BOOK REVIEW
- Details
- Published on Saturday, 04 June 2011 01:00
Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). 237 pp. ISBN 9781594202841
Reviewed by Raymond Lum
Here's the skinny: I hate this book.
I hate it not for what it is (because I have not yet figured out what it is) but because of what it appears to be.
Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 02 March 2011 00:00
New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010. xx, 354 pp.
Reviewed by Raymond Lum
Charlie Chan and his fortune-cookie aphorisms, introduced in the immensely popular novels of Earl Derr Biggers beginning in 1925, and later in forty-seven Hollywood movies that featured Caucasian actors with taped-back eyes, presented both positive and negative stereotypes of the Chinese. Mostly, they were positive, showing the Chinese, or at least one Chinese, as astute and intelligent but challenged by English verbs. Among Charlie Chan's philosophical utterances as invented by Biggers, were these:
Schoenberg's new book a Success
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 27 August 2008 09:49
With delight, I read Speech Insights for Success by my friend, Marlene Schoenberg. The book is well written, funny, and educational. It raised my awareness of the many interesting aspects of the English language. It offers so many pieces of practical advice on how to do things better, about speaking the language, interacting with people, and about learning in general.
Book Review
- Details
- Published on Friday, 31 December 2010 00:00
Deborah Fallows, Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language. New York: Walker & Co., 2010. 205 p. ISBN 978-0-8027-7913-7.
Reviewed by Raymond Lum
Can a billion Chinese be wrong? Contrary to popular myth, Chinese is not an impossibly difficult language to learn. Spoken Chinese is, rather, deceptively simple and is much less complex than English. Consider this: in Chinese, "he" and "she" are the same words; there are no singular or plural forms; there are no verb forms (no past, present, future tenses; the only tense aspect of Chinese is foreigners thinking it's hard); numbers are based on the decimal system, although larger numbers are in groupings of ten thousands; agreement of nouns and verbs is not necessary. "Book have picture" can be singular or plural but is perfectly clear in context, as is "I already went tomorrow at this time."
Submit Content to Website
If you would like to submit an event, link, blog, request information, submit an article or advertise with us, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.