My Borders nametag is a badge of moral impunity; I wouldn't be caught dead carrying "The Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex" back from the computer section where some horny teenage guy left it, without my Borders nametag clearly visible.

--I realized that, while I may be disconnected from the China front, this weblog is still about books and California.  Thus, I will mention a book that I'm reading, and a couple that I just finished.

I'm learning a lot from Simple Chic's <a href="http://www.kokogiak.com/amazon/detpage.asp?sb=s&asin=0679445765" class="title">Men's Wardrobe</a>.  I've never considered myself very fashionable.  The point of reading this book is to internalize a few basic fashion principles so that I won't have to worry about them in the future.

I just finshed Simon Winchester's <a href="http://www.kokogiak.com/amazon/detpage.asp?sb=s&asin=0805038884" class="title">The River at the Center of the World</a>, a narrative of his journey up what the West knows as the Yangtze, the <em>Long River</em>, from its mouth north of Shanghai to one of its purported birthplaces in the heart of Tibet.  This bit of reading is research for a possible collaboration with my uncle on a China-related project.  In its pages, it talks about the history of the Three Gorges (<em>san xia</em>) Dam project, and in passing mentions China's Cape Canaveral at Xichang.

Another book that went down much faster was <a href="http://www.kokogiak.com/amazon/detpage.asp?sb=s&asin=0060953748" class="title">River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze</a> by Peter Hessler, a Peace Corp volunteer in Fuling during the late 90's.  It was much more anecdotal, and I connected with and enjoyed it on that level.  It deals with the Three Gorges project on a more personal level because the author lives with and talks to people who will be displaced by the flodding.  I recommend it for anybody likes to read about daily life in China.