Robot-mel London, United Kingdom

I found the first two comics/mini graphic novels of this at a local charity shop for £1 each. It was set in a post-apocalyptic London that had reverted from technology. It was quite interesting but the "revelation" of the setting felt too slow. Rather than being intrigued about what was happening I was just confused for most of the books. When the revelation came it was quite interesting. I'm not sure if I will finish the story though as it really didn't grab me all that much. I guess it'll depend on how cheap I can find them. Unfortunately they're not at the local library.

This is the second volume of a comic version of Pu Songlin's Strange tales from Make do studio. This is probably my favourite short story collection of all time, stories about ghosts and fox spirits so it's not really a surprise that I love this series. The interpretations of the tales are very good. This one is about a young man who helps a fox and ends up having a love affair with the fox's daughter. Eventually they have to part but she leaves him their child at the end. It's a very nice spooky story and I'm definitely getting the third volume when I go back to Paris as I will re-read these stories MANY times. The artwork is just SOO beautiful. The traditional Chinese places, costumes and people are drawn perfectly. Definitely very highly recommended.

This book is about the Chinese tomb sculptures at the Musee Germuci. I was hoping that it would be a little more scholarly and talk more in depth specifically about the collection at the museum but despite that it was a lovely little book. It's a good introduction to Chinese tomb0 sculptures, how they came about and how they reflected the changing ideas towards the after life. It has lots of really wonderful pictures of the museums collection which is very strong, particularly in Han sculpture.

This was the first of the level one books that I read. It was a murder mystery about twins. Not only was it not obvious who did it to start with but you weren't even sure who died. It was kinda amazing how much could be done with such a limited number of words. The murdered girl was a college student so it made sense for them to go to the library at the university and talk to her friends. A bit more was revealed with every person they talked to in a way that gave good repetition of the new vocabulary. There was even a cool twist on the ending. By far the best plot for this series.

This was part romance part mystery. A girl who was maid to a woman who was manager of the bank fell in love with one of the other bank managers but he was accused of stealing money from the bank and had to go on the run to prove his innocence. It was quite silly and there was a lot of computer espionage that was nothing like how computers actually work. But for that it did give a lot of good vocabularly about computers and the internet which aren't covered in most textbooks (or at least weren't in the ones when I started learning over five years ago). The plot was silly but I found myself getting caught up in it anyway. The nice thing about these is there's some lovley grammer structures that are repeated lots you really become familiar with them.

The Gods of Mars I must admit I loved a little less. Here there was much less world building and character building it was much more action based with John and his various companions almost always on the run. That said Burroughs did manage to build some suitably creepy aliens and some disturbing situations into this one, I love the idea that heaven is actually full of monsters who will devour you but if you escape and try to tell people you'll be killed for blasphamey. I think I was disappointed that Dejah Thoris and Sola were in the book so little. Thuvia when she was introduced was great. I liked that she was able to control the beasts, but was disappointed to see her replaced so quickly by Phaidor. I also liked that there was so much anti-racism in this book. The people who thought they were better because of their race were repeatedly proven wrong and misguided and those who were believed to have been hideous were shown to be courageous and noble. There was even one point where John talked about how beautiful the black skin of the Martians was and how it enhanced their beauty, which he admited sounded odd coming from a Confedorate solider. Actually the more I write about this the more I am liking the book. I really do enjoy Burroughs Mars series and definitely need to re-read them all.

So having seen the John Carter movie I really wanted to go back and re-read Princess of Mars. I really loved this series when I first read them about ten years ago and couldn't remember very much that happened and decided I had to go back and read them again. I really did enjoy Princess of Mars lots. Because I'd just seen the film I was spending a lot of time thinking about what was different and what was the same. In the book the war between the humanoid Martians is much less important before the end. I was surprised that Dejah Thoris actually wasn't a fighter as well as scientist and princess and I had remembered her seriously kicking butt. But still she was pretty great. I also loved Sola even more this time around. She was a much stronger character than in the film. I loved that she was the Martian who had experienced love and loss and was more of an actual person than most of the characters in the book. I loved the way that John always knows he's on Mars and never wants to go back. It was very enjoyable to read again.

This may be my new favourite Judge Dee book. Unlike the others he actually seemed to get involved in the case, staking his reputation on what he thought had happened. He appeared much more human and much more sympathetic. There was also an unexpected death which surprised me a great deal. The mystery was more normal, not too shocking, though I will never look at snowmen the same again. I do love the Judge Dee novels, while ahistorical in that they are supposdedly set in the Tang dynasty but are written as if it were the Ming I still really enjoy the culture and the setting. I'm definitely going to read them all.

I randomly found a lovely old edition of this book at the Oxfam by our house. I'd not come across any books by Georg Ebers before but really liked the idea of 19th century fiction about Egypt written by an Egyptologist. The book was quite lovely. It was a lot like Greek drama with much of the action taking place of stage and people sitting around in rooms talking. There was a lot of discussion about the rights of women and how they were treated in various cultures. The book was partly set in Egypt, partly Greece and partly Persia. There was a good intermingly of people from different civilisations and while there while there was quite a bit of romance and war. Though with so much based on historical accounts there were far too many unpleasant things that happened for it to be really viewed as a historical romance. There was almost too much going on in the book and at times I felt like I'd lost track of who some of the characters were and all their motivations. I think this is definitely one that is worth reading a second time to pick up on all the things that were missed the first time. I also definitley want to try and find more books of his.

Snow Queen on the other hand was a bi-lingual Chinese (traditional) and English children's story I borrowed from the library. I think I'm going to give up on the dual language ones from the library as they are all just western stories retold into Chinese and the Chinese kids books at the Chinese bookshop are much better! I first read the story in Chinese and was a bit confussed as it was so disjointed. I then read the English version and it was just as bad! it was kinda like it should have been a prompt book. Rather than the parents reading the sentance on the page they should have used that as a guide for making up their own version of the story. This really was the worst version of the snow queen I've read and the illustrations were totally uninspiring. I think the dual language books from the London Consortium of Libraries definitely turn out to be a failed experiement.