Job Discussion Forums

[basiltherat]

seeing the poll for music reminded me of how important reading material is to me when im off teaching.
what particular titles and authors have you read or are you going to read.
i can recommend the pelzer series, michael moore's books and andy mcnab books. keeps me sane here. oh and, while i dont like john simpson as a personality, his books can be very revealing ( done a bit arrogantly, mind you).
basil

[dreadnought]

I tend to take science and history books with me wherever I go. I think this is because they last a lot longer as my mushy, vague, addled brain needs to keep rereading them to make sure I understood.

I particular like Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. 'The Language Instinct' and 'How the Mind Works' by Pinker are excellent, as is 'The Blind Watchmaker' by Dawkins. I also take them in the vain hope that beautiful women might be impressed if they see me thumbing through one of them in a cafe. Hasn't worked so far, I must admit.

Like a lot of TEFLers, I find myself reading lots of books I would never touch back home, especially given the limited choice in some countries. I'm almost ashamed to admit how many John Grisham novels I've read.

[FGT]

Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams (RIP), Michael Moore (newly discovered - well worthwhile), Bill Bryson, Jean M. Auel, Lisa st Aubin de Teran, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Jane Howard, etc. Books are important!

[denise]

I have always been lucky to have well-stocked libraries nearby. Prague's British Council has a nice library, and my school here in Japan has one too. I have been trying to catch up on all of the literature that I should have read in high school/college but somehow never did.

d

[shmooj]

I'm getting more and more into reading stuff I can download online. There is a ton of stuff out there that is copyright free and very well worth reading. Most of the free stuff consists of classics that I should have read but haven't so it is good education for me.

Also, I love to highlight and underline and scribble in books I read, and probably the thing I hate most in the world is having to leave behind a stack of well marked books each time we move on. With e-books I can do all that and take hundreds of books with me wherever. Aaahhhhh...

[Will.]

Currently going through a Pratchett stage, Eoin Colfer is a good laugh too.
Chaucer awaits me on the bedside table. Plenty of SF. Anthony Burgess..once... Romantic poetry. James Michener always leaves me with the impression of having learnt something in the process. Jean Auel has a similar effect but her latest efforts lack the punch of earlier work.
Let's be honest, if you are abroad and going through written word withdrawal anything printed in English or left laying around the staff room is worthwhile reading as long as it is not Mills and Boon.

[ha'anala]

although I'm not currently abroad, I'm always interested in what people are reading.

I can't wait until Neil Gaiman puts out a new book(I'm not talking about comics) I've read everything he's written so far.

FGT - It's great to see another Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams fan. Have you read The Salmon of Doubt?

If anyone is looking for a great book about being thrust into an unusual culture, you should check out The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell...it's one of my favorites.

Has anyone here every tackled the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I started it several years ago, but only made it through about the first 350 pages or so...I've been reading how great it is supposed to be and considering trying to make another go of it.

[SueH]

I'm hoping to make the move abroad next year - and one of the many problems is what do I do with all the books when I let the house out. I'll give some away to friends and the local charity shop, a few I'll take and the rest I suppose can go in the loft.

Perhaps we should start an adopt-a-teacher scheme whenever we are in our home countries and send vital parcels of books to pining teachers in remote places abroad. I instinctively dislike Martin Amis so here's a copy of London Fields to start with.

Hmmm.. thinking of the postage, I think I'd stick with the Gutenberg Project.

[FGT]

Ha'anala - Yes! I bought "The Salmon Of Doubt" last time I was in the UK. What a shame there won't be any more, and (for me) what an eye opener to read all the serious stuff he'd wriitten too, about the environment and computers et al. Bit like reading Bill Bryson's two books about language and seeing the guy in a different light and yet not being surprised that he had it in him.

[shmooj]

Just a word about putting books in lofts. Make sure the loft is well insulated from cold and damp. A few packs of silica gel in the boxes with the books wouldn't be a bad idea if you can get hold of them.

Our wasn't and so we found a friend's one that was and they are all up there at the mo. Other friends of ours taught us this lesson the hard way. Tons of stuff in their loft went moldy while they were away three years.

[arioch36]

Everytime I come back to china now I carry a large backpack and a hand bag filled nothing by books, and pack my suitcases with as many books as they will let me take on. Yes, in the Shanghai bookstore you can buy Grisham, and Star trek While I like science fiction as well as almost everything, I pass on reading Star Trek.

I doo like Terry Pratchett,. but where to buy in China?

i find myself longing for books I read long ago. Anyone read Rosemary Sutcliffe? Some of her stuff was for teens, some for adults. She would create some marvelous novels that came straight from history. her stuff helped me have a love for history.

Favourite current writer is Lois McMaster Bujold, science fiction. her stuff is extremely enjoyable, on one hand light reading, at the same time quite deep, making me laugh one second, cry the next moment, and then ponder. The two things I miss most ... books and "American" food (ie pizza, lasagna, salad bars, mexican, Stop Me)

[Deborann]

Couldn't survive without reading - on a good weekend I will read 4 books.

Anne McCaffrey
travel - especially those on China at the moment.
murders - anyone else read Lisa See?
biographies - anyone interesting - which leaves out celluloid heroes and modern musicians

I'm collecting a stack of books that I want to bring with me - mostly dealing with political stuff - Stupid White Men, Trauma Trials (Indigenous Australians dislocation), Wild Politics etc. The type of books that need to be mulled over. (preferably with a good red!)

[Roger]

Surprise, surprise - so many booklovers!

Mark of integration, adaptation to local life: I always begin reading a daily newspaper for the news on the local and domestic scene. That's a bit difficult in China unless you are a loyalist of the CHINA DAILY and its cohorts... My favourites are IHT, SCMP (it used to be a lot more neutral and reliable until some 5 years before!). I complement my English reading with news from German and French sources (on a country such as China, certainly very interesting angles).

As for books, fiction and non-fiction, I gave an exhaustive list a few months ago. Here, I just repeat my preferred topics:
- historical novels (that biographical account of H. Schliemann's two
loves, namely his love for Greek antiquity and his Greek wife was
one hell of a good book);
- sci-fi: Michael Crichton (am right now reading PREY);
- materia sinica: Scholarly and semi-scholarly debates on things
Chinese; this includes WATCHING THE DRAGON by two British
TEFLers based in the PRC in 1983-85; MEGATRENDS ASIA by John
Naisbitt, and so on;
- languages and linguistics: I am still grappling with Claude Hagege's
L'HOMME DE PAROLES - fascinating title for an otherwise highly
academic and dull study;
much more thrilling read is to be found in THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
LANGUAGE by Whitney (first name?) - best thing of all: I got it
in Hong Kong for a laughable HK$ 10 (hard cover copy, over 400 pages);
- romance, rebellion etc.: All those US authors of the 20th cenury:
H. Miller, H. Kerouac, John Steinbeck; not to forget British favourites
Anthony Burgess, and so on; South Africa: Andre Brink, Susan Freyta9g;
Breyten Breytenbach;

- and never far from my dinner table: Hugh Johnson's POCKET WINE BOOK.
-

[kattie72]

"Long walk to freedom", Nelson Mandela
"Cold mountain", Charles Frasier
"Wild Swans", Jung Chang
"Italian neighbours" and "An Italian Education", both by Tim Parks
any Harry Potter book
plus John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell for easy airport reading

[been_there]

Just read, "The Good Women of China" by Xinran (ne Xue Hue). Powerful stuff. This giant cried.

Everyone in this business should read, "Catch 22."

Roger; I might suggest, "The Gates of Fire" *edited due to complete lack of retention of historic personage/facts*


Im a HUGE Umberto Eco fan; read all his fiction as well as his linguistic theory. He does a colum for an Italian newspaper and they are collected into books. I read one called "How to travel with Salmon" and almost burst my giant knickers.

For SF (back before I swore off ficton because I would sit and read and read and read) I loved the Diskworld series, and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Also, "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith and "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth were good.

ha'anala, yes, I too got about 400 pages into The Infinate Jest, wondered if lemon pledge REALLY prevents sunburn, and, after renewing it from the library 8 times, wandered off to read something else.

Currently on the bedside table are: Last Exit to Brooklyn (I know, fiction, but it was recommended and, more importantly, a gift), a history of Chechnya ("a Small, Victorious War") and "Stone Walls," an ethnography of Kosovo.