I finished The Great Man and also read Trouble over the weekend. Unfortunately, we’re out of Christensen’s other books at my store! Now I have to wait to read them. Both books are fantastic. I’m not sure if I like one over the other–they’re very different. Trouble is more subtle and had a more traditional one person perspective. But then again The Great Man wouldn’t have worked as well without the various narrators. I’m eager to read the rest of Christensen’s books.

Meanwhile I’ve started Wolf Totem because I wanted to read a Chinese bestseller. Supposedly it broke all sales records and earned “the distinction of being the second most read book after Mao’s little red book“. Set during the Great Leap Forward in 1960s China, it depicts the dying culture of the Mongols through the eyes of a Beijing intellectual who has traveled to live among a small nomadic group. It took about 20 pages for me to get into it, but the descriptions of life in Inner Mongolia grabbed me.