Citizen Reader

I'm not a huge travel reader. But there are a few authors who I make sure to pick up whenever I see they've got a new title, and J. Maarten Troost is one of those authors. His latest, Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation*, was no exception. Although I don't often read books about China, I couldn't resist the lure of Troost (whose The Sex Lives of Cannibals is one of my favorite travel books ever).

It's good, but not as good as Sex Lives. J. Maarten has a very funny style, but as he does not speak the language it's hard for him to have a whole lot of run-ins with the natives (those types of run-ins were my favorite parts of his other books). He himself becomes aware, early on, of just how difficult the language barrier is going to be to overcome: 

"I want to be very clear about this. I am not blaming anyone. No one is at fault. I am even willing to consider the possibility that it wasn't done on purpose. But, as I delved into Chinese for Dummies, I couldn't help but conclude that the Chinese language is the Great Wall of languages, a clever linguistic barrier erected to keep outsiders out. What, frankly, is wrong with Esperanto? Or alphabets?...I am even, dare I say it, fairly good at languages. Typically, it takes me no more than few weeks of study until I can more or less function: I can get myself from point A to point B, I can discern the general drift of a conversation, I can sit in a restaurant and feel reasonbly confident that the dish I just ordered wasn't the Monkey Penis Special. But, as soon became coldly apparent to me, there was not a chance that I was going to even manage that in Chinese. And that worried me." (p. 16-17.)

So, a qualified thumbs up on this one. If you're looking to learn more about China (particularly in light of the Olympics having just been held there) or need a good basic travel read, this is a good choice. If you're looking to laugh a lot, go back to The Sex Lives of Cannibals.

*The subtitle to the subtitle, "Or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid" should indicate that those readers who can't abide any kind of animal cruelty might want to give this one a miss.