The Bulletin Page 1July 12, 2012

summer reading blockbusterAmericAn-born, english writer henry JAmes’s declArAtion, “Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language,” never feels more true than when one of those afternoons is spread out before you and the solitary item on your agenda is to sit in your backyard and dip into the book saved for that very moment. This summer, I’ve finally taken the plunge into James’s works, and I am also reading those of his great admirer and interpreter, the wonderful Irish writer Colm Tóibín, whose book The Master imagines James’s life through his lowest points and his soaring literary successes. Other worthy reads recently encountered include Fransesca Segal’s lovely debut, The Innocents, a contemporary re-imagining of Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, and sun-dappled and swoon-worthy Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (this one is stocked by the bookstore, I noticed). Walter’s sixth novel places Old Hollywood alongside new, and weaves a story set on the Italian coastline visited by a dying American actress in 1962 with a contemporary one that boasts unforgettable characters you don’t want to leave behind. Just begun are the so-far delicious and unconventional novel-cum-literary speculation, A Monster’s Notes, by poet Laurie Sheck, which revivifies Mary Shelley’s “monster” from Frankenstein, and the blackly funny and fierce, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County, by American playwright and actor Tracy Letts.

To launch your own summer reading right and for fun, we’ve added multiple “Top 10” lists to our summer book recommendations from members of our university community. In fact, we received so much great material, some of it has overflowed to U of M’s Facebook site, and you can join the conversation there. Also stay tuned next issue for an interview about his favourite books with the always-fascinating George Toles, distinguished professor in the department of English, film and theatre at the U of M. Happy summer afternoon reading, everyone! - Mariianne Mays Wiebe

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tina Chen’s top 10 books by Chinese authorsDream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. Written in the mid-18th century, this is one of China’s four great classical novels. It is believed to be semi-biographical and is a sweeping tale of the rise and decay of an elite family and the Qing dynasty

The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun by Lu Xun. Trans. Julia Lovell. (Penguin Classics, 2010). Considered the father of modern Chinese fiction, Lu Xun was a powerful voice for social change whose unflinching criticism of inhumanity in China’s past has been central to modern Chinese nationalism.

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), trans Karen Kingsbury. New York Review of Books Classics, 2006: This is a collection of four novellas and two short stories originally published to critical acclaim in Hong Kong and China in the 1940s. Chang’s stories explore the social and psychological limits of love, sexuality, and family at a time of great upheaval.

Ding Ling. I Myself am Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling edited by Tani Barlow, Beacon Press, 1990: This collec-tion features the works of one of the most prominent female writers in twentieth century China. Ding Ling’s writings focus on unconventional women, questions of sexuality, and women’s place in land reform and socialist revolution.

Please Don’t Call Me Human by Wang Shuo, Cheng and Tsui, 2003: Wang Shuo is considered the leader of “hooligan lit-erature” that gained popularity in the 1980s. Originally published in serialized form in 1989 in a Nanjing literary journal, this novel is an irreverent political farce that engages debates about Chinese ‘national character’ by mocking political culture, Chinese history, and sporting competition as means to determine national value.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, trans. Ina Rilke. Anchor, 2002: A beautifully simple story that foregrounds the power of storytelling, imagination, and friendship in China’s Cultural Revolution.

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian, trans. Mabel Lee. Harper Perennial, 2001. Gao Xingjian is the first writer in Chinese to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In this novel, Gao (now a French citizen) experiments with narrative voice as the book maps a spiritual, emotional, and physical journey through China.

Candy by Mian Mian. Back Bay Books, 2003: Mian Mian is a leading writer amongst China’s Generation X and Genera-tion Y. This “rock-and-roll drug addict story” was banned in China upon publication for its focus on drugs and sex in new China’s urban youth culture.

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua, trans. Andrew Jones. Anchor, 2004. This is the emotionally intense and raw story of Xu Sangguan, a man who sells his blood to deal with the costs of everyday crises; while he also confronts his obligations to blood relations and to a son fathered by another man.

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong, trans. Howard Goldblatt. Penguin Books, 2009. Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize and one of China’s recent bestsellers, Wolf Totem is a semi-autobiographical story of a Han intellectual’s experiences on the Mongolian Steppes. Internationally, it has been both richly praised and deeply criticized for its portrayal of Han-minority relations, human-animal relations, and ecological issues in modern China.

Tina Chen is associate head and associate professor of history.

add your picks to the top ten lists, contribute your summer reading picks and reading placeshere: Facebook.com/umanitobaor here: twitter @umanitoba

email your suggestion for a “top 10” books list to:bulletin@umanitoba.ca

Have an all-time Favourite book or an engroSSing read to reCommend?

You and you, members of the U of M Book Lovers Club

Join our summer reading conversations on twitter and facebook!

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>> see the issue in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/Nmv7Ay

tinA chen. reading places: In the summer I love to read sitting with a good cup of coffee in the patio space we share with our neighbours. to read: One of my favourite books is Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace. This book is a multi-generational family saga set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that takes the reader through Burma, India, Malaysia and

South Asia. Beautifully crafted with rich description, the book invites the reader to travel alongside the orphaned Indian shop-boy, Rajkumar and Dolly, the handmaiden to the Queen of Burma as their lives — and that of their children — are intertwined by love and the complex history of the end of the British Empire in Asia.

Tina Chen, associate head and associate professor, history.