, I never want to go there. But then I found it so interesting to read about how the people of Japan are so entertained by violent sex with blood and murder. That young girl with the comic book depicting all that violence! Why is that so entertaining to them? Well, Americans like that stuff too. But I'd rather read about what it is really like than about some phony everyone is so loving to everyone else sort of thing. And I will never forget the one-legged man, hopping ahead so fast that Paul couldn't catch up with him. All in all, I am immensely grateful to Paul Theroux for his showing me all these things around the world while I am safely ensconced in my comforable easy chair at home.



2. Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted.
   
   So, your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and note that a short review is not necessarily a bad review if it leads you to a great book.
   
   If you always dreamed of traveling, then do it the easy way by reading one of Paul Theroux's accounts of his travels. They are funny and insightful and grand adventures. Check out these lines:
   
   "The sad engineer would never go back to England; he would become one of these elderly expatriates who hide out in remote countries, with odd sympathies, a weakness for the local religion, an unreasonable anger, and the kind of total recall that drives curious strangers away."
   
   Speaking of young foreign travelers, Theroux says:
   
   "Occasionally, I saw an amorous pair leave their compartment hand in hand to go copulate in the toilet.
   Most were on their way to India and Nepal, because
   `the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
   And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.'
   But the majority of them, going for the first time, had that look of frozen apprehension that is the mask of the face of an excapee."
   
   Theroux has a great quote in the beginning of the first chapter--"The journey is the goal."



3. ... and this book is indeed an old friend, for it is the work that introduced me - and many others - to Paul Theroux. It was this book that introduced me to Theroux's charming crankiness, his wickedly astute ability to size up a human interaction and make the most of it - almost like a young boy who starts to craft a "whopper" - but most of all, his uncanny talent for observing a scene for nary a moment and offering up visualization that stays in the mind's eye for ages.
   
   Here is Theroux's oft-quoted take on pulling into one of Europe's crown jewels: "Venice, like a drawing room in a gas station, is approached through a vast apron of infertile industrial flatlands, criss-crossed with black sewer troughs and stinking of oil, the gigantic sinks and stoves of refineries and factories, all intimidating the delicate dwarfed city beyond."
   
   But there is more, just as artful, sometimes better:
   
   "...modernization stopped in Turkey with the death of Ataturk, at five minutes past nine on November 10, 1938. As if to demonstrate this, the room in which he died is as he left it, and all the clocks in the palace show the time as 9:05. This seemed to explain why the Turks typically dress the way people did in 1938, in hairy brown sweaters and argyle socks, in baggy pinstriped pants and blue serge suits with padded shoulders, flapping winglike lapels and a three-pointed hanky in the breast pocket. Their hair is wavy with brilliantine and their mustaches are waxed..."
   
   Or this: "Laos, a river bank, had been overrun and ransacked; it was one of America's expensive practical jokes, a motiveless place where nothing was made, everything imported; a kingdom with baffling pretensions to Frenchness... the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like a lower form of life, like the cross-eyed planarian or squashy amoeba, the sort of creature that can't even die when it is cut to ribbons."
   
   Or: "The mountains had begun to rise, acquiring the shape of ampitheaters with a prospect of the China Sea; eerie and bare and blue, their summits smothered in mist, they trailed smoke from slash-and-burn fires... Now it was sunny and warm: the Vietnamese climbed up to the roofs of the coaches and sat with their legs hanging past the eaves. We were close enough to the beach to hear the pounding surf, and ahead in the curving inlets that doubled up the train, fishing smacks and canoes rode the frothy breakers to the shore, where men in parasol hats spun circular webbed nets over the crayfish."
   
   "Railway Bazaar" has been derided by some for offering only a fleeting glimpse of various cultures from a train window and a quick layover; truth be told, that is what foreign travel consists of even for the most intrepid traveler who is not an anthropologist or social scientist. Theroux does a perfectly splendid job painting a portrait of a war-ravaged Vietnam where GIs and the locals have come to somewhat cynical terms with the denouement, and his vivid and disquieting depiction of the infusion of sexual violence into mainstream entertainment (theater and even comic books) in Japan is among the best I have read about this dark underside of that culture.
   
   And then there are the characters of his passing parade, the bit real-life players that Theroux shapes into larger-than-life caricatures. They are at turns annoying, stealthy, invasive, pedantic, morose and beatific, and Theroux breathes life into them - each a literary joy in his or her own way.
   
   Theroux has a wonderful knack for taking the last paragraph of his creations (many, at least) and crystallizing the mood of that work within a final sentence or two (think "Saint Jack" and "My Secret History"). He does that in "Railway Bazaar" and when the literary train pulls into the station, you want to step off quickly, grab a refreshment, then reboard for another ride.
   
   Old Friends like this do need revisiting every so often.



4. It hardly needs repeating that Paul Theroux is an exceptionally gifted writer. Moreover, this is a very skilfully written story, full of original and acute perceptions put across with wit and point. Theroux recounts a series of train journeys, interspersed with boat trips or aeroplane links where the rail option is not available, as for instance when making a sea crossing or in railless Afghanistan. In the course of this journey he has a number of lecturing engagements, presumably arranged in advance, for which I assume (although he does not say so) that he received a fee. I assume also that what took him away from his home and family for so many long months was not just the enjoyment of rail travel that he owns up to, but financial recompense for the book that he intended to publish as a record of his trip.
   
   Earning an honest living by writing, and by travel writing in particular, is a worthy and honourable pursuit. However when the people represented in the story are real people, and the incidents are true occurrences, and the statements recorded are what people really said, there are to my way of thinking certain standards of taste and propriety that should be carefully adhered to. Personal records of travel and encounters along the way are presented impeccably in, say, Germaine Greer's `Daddy We Hardly Knew You' or in Peter Hessler's River Town and Oracle Bones. In these narratives the authors have reasons for being where they are and for meeting who they meet. These are accounts of research, investigation and exploration from which the books are a spin-off. They have not just taken a trip with a view to parading whoever they might happen to meet before the public at large, which is really what Theroux is doing here. Was the permission of Mr Duffill or Mr Molesworth sought before their statements and actions were made public? I doubt it somehow, but my idea of propriety doesn't even necessarily require that. The parties reported sympathetically by Dr Greer obviously knew what she was doing, but the personae she disliked would not have been consulted about what she intended to say about that them, and that is fine by me. What I am not happy about is going out on a fishing trip and subsequently dangling the fish on a line to be gawped at or derided. Some instances are worse than others. It is not particularly offensive to pillory the downmarket press of any country, such as the Indian weekly `Blitz' which informed him regarding some rowdy individual that `He was high and headstrong...Hurled abuse at some and then fisted a guest', in which the last verb is not used in a more recent sense but means `punched'. I also can't deny that I was amused (rather guiltily) at the clever representation of his Japanese host's offer to show him the local Tiergarten `You want to see tzu?' `What kind of tzu?' `Wid enemas'. Very smart, very clever, but coming from someone who spoke no Japanese more than a little patronising and de haut en bas.
   
   I think it is perhaps the chapter on Japan that brings out in particular the slight sense of distaste I feel for this book. Theroux recounts at some length and with some particularity erotic shows and publications patronised by placid-seeming middle-class Japanese. I confess I find the shows as he describes them somewhat disgusting, but in a rather detached way. What revolts me more acutely is the spectacle of the audiences themselves, and that brings to the fore in my mind the nature of Theroux's own narration. What exactly is he doing there in the first place? He is another audience on the next tier. Does he have some mission to tell the world about all this? Is he engaged in academic research? None of that, and he does at least show awareness of the issue, admitting that he is a bit of a drone amusing himself idly and in the process making rather free with other people's privacy for the entertainment of a paying public.
   
   All that said, the book still has plenty to recommend it. I felt that the later chapters are better than the earlier, which have too much sense about them of `oh look at these people doing these things' and `this guy said this three-quarter's of a page worth to me'. There was a sharp improvement starting with the chapter on Singapore, where Theroux's trenchant comments seem to me to be not only valid in themselves but also to satisfy one of my own requirements from a book of this kind by offering analysis and generalisation rather than just random detail. Also, the book was written in the early 1970's, and so is a reminder of an epoch. This was pre-junta Burmah, for instance. It was the time of the cold war. South Africa was still under apartheid although the availability of the industrial capacity of the Japanese obtained for them the status of `white' from Mr Botha or whoever was in charge in South Africa at the time in question. Above all, it was the time of the war in Vietnam, and the vignettes of that ravaged nation as recounted by so talented and independent a storyteller made a vivid impression on one reader at least.
   
   At one point Theroux comments that travel narratives turn into autobiography. The books I have instanced by Greer and Hessler are certainly autobiography and rightly so. I only wish this book had practised what it preaches. Theroux gives away comparatively little about himself apart from his participation in a few dialogues, the purpose of which is largely to pillory his interlocutors, and I particularly miss precisely this sense of personal development which he himself says one should expect.
   
   There is next to nothing for railway geeks, but if I remember one thing above all from the book, it is the tantalising semi-description of the viaduct at Gokteik in Burmah.



5. I enjoyed this book for its wonderful sensuosity, but found the author's superior and condescending tone frustrating. I found myself wondering why on Earth he took the trip if he wasn't going to at least try to appreciate the people and cultures he visited? Still, he took me on a journey I'll probably make myself and, while Theroux may not have relished the adventure, I did.

5 comments about Finding George Orwell in Burma.

1. I lived in Burma in the late 80's because of my father's U.S. government job. I find most American's know little about Burma (as I did not before I went there.) The current regime has sealed off the country, so that its people suffer behind a veil. They are hidden from the rest of the world. Through the lense of a study of Orwell, the author provides a window into a country few know about. I loved that this book was short and accessible. I recommend this to anyone who wants to find out about Burma. You don't have to be a George Orwell scholar to understand the comparisons. (Although, I'm an English teacher and thought the author made some insightful observations.)



2. I visited Burma recently for a tourism visit. I read this book in preparation. Since much of the narrative is in historical terms, I didn't, at first, get a sense of what to expect. Only on my return did I realize that it gave me a much richer experience than I otherwise would have had. It is an often beautiful book. I got to see a number of the places that are mentioned in the book, but I frequently recalled her descriptions, rich with historical context, when I was there.
   
   What I gained from reading this book before my visit was to sit-in on the conversations that the author had with both seemingly ordinary and some extraordinary Burmese. Not knowing the language, and being a casual visitor, I wouldn't have dreamed of talking politics when I was there. This book is hardly a journalistic contemporary history piece, but the author asked all the questions of ordinary people that you would want to ask, but can't. Burma is an exceptionally beautiful place, but I was always conscious that I was seeing only what tourists are allowed to see. There was no obvious evidence of the horrible events of just a few months ago, but armed with the author's experiences I could better see what was around me.
   
   The parallel narrative involving Orwell was quite effective. It made me want to reread Animal Farm, and seek out Burmese Days. For potential visitors to Burma, I would also recommend The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire



3. Emma Larkin methodically followed Eric Blair's footsteps in Burma. As an expatriate Burmese (having left the country in 1969), I find her description of the present socio-political situation in Burma and the parallels she draws with Orwell's vision of the human condition rather fascinating. I agree with Larkin that Blair's experiences in Burma had a definite impact on Orwell's views about the nature of human societies, but more interestingly, it is clear from the way Larkin describes many Burmese in her book (especially the kind of english books they read) that the impact of the british colonial period on Burma was substantial. What is then the more subtle message here? How much Burma changed a single colonial officer (a rather moody and pessimistic type at that!), whose later books did influence the way the world views colonialism, communism, fascism and other totalitarian regimes or how much England changed Burma (where the present regime is totalitarian)
   I like the literary style of the book (easy to read) and there are many interesting and illuminating details about Blair and Burma. but perhaps the narrative is a bit too naive to really give a deeper understanding of what Blair experienced in Burma and more importantly what Burma went through in history to reach the present state of "State". Human societies (even the "isolated" burmese society!) and individual human beings (even Blair) are very complex in nature and beyond the comprehension of a single person whether it is an Orwell or a Larkin. I do admit that I read books not to find the "final explanation" to any kind of problem, but to enjoy and I really enjoyed reading this book.



4. I learned some new things about Orwell. Most importantly: did you know that O. wrote 3 books about Burma, not just 1 as I had thought, naively?
   After 'Burmese Days', there was also 'Animal Farm' (how the pigs with the dogs overthrew the farmers to take power) and then '1984' (how the powers control the minds and the records). These are predictions on Burma! Who would doubt it?
   Second: when O was on his death bed, dying from TB at a much too young age, he was working on another novel or story about Burma. That was really new to me.
   This book by an American journalist written under a pseudonym works on 3 levels, like a layer cake.
   There is the Orwell biography; and frankly speaking, that is a disappointing part, because when the author followed O's traces in Burma, she didn't really find much. That is mainly because she was travelling as a tourist and couldn't do open research. Not her fault. What she injects is from other sources, like visits to London libraries and the Orwell archive. The visits to O's Burma places serve more for background colour than for new insights.
   Second layer: this is a travel book about the places where O lived in Burma. We get to look at Mandalay, the Delta, Rangoon, Moulmein, and Katha.The book delivers the travel account without much passion. Let's put it this way: Larkin as a travel writer isn't exactly sparkling. She may never make it to the top ten of the genre.
   Third layer: maybe the most important part or level of the book is the description of the totalitarian routine of life in Burma. While even this lacks spark, it is certainly an important contribution to the international knowledge of a tough subject to be informed about. The descriptions of daily life are continuously set against a background of 1984 scenes.
   In short: a book worth reading that somehow remains short of expectations.



5. Finding George Orwell in Burma
   
   
   The premise of Emma Larkin's intriguing book is that the current political climate in Burma was eerily forecast in three of George Orwell's books: "Burmese Days," his first book based on his experience in the British Police Force in Burma in the 1920's; "Animal Farm," the allegory in which beasts take on the characteristics of their oppressors; and "1984," the grim projection of totalitarianism regimes. "It is a particularly uncanny twist of fate that these three novels effectively tell the story of Burma's recent history. The link begins with Burmese Days, which chronicles the country's period under British colonialism. Not long after Burma became independent from Britain in 1948, a military dictator sealed off the country from the outside world, launched "The Burmese Way to Socialism," and turned Burma into one of the poorest countries in Asia. The same story is told in Orwell's Animal Farm....Finally, in Ninteen Eighty Four," Orwell's description of a horrifying and soulless dystopia paints a chillingly accurate picture of Burma today, a country ruled by one of the world's most brutal and tenacious dictatorships." (Larkin, P. 3)
   Larkin (a pseudonym, to protect her and her sources) is an American journalist based in Thailand who has seen modern Burma close-up.
   
   As I write this, Beijing is opening the Olympics (August 8, 2008) The eyes of the world are on China, as it wrestles with coming of age economically and politically.
   It is also the 20th Anniversary of a bloody uprising in Burma, which resulted in a brutal crackdown and the deaths of at least 3,000 people. The BBC (for which Orwell reported, and which itself is banned from reporting from inside Burma) says: "Elsewhere in Asia, human rights groups and activists who fled in the aftermath of the 1988 protests held demonstrations outside Burmese and Chinese embassies.
   "We are here because China is the main supporter of the military regime," Kyaw Lin Oo, a Burmese activist, told reporters outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok"
   
   One of Burma's true heroes is Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of Aung San, who was assassinated as Burma gained independence from Britain. She has been under house arrest for virtually her entire adult life, but still heads the banned National League for Democracy (NLD). The Burma Government is faced with a dilemma with Aung San; he was instrumental in Burma's fight against colonialism and thus a national hero. But his daughter is the regime's sworn enemy. So the Government simply omits him in its official histories.Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Prisoner of Conscience
   Larkin recounts a curious period in Burmese history. When the Japanese occupied Burma, there was a crop shortage, and the only thing available to feed the donkeys they depended upon for transportation was parched, white grain.The donkeys refused to eat it. So they developed an ingenious solution: they fashioned spectacles out of green glass and wire and hung them over the donkey's ears. The donkeys, thinking they were eating green grass, ate it happily. That period of Burmese History became known as "The Time of the Green Spectacles."
   As one Burmese said: '"That's what we have to do...view the world through green glasses." White is green, bad is good, war is peace. Orwell is alive and well in Burma.

5 comments about Crossing Boundaries: A Global Vision of Design.

1. mr wolf in his travels search for inspirations in the most unusual places: ethiopia, burma, syria - most of times acquiring local handcrafted items which he will use in his decorations. Although his palette is a bit neutral, with pastel colors most of times, his interiors are extremely beautiful, with subdued elegance and charm. Interesting is how he manages to mix the objects from his travels, with modern furniture, mirrors in abondance and white walls.



2. This book with it's exciting interior pictures captures interior design at it's best. Mr Wolf's incorpration of ethnic items makes these interiors personal and interesting. His use of color and his inclusion of Benjamin Moore color numbers is a nice feature. I very much like this book and his style. I am an interior designer also and I'm not easily impressed by most other designers work.



3. I regret that i have bought this book! It does not show anything special and the objetcive of the author of showing misery people and then show glamorous spaces is a shame!!!!



4. My wife and I plan to remodel, and bought this book for inspiration and design concepts. We ended up quite disappointed.
   
   The book has 5 chapters organized around 5 places that Mr. Wolf traveled to. Each chapter consists of two parts: travel log and design. Both parts show many colorful photographs, some of them quite beautiful. In general, the travel log part has more pages then the design part. For example, in Madagascar Scale chapter, travel log has about 24 pages vs. 18 pages for design. The pictures are even more lopsided towards the travel part. Often the relationship between the design and place seems rather superficial or contrived like a blue/yellow color scheme that is somewhat similar to an umbrella on a photograph or a light color bedroom inspired by a misty landscape. Also, Mr Wolf's design schemes are not as varied as you would expect if they were inspired from all over the world. Most of them use very similar style furniture and color schemes.
   
   Worse still is that the book does not present design concepts in any systematic fashion. It does not say much about the places that Mr. Wolf designed, what were the challenges, or how different rooms fit together. There is not a single floor plan in the whole book, and rarely it shows the same room from different angles to give the reader a feel how things fit together.
   
   Conclusion: If you are looking for a travel diary with pretty pictures, this book might be for you. If you are looking for design ideas that are of practical use, stay away. You might consider Kelly Hoppen's book ``Home'' instead. We bought it together with this one and found it packed with useful interior design concepts and really helped us to think through all the elements of designing a house or apartment.



5. This book lacks consistency, and although the pictures might be technically good, the interiors design itself has little to do with the story the author is tryng to sell to us: that he has seen certain things in his 'exciting and sophisticated'journey that inspired him to create special interiors. What we get instead is a twisted, dated, unrespectful and pasteurized concept of what other cultures could give us in our every day living. Please, don't buy it.

5 comments about Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess.

1. Lea Jacobson's memoir is subtitled " My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess."
   
   
   I'm a sucker for a good memoir and this one sounded really interesting.
   Jacobson is an American fascinated with Japanese culture and language. Her studies have made her quite proficient in the language, so she accepts a teaching position in Japan. Her visa is good for two years.
   Learning the culture through a book and experiencing it firsthand are two different things though. Jacobson has difficulty accepting the rigid standards and structures of Japanese society. She is fired from her teaching position and begins to drift.
   
   
   She ends up hostessing in a Tokyo nightclub. I think like most people I had some preconceived notions as to what hostessing entailed. Jacobson gives a detailed account of this profession. In fact her memoir reads as a diary, detailing friends, encounters and thoughts. We are offered a fascinating glimpse into Japan from someone living fully immersed in the culture.
   
   This immersion begins to take it's toll on Jacobson. She descends into alcoholism and self harm in many forms. She realizes she needs out and returns to the US, but is just as disillusioned there, and returns to Japan.
   
   
   Jacobson ends her book with the Japanese saying" Fall over seven times, wake up eight." She manages to pull it together. I found myself wanting a bit more concrete detail from the epilogue, but found her blog which ties up things a bit more.



2. Just finished the book. I picked it up in the first place because I was on a quest to read everything ever written about hostessing; this book was by far the best source of information and insight into the floating world.
   
   The author's writing style is neither too much nor too little. I could imagine how a book about a hostessing could get messy with lots of flowery detail and description, but Jacobson maintains a great balance. I appreciated her metaphors and anecdotes, and found that her analysis of herself and other characters was sensible and interesting.
   
   Strongly recommended to anyone with interest in the subject. Hard to put down and no boring moments!



3. In Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, Lea Jacobson recounts the roughly two years she spent as a nightclub hostess in Tokyo's Ginza district.
   
   After she went to Japan in 2003 to work as an English teacher, Jacobson was fired from her job after a psychiatrist spilled the beans to her employer about her fragile emotional condition. She then went to Tokyo, where she began work as a hostess, entertaining Japanese "sararimen," even though she was psychologically unwell. Jacobson describes the underbelly of Tokyo culture as being in a "floating world," where everything is fluid and nothing stays constant for very long. Along the way, we're introduced to a variety of interesting characters, including a dragon-like mama-san, an Irish boyfriend named Nigel, who lies to her; and a four-year-old girl who learned perfect English entirely from Disney movies.
   
   Jacobson's knowledge of Japanese culture is spot-on. She details her drug addiction without feeling sorry for herself, and even though you don't want to watch her spin out of control, you do, because her story is heartbreaking. But Jacobson learns a valuable lesson from her mistakes, and she does a wonderful job of analyzing, not rationalizing, her decisions.



4. Survivor first aired in on May 31, 2000. Lea Jacobson first went to Japan in 2003. Why is this significant? In the book, Lea's mom tells her that life is not an episode of Survivor. Lea claims to not know what she's talking about. I have a hard time believing that she really hadn't heard of Survivor since at least two seasons had aired on North American television before she even set foot in Japan and it was a huge phenomenon. Having been in Japan at that time, even I had heard of Survivor. If you picked up a newspaper or magazine there was something about Survivor in it. You had to have been living under a rock to not have at least known what it was - even someone living in Montreal. She claims that upon returning to the States, she had to be told what C.S.I. stood for. That show first aired on October 6th, 2000, nearly three years before Lea set foot in Japan. These may be minor errors and maybe she was just never a big television fan. More likely she tried using her supposed lack of knowledge about those shows to emphasize how immersed in Japan and how out of touch with America she'd been but the devil is in the details and if she'd "misrepresent the truth" about television shows it made me wonder what else she'd "misrepresent". The club she mentions early on is actually called One-Eyed Jacks not One-Eyed Zacks. It's a big club and advertises in a free, English magazine popular among foreigners living in Tokyo. Additionally, there is no shinkansen (bullet train) to Kamakura station. Ms. Jacobson could have used a better editor and fact checker. The book itself is passably interesting but doesn't add much to the "misspent youth" type memoir of which there are many and many better ones. If you have an interest in the world Japanese floating world you may find some appeal in this book but otherwise I'd recommend something by Liza Dalby who trained as a geisha and writes with far more skill and without sensationalizing things.



5. Wow. This book was pretty bad in my opinion. Reading it was painful because of the author's own comments on strung together observations. I had picked up this book in Penn station in NY thinking of getting something to read on the train and instead I opted to just fall asleep. The author writes about an incident where she's a nanny having a tea party and she draws the conclusion herself that she is in fact alice tumbling down a rabbit hole. Come on, really? The author is pretentious and exaggerates facts to fit the story, as also written by another reviewer on amazon. The book is boring and written poorly, it sounds like the author should go back to being a hostess because being a writer doesn't seem to be working out too well.

No comments about Living and Working in Hong Kong: The Complete Practical Guide to Expatriate Life in China's Gateway.

1 comments about Fodor's Hong Kong, 20th Edition: With Macau and the South China Cities (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. My husband purchased and took this book with him last month to Hong Kong and Macau and found it most helpful.

5 comments about Trans-Siberian Railway (Lonely Planet Travel Guides).

1. What you'd expect from Lonely Planet--useful but not comprehensive. I would recommend getting both this and the Trans-Siberian Handbook. It can be a little difficult to find (especially if you don't want to wait 6 weeks).



2. The guidebook is just fine for sightseeing, hotels, restaurants, but for train information, there is almost nothing. Really, almost nothing at all. To take the Trans Siberian, it is very difficult to make stopovers, and get reservations for future trains. And you can't simply board the train in a city or town other than Moscow or Vladavostok, or Beijing. None of this is addressed in the book. So, it's great to have tons of pages of sightseeing information, but for places almost no one will get to, due to the difficulty of reserving future trains.
   
   There is almost virtually no information on how to book the train, or recommendations on how to book it, or where to book it, or the wide range in prices. Hardly anything about the different classes. Hardly anything about the cabins, onboard food, how to buy food at the stations, is there an electrical outlet, train etiquette, etc.
   
   I was very disappoined in the lack of practical information needed. The Trans Siberian is NOT as easy to book as a train from say London to Paris, and the book doesn't address that.



3. As the title says, I found the book a very useful guide. Since I currently live in China, I was mostly just using the portions for Mongolia, and Russia.
   
   My only complaint is the switching around of currency used. Sometime in the Russian portion prices would be listed in US dollars, other times Rubles, and sometimes in Euros. It would have been much better to pick one currency and stick with it. A minor complaint.



4. I was overall disappointed.
   The guide was useful to plan the trip, but much less once on the spot. Quite a bit of information is erronous or outdated (e.g. restaurants/hotels do not exist or are priced over double of what stated, museums have been closed or moved), which especially in Moscow and Yekaterinenburg led to cross-city walks and travels at the end of which we found nothing. This is especially for what concerns the Moscow to Yekaterinenburg part; pages on St. Petersburg, China, Mongolia and the Irkutsk area were much more useful.
   Train and bus info: there is quite a lot of information if you are heading in the St. Petersburg to Beijing direction, but no special indications for if you are taking the opposite direction.
   Last point: guide suggestions are generally targeted to a welthier-than-backpacker budget (though Galina in Moscow was great!).



5. This gives a very comprehensive account of the various routes on the trans siberian, i'v chosen vladivostok to st petersburg! will have my guidebook close at hand during my trip!

No comments about Customs & Etiquette of Nepal (Simple Guides Customs and Etiquette).

5 comments about An Area of Darkness.

1. This is a book that heartily annoyed me as I read it, but the last 60 pages changed my tune. I would never want to read this book again, nor would I recommend it to others unless they knew what they were getting into--but the endless historical essays on caste and English colonialization did eventually end, and did lead into a really interesting place for Naipaul. One of my chief complaints with the book as I read was that Naipaul kept himself aloof, that so much of the book was abstract historical essay instead of real stories of his travels. There was a chunk in the middle of the book where Naipaul stayed at a particular hotel and got to know the people there, which was really intriguing, but otherwise I was dead bored. The last 60 pages, however, were almost entirely of Naipaul's experience and dealt with the real people he met and the terrible misunderstandings he had. All of the earlier material on caste and colonization had been building up to this point: the point when he visits his grandfather's village and, though charmed at first, ultimately cannot connect with his relations there for the same reasons that he can't connect with the rest of India. Overall the ending was very moving and very powerful.



2. I like travel books that have a sense of adventure, and where one identifies with the writer. This failed on both acounts, and after struggling through half of it a I threw it away.



3. I really loved this book! It'snot history, it's not politics, it's not a cultural review, it's not sociology ... but all the above in one astonishing piece of jewelry. I loved reading it rom the beginning to the end...



4. I read this book in preparation for recent trip to India. While it may be a bit dated, Naipaul writes beautifully. He describes India's people and places as he found them in the early 60's (pre Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and even, apparently, before Nehru shirts were known as such)givin and interesting perspective and historical context to the India I experienced on my recent trip.



5. The author, Sir V.S. Naipaul, won the Nobel Prize in 2001. He is known for both fiction and non-fiction works concerning Asia and Latin America. He was born in Trinidad and is of Indian heritage. Reading the excerpts about his book from well-known magazines to well-known authors gave me the impression that Naipaul wrote well and that his books were excellent. So I picked up this book, written in the 1960's and considered one of Naipaul's classics.
   
   After reading this book, I can only wonder what the reviewers were thinking. Naipaul's prose is often dense and stilted. His narrative style is jerky and anything but reader-friendly.
   
   This book starts with Naipaul going to India for a year or more to work on writing and to visit parts of India including the village from where his grandfather emigrated to Trinidad. He wrestles with a typical 3rd world bureaucracy trying to import some booze. This episode was humorous although I don't think the author was particularly trying for humor. Then Naipaul settles into a hotel near a lake and takes occasional side-trips. Then Naiapul leaves the hotel, travels through India a bit more, and then leaves. That's about it for the action.
   
   This book does include long passages on the after-effects of British colonialism, commentaries on the caste system, and quite a bit of cranky complaining about the culture of India beginning with a rant on the Indian proclivity for defecating anywhere and everywhere and not cleaning up. I've never been to India, so I can't comment on the veracity of this account.
   
   But the book took a long time to cover a very few subjects. Occasionally there would be passages or incidents that were funny or invoked despair or thought. But these passages were not the rule and there were too many pages in-between of filler about the hotel staff or Kipling's influence.
   
   I did finish the book, and there were note-worthy parts, just not as many as I had been led to believe. I love travel writing, I enjoy cranky accounts more than gushing accounts (try Thubron and Theroux). But I honestly doubt I will read any other books by this author. So overall, a grudging 3 stars.