The Edge of Europe

Check out my review of Pentti Saarikoski's The Edge of Europe at Tarpaulin Sky.

Check out one of my photos from Scotland in an online guide to Edinburgh. The photo is of Holyrood Park.

I was very pleased to wake up this morning amid bubble wrap and boxes to find myself on McSweeneys. Now I'm officially one of the cool kids, at least for today.

I am absolutely delighted to have two poems published in DIAGRAM issue 8.2.

Now I've published a poem about a cat on the internet.

Check out my interview with award-winning Australian novelist Gail Jones in January Magazine (where I'm now a Contributing Editor).

You know what's funnier than hearing a joke once?

Hearing it twice!

Check out "Some Excerpts from the Lonely Planet Master Guide" on Monkeybicycle.

I'm sure everyone has read this already, but The Original of Laura will be saved! See more details here (The Guardian).

In other news, I'm proud to say I will soon be contributing to the venerable Tarpaulin Sky. Also, one of my Foghorn pieces is upcoming in the excellent comedy magazine Monkeybicycle.

Lastly, I have been transfixed by this story I caught in the news the other day: a Catholic priest in San Paolo is missing after being carried away by hundreds of helium balloons. I mean the utmost respect to the priest and hope he will be recovered safely, but I also find this story has so many elements of magical realism, it's mesmerizing. I am working on a short story about it now...

Two articles in the new that's Shanghai (at their new Urbanatomy site) - an interview with prize-winning Australian author Gail Jones (Sorry, Sixty Lights) and my foray into burlesque dancing.

If You Only Buy 110 Books This Year, Buy These

(I just posted this on The Foghorn. Also up this week, an excerpt from Duelism.)

Last Sunday, the Telegraph released the inexplicable "110 Best Books: The Perfect Library," an exercise intended, I suppose, for budding autodidacts in possession of a generous Amazon gift card. The list is divided into categories, including Poetry, Children's Books, History, and the presumptuously-titled Books that Changed Your World—though I would like to meet the person whose world was changed by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Tipping Point, and A Year in Provence. Once.

The list is a combination of the obvious (Homer, Shakespeare) with some safe if unremarkable choices (Trollope, Thackeray, Flaubert) and a few real curve balls (Eats Shoots and Leaves? The Day of the Triffids?) It also rests on the assumption that if you only had 110 books, 19 of them would be listed under Crime or Romance. Not to mention Science Fiction, a category whose laudatory introduction to Asimov begins, "It is not for literary brilliance that one approaches the first in the Foundation series . . . " Well, no. In this context, the judges' assurance that "Once you've finished this, 14 novels and countless more short stories await" seems more like a threat than a promise.

Not to mention the eerie arbitrariness of having exactly 110 books. What does it say about a person when they own just 110 books, among them A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and St. Augustine's Confessions?

Meanwhile, the New York Times kick-started their own literary argument with a recent blog post on the most overrated books. If you want to avoid apoplexy, do yourself a favor and don't read the comments. Suffice it to say that readers were quick to judge hefty stand-outs like Proust, Tolstoy, and Joyce as "unbearable;" perhaps they were using the word to mean "difficult to lift" and not "difficult to read." Meanwhile, the same aggrieved commentators bemoaned the exclusion of Ayn Rand (Books To Hide When Guests Come Over).

In this spirit I present my own reorganization of the Telegraph's picks into new categories:

Best Books That Appear, Mildewed and Worn, at Every Flea Market and Library Sale

Anthony Trollope, The Barchester Chronicles

William Makepeace Thackery, Vanity Fair

Best Books That Like Totally Changed Your World When You Were in High School

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, 1984
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
William Gibson, Neuromancer

Best Book By A Serious Author Who Nonetheless Use Character Names Like "Fanny Assingham"

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Best All-Time Book To Whose Protagonist You Nevertheless Want to Give a Sound Beating

Marcel Proust, A la recherché du temps perdu

Best Books That You Read Again and Again While Wearing Stretch Pants and Eating Leftover Birthday Cake

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

Best Books Most Often Cited by Earnest Bloggers

Tom Paine, The Rights of Man

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

Best Books Tailor-Made for Tedious Five-Paragraph Essays

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Earnest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Best History Book Featuring Magical Dolphins

Herodotus, The Histories

Best Children's Book About The Colonial Experience From the Point of View of an Elephant

Jean de Brunhoff, Babar

Best Children's Books With Homoerotic Subtexts

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Best Seldom-Read Books About Which People Nonetheless Enjoy Having Opinions

James Joyce, Ulysses

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Sigmund Freud, On the Interpretation of Dreams

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species

Best Books Whose Gist Is Easily Absorbed Without Bothering to Read Them

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

Best Books Of Which You Saw the Movie Version

Choderios de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Robert Graves, I, Claudius

Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

Best Books of Which You Saw the Coen Brothers Movie Version

Homer, The Odyssey

Raymond Carver, The Big Sleep

Best Books Currently Being Used to Prop Up Your Futon

Karl Marx, Das Kapital

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Best Book This Author Admits She's Never Actually Read

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Best Books That, Let's Face It, Even the Judges Haven't Read

Diderot, L'Encyclopédie

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

I was pleased to see my recent CRAFT article was mentioned today on parenting site otterhop.com as a recommended craft project for kids.

There's a whole new week's worth of fun up at The Foghorn, including dubious memoirs, affordable shelving, ontological uncertainty, and dead whales.

For weekly updates, subscribe to our RSS feed, http://rsspect.com/rss/foghornfeeds.xml.

Be sure to read my husband's first blog post at Studio Kumar. And check back often!

Check out this week's haul over at my other project, The Foghorn. We are classing things up a bit and leading off this week with two new works in verse, the poetry of Miss Gillian Block and Ms. Katy Spindler. Also two new essays and a short fiction piece.

We've also added a new box at the bottom of each Foghorn piece, with handy links to Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, reddit, and any other company with a made-up name we can find. If you like what you read, pass it on!

We are also eagerly seeking new submissions. Email editor at thefoghornmagazine dot com today.

Announcing The Foghorn

I am very happy to announce the launch of my new web project, The Foghorn. Check back every Wednesday for updates.

I am happy to report that two of my poems have just been accepted by Diagram. They should be available in print in a few months.

Another (light and silly) column for Tripmaster Monkey.

I am happy to say that I've just written and published my first piece of short fiction in January's Stirring Magazine. Hopefully this will be a good omen for the new year.

Merry Christmas! And enjoy my column in Tripmaster Monkey about Christmas in Shanghai.

Make sure to check out the upcoming volume 6 of CRAFT magazine, including my guide to turning travel photos into themed coloring books.

Check out the first in my (bi-weekly? semi-weekly? quasi-weekly? you know, once every other week) series on Tripmaster Monkey, Letters from Shanghai. The first installment is about Thanksgiving.

Another review up at Small Spiral Notebook, this one of Ma Jian's classic Stick Out Your Tongue, now being reprinted.

Look for major updates to this site soon!

And one more, an artnet review of the recent ShContemporary art fair, with some excellent photos by my husband.

I have a new review of Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee up at Small Spiral Notebook, where I'm also on the masthead now as a Contributing Writer.

A new review at Small Spiral Notebook, of Anthony Giardina's White Guys.

Another book review at Small Spiral Notebook, this time about weddings - Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings.

A new artnet piece, featuring Xu Zhen.

I'm cleaning house today, getting caught up on all sorts of odds and ends before I take a brief hiatus from journalism this summer and work on some fiction and other projects. I've been updating the website, archiving this blog, adding old work to my clips book, etc.

In the process, I noticed that I somehow forgot to post this Small Spiral Notebook review the first time - a review of Alan Bennett's excellent Untold Stories. I'll be ramping up my work for SSN in the future, so stay tuned for more.

My first magazine cover story, on global warming in China, for that's Shanghai.

Summer Talks Business

I have three articles on the Chinese business environment here: 1, 2, 3.

Another review at Small Spiral Notebook, this one of J.P. Greene's The Optics of Evening.

My first Chinese article, for Newsweek's China edition. (No, I did not write it in Chinese, I wrote it in English and had it translated.) My Chinese name is 夏苓.

My first piece is up at Small Spiral Notebook, a review of Jillian Weise's The Amputee’s Guide to Sex.

Last but not least - my last article about India (for now), a review of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games and a Mumbai travelogue.

More Bollywood gossip - with a message.

Yet more on India! A short travel piece on Delhi - an article on Bollywood and film noir still to come, and today I am finishing a piece on Bollywood gossip and the BJP. You can also check out a recent column on fitness.

(I am also not using contractions because I cannot find the apostrophe on this Japanese keyboard.)

More on India, this time from artnet.

Part two of my article on Indian weddings.

The first day of spring has arrived and all the women in my neighborhood are strolling through the afternoon with their parasols - Shanghai is becoming quite a lovely place to be.

In other news, I have a Bollywood gossip article up on Tripmaster Monkey - stay tuned for part two!

My interview with Wayne Belger is up on the ALARM website, as well as published in ALARM #26, on newsstands now.

I have several more pieces coming soon, including new art reviews for artnet and ALARM #27. I'm working on pieces for new venues like Tripmaster Monkey and Newsweek, as well as old favorites like the Chronicle, that's Shanghai, and that's Beijing.

I am pleased to mention that I made Identity Theory's Best of 2006 for my review of Charles Blackstone's The Week You Weren't Here. Make sure to check out the entire list, particularly Amy Leach's "Warbler Delight."

Shanghai Biennale

My Shanghai Biennale coverage is up on artnet, with photography from my lovely assistant (and husband), Dev Kumar.

I'll also be writing about art for ALARM, stay tuned.

Empress

Another review up at Identity Theory.

I'm now a Contributing Editor over at Identity Theory, and just started writing for ALARM as well.

A New Review and a Love Letter

I just published a somewhat unusual review of Charles Blackstone's compelling The Week You Weren't Here.

I also published one of my many rapturous odes to Los Angeles, this one in a British travel magazine.

Modern Times

I wrote a little mini-review of Dylan's new "Modern Times" at work today - it's so worshipful, it's treading the line of "blasphemous." But writing it nearly made me cry - I miss America, I can hardly hear a Hank Williams song without feeling misty.

John Updike

I made my career trashing John Updike, and I'm not going to stop now. My new review of his novel Terrorist is up on January Magazine. You can also check out my very first book review (written at the tender age of nineteen) on Updike's Bech at Bay.

artnet

I have a Shanghai gallery review up on artnet, a tour of some recent shows in the city.

Fernanda Eberstadt

You can find my interview with Fernanda Eberstadt (The Furies, now Little Money Street) over at Identity Theory.

Jenny Lewis

For everyone who just can't get enough of my opinion, I have a short music review in local magazine SH.

Color of the Sea

I have an article in this week's San Francisco Chronicle, a review of John Hamamura's Color of the Sea.

Andrew Gottlieb

A new review up on the Verse site.

A review of Andrew Gottlieb's Half Lives.

I just finished filing my Chinese visa documents. I am required to submit a medical report confirming that I am in good overall health and do not have TB, AIDS or any other venereal disease, or any mental ill­nesses. This is followed by an ex­haust­ive list of possibly dis­qual­i­fy­ing mental ill­nesses - none of which are obviously communicable.

Sea Otters

A very short review.

County Fairs and the Wages of Fun

I have a short humor piece up at DYSKE (also featuring a photo of Dev).

January Magazine Best of 2006

My short but enthusiastic review of Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures is included in January Magazine's Best of 2006 review.

I am also completing my first assignments as a copy editor for Identity Theory.

Happy New Year!

The Crusades

The new fall online edition of Rain Taxi is here, including my article on the First and Fourth Crusades.

The Tiny

My review of the new poetry journal The Tiny is up at Verse.

Last Days of Dogtown

I have a new review up in the Sunday Chronicle.

Last night I stayed up until almost 3am finishing an article - on medieval history, no less. It felt like college again and made me that much more excited about the idea of returning to school someday. I've been thinking a lot lately about applying to graduate programs, but I can't make any firm decisions until I know where I'll be living in the coming year.

Meanwhile, I have a short little mini-review in this week's Seattle Weekly.

My first entry over at Identity Theory is up, and I'm excited to have one more place to shoot off my worthless opinions.

(There is probably some awful neologism for using one of your blogs to link to another. Please, no one tell me what it is.)

The Red Carpet

A short and sweet review of The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran, at East Bay Express.

Kafka on the Shore

My recent review of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is now available at January Magazine.