Kashgar - Xinjiang Food!!!

Okay!! Finally!!! A post in which I talk about Xinjiang food, having actually been to Xinjiang! A post in which I don’t talk about bread! Let’s begin.

So I decided before I went, that I would try the quintessential Uyghur meals regardless of whether they had meat in them or not. If this horrifies you, then maybe read this post. Essentially the decision comes down to a fear-of-missing-out paradigm that pretty much twists my arm into flinging myself into all of life’s possibilities. I.e. I didn’t go bungee jumping in Uganda because I actually thought I would enjoy it, I just knew that I would never forgive myself for missing the opportunity. It turned out to be a seriously incredible experience that nothing can compare to. Anyways, I just knew that I had to try some real Uyghur food while I was in the motherland, or I would never stop dreaming about how good it ‘could have been’.

So, to begin with, I have to remind you that the bread was a big part of the Xinjiang food experience, and so now we officially move on. Beginning with…..

THE PILAF.

HOLY CRAP THIS FOOD IS SO SO SOOOOOO DELICIOUS.

The pilaf is pretty much the national (if Xinjiang was a nation, which I think it should be) dish. They make it in these epic steel/bamboo containers that look like silos with big wooden lids, and it just sits in there cooking for hours and hours. It’s perfectly oily, and is full of dried fruits and spices and herbs, and chunks of lamb that have been cooking for about a hundred hours and are now so tender that they make cherubs weep.

The meal is served to you with a small plate of pickled vegetables which are actually delicious. Normally I hate Chinese pickled vegetables with a passion that grows and grows, but these are kind of spicy and have coriander and fresh ginger and are just really fresh and zesty. They’re actually incredible. Sometimes you also get a pot of natural yoghurt, which you can imagine is just the bomb. The whole thing is served with cups of hot local specialty tea.

     

The next delicious thing is the skewers. I mean, this is the pinnacle of the Xinjiang meat experience. They’re meat eaters. You cannot escape it. I cringe to imagine what I would have eaten had I not forsaken my veggo-orientation for that week. Probably just bread. Their diet consists almost solely of meat and bread, and the best example of this meat culture is the kebab.

Every single restaurant has them, and all along the street you can find the long, thing, specially-made barbeques pouring their charcoaled smoke into the air. It’s actually a really nice smell, it reminds me of winter and the lovely days when I used to eat big lamb roasts as a kid.

The kebabs are dusted in some kind of spice rub mix which is ridiculously tasty. I don’t know what they put in that stuff, but dude, it’s like heaven. I think it could actually be potatoes and pumpkin roasted, and if it had that spice mix on it, it would make me an eternally happy chappy.

The last real kind of food, is the noodle selection. More similar to what I previously knew as Xinjiang food, and what I learned to cook in that class I went to in Beijing. They make fresh noodles and then a tasty sauce to go with it. This is just about the only kind of food in Xinjiang that actually has vegetables in it, and it’s great. The method of preparation isn’t too unique, you know, you just put the things together in a pan and stir-fry it all up. The preparation for the noodles, however, is pretty darn special, and watching it is amazing.

 The only not-so-good thing about the food in Kashgar, and in Xinjiang in general, is the hygiene... I mean, I told you what it was like at the Sunday Bazaar, but it's pretty damn terrible everywhere. I don't want to harp on about it (lest I actually make myself sick thinking about what I ate...) but I think this next photo is a pretty funny way to wrap up the 'food' recollections of the trip.

They look so angry!!! Hahahahhaha. 

The other thing I noticed, though, is that a lot of what we were eating was kind of almost 'special occasion' foor for the locals. They rarely eat the noodle dish, and don't even have the pilaf that often. Usually they will eat a bagel ripped into pieces, and then dunked into a lamb broth. The broth is served with a big chunk of bone in it, and the rest is a clear, without vegetables or other ingredients. The men
(I barely saw women at all in any of the restaurants) would sit there and nibble off the little bits of meat from the bone, and apart from that jsut have a lot of bread. I have no doubt the broth itself was tasty, but surely the nutritional value of such a meal is nil?

The last thing I absolutely MUST mention is the Uyghur yoghurt. Holy mac, this stuff was the greatest yoghurt I have ever had in my life. Easily. Hands down. And it was 2 kuai. Thats less than 30 cents, people. 

We got a small pot each as dessert after a delicious meal one evening in Kashgar after seeing a big table beside us go crazy over it. They serve it to you in the individual little bowls that it is grown in, and give you a big container of sugar and a spoon. Also served with local tea, of course. The yoghurt tastes so amazing by itself, it hardly needs sugar at all, but when you sprinkle that sweetness on top it just comes alive as a lovely dessert! The sour nature of the yoghurt and then the crunch of those oh-so-sweet sugar granules.... oh boy oh boy. It was a culinary highlight for sure.

The last truly great discovery was the cookies. Kashgar has great cookies. Little known fact, but it's true. You buy them by weight, and then munch them at will. Totally Awesome.

Anyways, I guess to sum up, the food was much different than what I expected, but totally fulfilled my expectations of how awesome it would be.I did not realise they would have such amazing yoghurt and cookies, though. I thought that the noodles was the numero uno dish, but the pilaf turned out to really be my favourite. 

Their culture really revolves a lot around lamb (the animal) and lamb (the meat) as well as baking and bread. It was really nice to be in a place that wasn't really China, but had that same kind of food-is-an-ingrained-part-of-the-culture vibe. If you live in China, or are planning a trip to China, and you are at all interested in food and/or cooking, then Kashgar (or at least somewhere in Xinjiang) is a must.

wish i could share it with you...

Sometimes the words just don't flow as well as I would like. Sometimes I just can't seem to run as far or fast as usual. Sometimes I read a lot slower and chop my fruit really messily so the juice goes everywhere. 

Then I remember that it might be because I'm just so damn hungover. Clubbing in China is not like Australia. It's so much harder-of-the-core. By that I mean that it's hardcore. In Jinan we go to a place called PinBar and there is a live band of about 10 people covering awesome 90's tracks as well as the new stuff. People in crazy leotard suits dance on the bar (like, three at a time), you can smoke everywhere, ladies get all-you-can-drink cocktails for 50 kuai (less than 10 dollars) and the spirits are always high.

I literally lost count of the Mojitos. Lost. Count. 

We arrived at that bar at about midnight and stayed until 3. Then we got McDonalds (I can only have the chips and it's always SO frustrating becuase I want a Big Mac SO DAMN BAD (especially after drinking)) and then we meandered home.

Now that I write it out, it doesnt appear to be too different than a crazy night out back in Brisbane, but it really is. Everything here is always just so much zanier. 

It feels like the night herself has been drinking
and the cold breeze is flirting with you trying to get under your coat.

The sun wont rise until later becuase he has a hoarse throat

so he sends the mist at four

into you and air and your mind.

And you believe him.

And when you lie to your bed you are sticky from your sweat

but there is a hand holding your mind so that

you cannot control it. 

You won't fall asleep but you will wake up later.

With only bruises to show where that vice grip led you.

And shards of glitter caught in your eyes.

 

I spent the better part of today eating almonds and drinking strong black coffee. I tried to write about the religion in Kashgar, which I have been meaning to write about for a while now, but it just wouldn't come. My brain, apparently, is still a little too mushy.

I'm listening to the new Beirut album, and it's really speaking to me. If you need one track to convince you, go straight to Goshen. There is something very special about this album. 

So I couldn't write. So what is a youngen do with her time when she should be studying? 

(Click to enlarge.)

This is my favourite picture (left) so far from Kashgar. 

There is just so much meaning in it. The curtains and her muslim veil. The perspecitve of looking through all the layers to find her obscured at the back. The femininity of the curtains against her dark figure. I can just look at this picture for so long. It means a lot to me.

So I tried to draw/paint it! 

I mean, I did. I wish I could share it with you but as you know, I don't have a scanner here in Jinan.


  

I thought I'd give you a quick snapshot of my desk though, because I love seeing pictures of other people's desks on tumbler. If I had a tumbler I think there would be so many pictures of desks on it. And bookshelves! I love seeing a good bookshelf! It's like intellectual porn. You can also see that my plants are still well and happy! I'm very proud of them. They're just so darn metaphorical because I remember buying them with my mum way back when I had just arrived and they were small and now they're big and healthy and oh gosh stop me now. Too much metaphor!!!

Anyways. I'm going to go make some dinner and hopefully when I come back I might be able to actually post something educational. For the record, though, dinner is a delicious chunky tomato, potato and chickpea soup with garlic and ginger and dark soy sauce. SHAZAM!

Kashgar Bread

      "Well, that seems to be a very specific topic." I can hear you think.

Yes. Apart from being able to read your mind, I'm also quite aware that this post sports a rather narrow focus - but it's a gread focus! Bread is the bomb! Especially the bread in Kashgar. Man, do those kids know their bread or what? 

It's not 'what'. Thats for sure. It's damn good bread.

I don't even know where to begin talking about it. All the different kinds and all the times I ate it and the fact that I ate bread and apples (and nothing else) for about 5 days and still wasn't really sick of it. Yeah, you're hearing this. It was that good. Just believe me already! The truth is, I began to write about the amazing food in Xinjiang in general, and I realised that I had a page full of photos and stories that were just about bread. Without even beginning to discuss the pilaf and lamb and honey and markets everything else I had myself excited. 

No matter the kind of bread, they call it ‘nan’ and yes, it’s pronounced the same as Indian naan. You whippersnappers can google that history and get back to me. A local dude told me that Napoleon had something to do with brining the foods that Kashgarians invented to the wider world, but I’m pretty sure every country in the world thinks they invented spaghetti and pizza, so let’s just move and talk about how awesome it is now.

So yes. This is a post entirely about one kind of food (bread) from one very small city (Kashgar). Let us begin, and for lack of another idea for structure, we shall travel chronologically through my bread experiences.

Humble nan beginnings.

We arrived in Urumqi, the big (read: capital, but not actually very big) city of Xinjiang on nightfall. It was cold, and as usual, the train station and surrounding area was an assault on the mind and body. Auditory overload from the shouting and hawking-then-spitting-combo and traffic jamming was accompanied by the visual shock of being in such an entirely different place. As usual, in a ‘developing’ area like Xinjiang, you don’t actually want to know what that bad smell is, and the concept of personal space is also still in the ‘developmental’ stages. As usual, you feel dirty and smelly and generally sleep-deprived from your train ride. No, you will not find a genuine taxi. For a few ginger moments you wonder why you came.

And then. Just when you thought all hope was lost. You feel light behind you and as you turn towards that comforting neon glow, a lady materialises, and she is selling hope.

Big, round, carb-filled hope. Crispy yet chewy, slightly garlic flavoured hope. It’s bread hope. And it’s 5 kuai for two bigger-than-your-face pieces.

This was my first introduction to the bread of Xinjiang province. Yes, I concede, it isn’t exactly Kashgarian bread, but they pretty much invented it in Kashgar, and it’s where this breaddy tale begins. So shoosh!

This is a much better picture, from the centre of Kashgar Old Town, of what this nan actually looks like. The puffy thick part around the edge is so chewy! Every kind of bread in Kashgar is ripped with hands, and I actually got guns from just ripping my bread apart. It’s tough stuff. Nevertheless, you can chew on that thick part, but the big thin middle section is a whole different story. It satisfyingly cracks like a crispy thin crust – which is kind of exactly what it is. The best ones have flecks of garlic or salt or red onion on them, and the flavours are just so wonderfully rustic and authentic. 

 

People seem to buy this nan in massive bags of ten or a dozen. You can see people everywhere, walking with armfuls of nan.

The other thing that makes this nan so special is the beautiful pattern on the surface. Little stamped conentric circless start from the and spread out. 

The awesomeness that is a bagel from Kashgar.

My personal favourite was the bagel. I mean, the locals didn’t call it a bagel – but it’s exactly what it looks like. You find out as soon as you life one of these puppies, though, it ain’t no ordinary bagel. The begin with, they weight a ton! It is easily the most dense bread I have ever eaten in my life. Ripping chunks apart could prep you for the marines, and one mouthful is probably instant death for anyone even remotely celiac.

What do they taste like? They kind of taste like white bread - except healthy. The shiny golden brown top is crispy, and the inside is heavy and moist. The walls of the bagel ovens are salted, so the undersides will often hit you with amazing chunks of rock salt that have incidentally transferred. It’s actually an incredible experience.

The old dudes at the Tea House knew the perils of this bagel life. Despite the tens of dentists around Old Town (still baffles me) most of the locals had terrible teeth. My strong young healthy chompers could barely manage the Kashgar bagel, so I am sure it must have been impossible for them to chew through one on a daily basis. Their solution was to rip the bagel to chunks then plop most of it in their bowl of tea. They wait for it to soften, then slurp it all up together in big spoonfuls. This makes complete sense when done with the staple, but apparently delicious, local lamb soup. Tea baffles me a little.

I couldn’t bring myself to dunk the chunk in the bowl, but I did sip the tea while breaking my teeth on the still-hard-bagel, and I slowly came around to the idea that the two flavours might maybe be mixable.

Nevertheless. The bagel has cemented itself a place in my culinary heart.

I think one of the other reasons for this, is because bread was just so clearly a part of life in Kashgar. It was their staple even more so than their famous rice– and noodle–based dishes. Bread was always for breakfast, it was usually in lunch, and often in dinner. When you walk down the main street of Old Town, about one in three of the people there are employed by the local bread trade. They either cook it or sell it or eat it in trade of their fruits. It is like the lifeblood of Uyghur people.

 

In the early morning the smoke billows up from their nan ovens, and strong young men knead the colossal balls of dough, muscles rippling from the strain. One will be standing in front of the mouth of the oven, checking the progress of the baking, holding his long iron tongs ready to extract a fresh-and-ready bagel for you. He’s sweating from the heat that rises straight up and over him, and he’s an expert at what he does. He learnt the skill from his father. He is an artisan. 

 

Lastly, we have the surprisingly easy to eat rippy-strippy nan.

This is the main kind of bread (aside from two bagels) that we took with us on the desert trek (which I will write about soon, I promise). This one is really delightful actually. It reminded me of a croissant in the way that it flaked off, and ripped apart so smoothly. The bread was so soft and easy to chew, and without a doubt it had a creamier texture than any of it’s other nan siblings. That first picture I have of it is from our sandy sunset picnic, which was just such a perfect time. A quintessential Kashgar experience.But this is what it looks like close up. It is not to be confused with the number one mentioned nan.

Apples and bread. Bread and then some apples. A sip of water, too! And then we would maybe have and apple, or maybe a little bread, but definitely later on we would have some bread and apples.

One other thing you have to know about bread in Kashgar, is that it’s a completely hands-on experience. Everybody touches the bread with your hands – the people that make it, the dude you but it from, three people who looked at that bagel before you, then your own grubby hands. In the beginning I would internally flinch. 

 

“The dirt under those fingernails is at least as old as me.” I remember thinking about one old guy who we brought breads from. If you asked for four nans, he would run his fingers across the top of the majority of loaves, push some others aside, and feel about at least six before he chose a different four and put them in your bag. You just have to get over it. Once you do, your world will open up to a whole new level of deliciousness. Withoutadoubt there is something to be said about the action of ripping your bread apart as you eat it. The bread becomes an experience.

And, dear friends, that is what the bread in Kashgar truly is. An ­­experience.

     

What I've Been Reading.

I have to preface this post with the statement: “I’m feeling really good!” Because I am. There are many reasons for my feeling this way, and I will now attempt to communicate these with you before delving into my latest literary conquests. 

1.      I am currently eating a Nutella sandwich and drinking a nice cup of tea. This potentially ordinary situation is made awesome by the facts that; a) the tea is in my Dalek mug, and b) there is SO MUCH Nutella on this sandwich. 

2.      My awesome Brisbane friend Phuong and I recently booked airplane tickets for two weeks in Phuket together on my way home. SHAZAM! We’ve decided to rent a little bungalow on the beach and only; read books and write books and watch movies and sip cocktails from coconuts. It’s going to be the perfect purgatory before arriving home. 

3.      My awesome Finnish friend Hanna and my other awesome Brisbane friend Dan are coming to China to visit me for Christmas!!!. We’ve decided to go up to Harbin together for my first ever white Christmas. Can’t wait. 

4.      I ran a really long way when I went for a run. 

5.      I bought a superdooperwaycool MacBook Air and it just arrived at my Brisbane home, and when my mummy ships it to me the parcel will also be full of timtams. HOORAH! 

6.      I am listening to the new Beirut album and its amazing. 

7.      Lot of people have been reading my blog. Like, lots. Super popular as of late.Still baffling.

SO! Moving right along. What have I been reading lately, and why do I feel it imperative to share with you these readings? Well, since arriving in Jinan I (chronologically) finished ‘The Fry Chronicles’  by Stephen Fry, then ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ by Junot Diaz, then ‘What the Dog Saw’ by Malcolm Gladwell.

I began The Fry Chronicles with, to be honest, very high hopes. I had received it as a birthday present in Australia a long time ago, and had been aching to read it for more than 6 months before I finally got my itchy fingers on it again. The lovely hardback edition where Mr. Fry is sitting on a humble wooden chair wearing a corduroy jacket (my love for corduroy is infamous) and stripy socks. He sports a magnificent side part of hair, and wears an indescribable expression of authority/knowing/smugness, which he himself tries to explain (away) in the book itself. I was very excited. I cannot say I have read this book’s predecessor ‘Moab is my Washpot’, but I do count myself as a Fry fan. I’m big on his vodcasts (no, not misspelt, have a squiz at his website) and QI is, like totally, the best quiz show ever.

Review conclusion:
If you like Stephen Fry-
then you’ll like this book.
Wow, so insightful…

So how, then, could I have possibly been at all disappointed in this tome? I’m not sure. Let me be clear, it wasn’t bad. At all. The book was good. It was a good book. I find it difficult even now, to articulate what exactly put me off.

I appreciate his stubbornness on certain subjects, and his movability on others. I adore his use of language and his way-with-words is exciting and creative. It was entertaining and it was insightful. A little too much name-dropping for my liking, but perhaps I wouldn’t have minded so much if I was actually familiar with half of those dropped names. Or indeed, if I was just a little older and a lot more British.

To try and come to the point, I think he is a great man, but this is a good book. He has achieved so many wonderful things in his life, but the book reeks with a sense of him trying to apologize for these, and even down-play them. He will say he is sorry for how ‘lucky’ his monetary situation was, then talk to us for several paragraphs about his awesome cars. It’s not the cars I don’t want to hear about – it’s the apologizing. Even when he doesn’t expressly say it, the implications of his constant self-undermining are just so present. He describes wonderful achievements as ‘lucky’ and paints his friends as saints who just happened to constantly grace him with their presence. It is the very picture of humble, but unfortunately in book-form, it becomes tiresome.

What I do know for sure, is that while I didn’t really like the book as a ‘read’, it made me like Stephen Fry as a ‘man’ even more. Weird, I know, but if you’re the kind of person who likes Stephen Fry, then you’re the kind of person who will understand how this is possible. The conclusion, therefore, is that I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the man himself (you know, if you’re actually a fan) because you will find it illuminating and inherently interesting, and it gives you a reason to worship him even more. If you aren’t already a fan, then DON’T BUY THIS BOOK. It would surely be kind of boring.

Moving on. Almost.

I delved into the next book ‘…Oscar Wao’ on the same evening that I finished Mr Fry’s autobiography, and I noticed that a strange thing happened. I was reading Oscar Wao as if it were true. I know, I know, when we read we create the alternate universe in our minds and suspend reality in order to create the fiction blah blah blah. But it was more than that. For the previous ten days, I had been reading about (if you trust Mr. Fry, as I do) real life events, and the autobiography had self-reflexively (not misspelt, look it up) talked about how much it was an autobiography. You know – how real it was. That kind of thing puts you in a certain headspace when you read and I accidentally, but interestingly, carried that headspace along to this next book.

Review conclusion:
If you’re a cool person-
then you’ll like this book.
Again with the insightfulness…

 What helped this fantastical notion along, is that Oscar Wao is a book about the life of one individual. It isn’t always autobiographical, but it was definitely biographical. Like never before, these characters were in front of my eyes. The Dominican landscape of Oscar’s youth was so real to me, I expected to be able to fly there right now and have it exactly as Mr. Diaz paints it. Oscar was a real person. It was so clear.

To be fair, Mr. Diaz is also an AWESOME writer. It’s the first time I have read a book and been so sure that me, as an individual, really responded to it in an individual way. The way he writes is so full of swearing and slang, that even when he gets passionate and flips into another language, I can still totally dig what he’s saying. It did win the Pulitzer of 2007, and was the recipient of tons of insatiable reviews, but I still feel like my interaction with this book was unique.

Oscar is a nerd – and I understood ALL of his Star Wars references. The whole book is set in the Dominican Republic, and I have never been anywhere near that whole region, but by Jesus, I totally get it now. The location of the story is at the heart of it all as much as Oscar is and sootnotes (yes, actual footnotes in a work of ficiton, as a reference to how much of a nerd Oscar is – AND I LOVE IT) provide you with a slang-filled, down-to-earth history of the place.

It isn’t just about ‘place’ though. The vivid picture that Mr. Diaz paints for you also includes the characters. Actually, I would say that in the most complete of ways, this book is entirely propelled by the characters. Their depth. The very nature of who they are is the source of every new turn of plot. The people in this life are absolutely compelling. The chapters are, in turn, narrated by several of the integral characters in the story, and what this means is that you get everyone’s real opinion of everyone else. You also feel very familiar to each of them. I came away from the book feeling like I had a third-person level of understanding of each character, but it had the intimacy that you get from reading a first-person book. Incredible!

Haruki Murakami said (I stole the quote from this cool guy’s blog) in his acceptance speech for The Jerusalem Prize:

"I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness."

Murakami is quintessential, non-optional, absolutely-required-for-life reading. I feel like what he says here totally and utterly explains what Mr. Diaz did so well in Oscar Wao – he brought so many new souls to life, and in doing so, completely refreshed my brain from ‘The System’. Mr. Diaz refreshes his characters from the Dominican Republic ‘System’ too, but that would just be getting too deep for a discussion where I presume you haven’t read the book.

I guess my final comment for Oscar Wao, is that if you don’t like contemporary fiction (whatever that means) then don’t read it. But if you aren’t a million years old in your literary tastes, then read this book before any other.

 And now onto the third book I want to mention as having already read – ‘What the Dog Saw’ by Malcolm Gladwell. Some of you (i.e. Hanna) spotted the book in my lovely/poetic/vain train photo. It’s a collection of journalistic-style stories collected from his publications in The New Yorker. I started and finished '...Dog' on the Xinjiang trip, and it was a wondrous situation in which to read the book. Mr. Gladwell has a brilliant way of making incredible connections between phenomenon and the people involved in said phenomenon. He articulates concepts which perhaps we all pondered, but felt we could never begin to express. He also writes about things that none of us could ever have even begun to ponder, as they are so unique and wondrous to truly be genius.

A theme I see re-emerging in this post, is the idea of truth. I think, again, I got so involved in Dog because Gladwell writes with such truth. It is, of course, a work of non-fiction by a journalist-kind-of-guy, but I’m not really talking about facts. I’m talking about the way that Glawdwell communicates with you through the pages, as if he were really chatting to you. Difficult concepts are explained clearly without being condescending. Humans are treated as subjects of inquisition as well as individuals with stories. Without a doubt, after reading Dog I now understand why Mr. Gladwell is so famous. He’s damn good at what he does.

His book also makes me proud to be human. Not in a we’rethebestestheroeseverandareallawesome kind of way. It’s more subtle than that. He covers topics which were big back when I was in kindy. He talks about things from the 50’s when I wasn’t even a hypothesis. But he makes me dig it. His stories are mostly about America, but he makes me dig it. Heck, one of them was about the stock market, which confounds me completely, but he makes me dig it. In each chapter, each story, he searches for a universal human truth and teaches you about yourself.

Kind of like Ghandi, maybe? But better. I’m sure of it.

I was watching Dawson’s Creek the other day (just the pilot, to see if I’d like it, which I don’t) and I couldn’t believe that Michelle Williams was in it! So then I googled her, and found this quote of hers about someone (potentially) much more intelligent. And that intelligent second-hand-quote caught my eye:

            “I think Vladimir Nabokov once said that genius is finding the invisible link between things. And that’s how I choose to see life. Everything’s connected, and everything has meaning if you look for it.”

My favourite pic of
Vera & Vladimir.

This is what Mr. Gladwell does. He finds the links between everything around us, then finds the links between humans and those things, then tricks you into becoming attached to the people in the story, and by the end you’re emotionally involved in the insightful conclusion. In my books (and in his, lol, pun, let’s continure) that makes him a fully-fledged, Vladimir Nabokov-level-genius.

 

I feel like everybody should read this book, but I know that many might not like it. In some ways, Dog is like medicine. It’s good for you. You should do it. It’ll make you better. Personally, I found it simultaneously entertaining, but if you aren’t the kind of person with a subscription to The New Yorker, or the kind of person who studies philosophy for fun, or the kind of person who is interested in analytical journalism, then this isn’t for you. I want you to read it, like I want you to eat well and go for a run, but thank god I ain’t yo mamma. I can’t tell you to spend twenty bucks on something you don’t want.

But please do?

So that is the end of me talking about what I have read for the past while. Right now I’m into, simultaneously (naughty naughty, I know!!!) ‘Faulks on Fiction’ by Sebastain Faulks and ‘Tom Sawyer’ by Mark Twain. I loved ‘Huckleberry Finn’, but that was about five years ago now, and I’m finding Tom a little tedious. Anyways, I’ll talk about them once I’m done. and

After those, I have ‘Superfreakonomics’ and/or ‘The Finkler Question’ to start. Any suggestions?

Also, I painted some alternative book covers for the three books I discussed (a favourite past time of mine) which I really wanna share, but I don’t have a scanner here. So whatever. I don’t even care. Scanners are dumb anyway. Shut up.

Also, tomorrow afternoon after my dictation test for Chinese class, I’m going to write some more about Xinjiang, I hope you’re still interested!

Also, I maybe finished another Nutella sandwich during the creation of this post. SHAZAM!