Balancing Frogs

A Pail of Oysters by Vern Sneider In 1953, American journalist Vern Sneider published his novel A Pail of Oysters to acquaint W...

Party Members By Arthur Meursault This is a satirical novel about a lowly Chinese bureaucrat whose penis starts talking one day and beg...

History of Rome Volume I: The Republic by Mike Duncan For me, this book was a review of material already covered. Practically all t...

Welcome Home, Master: Covering East Asia in the Twilight of Old Media By J. D. Adams J. D. Adams’ memoir of his years as a Taiwan-base...

Black Island By J. Michael Cole Black Island describes how the pivotal years 2013 and 2014 exposed the pitiful inadequacies in both the ...

So I’ve been practicing Mandarin listening comprehension and building my vocabulary with FluentU . The site comes in Mandarin, Spanish, F...

Officially Unofficial by J. Michael Cole J. Michael Cole is one of the best-known Western journalists based in Taiwan. His 2014 book Of...

I’ve decided to start updating this blog again. I really have very little excuse not to, as I’m not snowed under with work. It’s really a m...

I've posted close to nothing for several months, as I've been focusing my mental energies on work and study. On December 4, Jenna a...

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett Published in 1990 Published by Harper Torch The Plot : Six thousand years after the worl...

In which Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving fight to free Londoners from a tyrannical dictatorship. At least I assume that's Hugo Weav...

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco Translated by Richard Dixon Published in 2012 Published by Vintage The Plot:  Simone Simonini is...