What are you reading Wozzy?

I have just finished 'China Road' by Rob Gifford. Like 'River Town' by Peter Hessler, the book is written from the point of view of someone who has lived and worked in China, providing an awful lot of insight into the lot of the Chinese everyman ('Old Hundred Names'), that is not provided by the scare-mongering, black and white texts spewed out by left and right-wing fuckwits - or by the literati, glitterati and chatterati of China's newly emergent middle class.

There are about 150M people in China who earn a decent whack, and they're located in the Eastern areas of the Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta & Pearl River Delta. The other 1.2 billion are not doing so great - 750M of them are still regarded as peasant farmers. The Communist Revolution of 1949 was for them, but they have benefitted the least, and this is the fault line in China's prospects for future growth and stability.

My next book in the 'China list' is Susan Shirk's 'China: Fragile Superpower'. She has over 30 years of dealing with China and spent some time as a diplomat. After that (time willing) will be Peter Hessler's 'Oracle Bones' then Will Hutton's 'The Writing on the Wall'. Then in Feb '08, Penguin's 'History of China' should be released.

That, the job, the poetry/prose and the MBA should keep me busy.