Book Review: Three Strong Women A Tall Tale from Japan By Claus Stamm, Jean and Mou-sien Tseng

Great story telling with fun and beautiful illustration. Great for staring reader age 6+.

Book Review: The Nile, a journey downriver through Egypt's past & present by Toby Wilkinson ISBN 9780385351553

This is not a review as I haven't read the whole book yet, but just as a holder for future return. Egypt has been fascinating to me, and I once had a neighbor who worked as an environment engineer for a Unisco project in Cairo for extended period and his description of many healthy and strong Egyptian men wondering around Nile bank at night without ever trying to find work left me a strong impression and a big question: why Egypt today resembles none of its old glory? Why Egyptian today can settle in such idleness with so little to show? This book may not answer my question, but I hope history of Nile will reveal some clues.

A better review of the book can be found here

Book Review: To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron ISBN 9780061768262

".. account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet" "from our greatest living travel writer".

Maybe a good companion when you visit Tibet.

Book Review: The Diet Fix, Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work by Yoni Freedhoff ISBN 9780804137577

The book gives out a 10-day reset recipe for people to adapt their daily eating and excising habit to control weight gain in a natural and non-traumatic way. After reading the book, for people comes from Chinese food culture it feels like Mom is talking to you about all the eating on time, eating from all food groups, etc. But still a good book to go through.

Book Review: How to read a book, a classic guide to intelligent reading by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren ISBN 067121280X

The book explains

• Why activity is essence of good reading, the more active reading is, the better is
• What is active reading: asking questions
• What questions must be asked of any book, and how those questions must be answered in different ways for different kind of books
• Four levels of reading, and how these are cumulative, earlier or lower levels being contained in later or higher ones

Great book can grow your mind, what have you read lately?

Book Review: Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace By Al Ries and Jack Trout ISBN 0071373586

A tight and entertaining book about how to effectively using word to trigger the image you intended for __ (fill in the blank here: product, company, your city, yourself as a college applicant, etc).

Some memorable quotes from the book:

• This is the classic mistake made by the leader. The illusion that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization. It is just the reverse. The power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the product owns in the prospect's mind.from Chapter 6
• .. words don't contain meanings. The meanings are not in the words. They are in the people using the words. from Chapter 25
• The big winners in business and in life are those people who have found open positions near the center of the spectrum. Not at the edge. from Chapter 25
• To repeat, the first rule of positioning is: To win the battle for the mind, you can't compete head-on against a company that has a strong, established position. You can go around, under or over, but never head to head. from Chapter 25, remind you of Steve Job's early days in his return to Apple, not to compete against Microsoft, and John Chen's current Blackberry days, not to compete with Apple in consumer market, but rather focusing on enterprise market.
• In our overcommunicated society, the name of the game today is positioning.

Books about Berlin to memorize 25th anniversary of fall of the Berlin wall

A lot of things happened 25 years ago, one that we closely related to occurred in Beijing, but today is for another happening: Nov.9, 1989, a wall in Berlin fell.

Three books about Berlin that I don't have time to read yet, and hope to read later are:

• Berlin Portrait of a city through the centuries by Rory MacLean
• Berlin Now The city after the wall by Peter Schneider
• The collapse The accidental opening of the Berlin wall by Mary Elise Sarotte

Book Review: Amy for short by Laura Joffe Numeroff (ISBN 0027681807)

Amy is the tallest girl in the class, and best friend of Mark, the tallest boy. After summer of 2nd grade, she grew one inch taller than Mark, and the friendship seems to strain.Would Mark come to Amy's birthday? As the backcover of the book said: "... all youngsters who are beginning to read will enjoy Amy's ingenuous story of her bumpy romance and the key to its happy resolution". Funny and touching, a great book for both young and old.

[UPDATE12/03/14]Laura Numeroff's other books are also great choices for young readers

• If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• If You Give a Moose a Muffin
• If You Give a Dog a Donut
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• If You Take a Mouse to the Movies
• If You Give a Cat a Cupcake
• If You Give a Pig a Party
• If You Take a Mouse to School

Best books for kindergartner and 1st graders to enjoy reading.

Book Review: Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith In the New China by Evan Osnos (ISBN 9780374280741)

[UPDATE]The book wins 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction category. Well deserved.

I have lived in the States for nearly two decades and I have seen American understanding of China increasing by leaps and bounds, but still when I read books or articles written by Westerners about China, they tend to depict China in one huge brush stroke, either China is an economic miracle bent in world domination or China is a dictatorship society thrives in crushing human rights.

What a delighted surprise to read Evan Osnos wonderfully written book. In the prologue, the author mentioned he had lived in China for eight years and it shows in the book. The author does all the usual China observers do: marvels at its economic progress and questions its neglect of human rights and one-party dictatorship. But what sets the book apart is its detailed and nuanced depiction of individual Chinese: former World Bank Chief Economist Lin Yifu, dating website Jiayuan founder Gong Hainan, blogger Han Han, artist Ai Weiwei, human right activist Chen Guangcheng, Crazy English follower Zhang Ziming (Michael), Hong Kong gambler Siu Yun-ping, publisher Hu Shuli, nationalist web blogger Tang Jie, railway official Liu Zhijun, the list goes on, from big shots to small potatoes. The author told life stories of these people in the backdrop of China’s economy and China’s political system. And growing up in China under Communist rules myself, I can relate to these stories and I feel the author understands Chinese way of thinking and sometimes he speaks from a Chinese viewpoint. From the book I assume the author can speak Chinese very well. Yet he is also able to pullback from his subjects and narrates the stories from an outsider American viewpoint, and his analogy of China today to American Gilded Age really struck a chord with both Chinese people and westerners, as validated by rave review it received from Washington Post.

One of the three best non-fiction books about China I have read. The other two: The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor and Red Star over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism by Edgar Snow.