Jeou-Fen and Eslite Book Store, Taipei

Leona and I just got back from three days up north in and in Taipei; went to a place called Jeou-Fen, a former mining town on the mountainside with long tourist alleys. It was on a Thursday so most tourists hadn't gotten off of work or school yet; it's the only time to go travelling in Taiwan if you don't want to get trampled or in a traffic jam. The next day we had Passover Seder with a hundred Jews, mostly from Israel, and a rabbi from Hong Kong originally from Brooklyn. It was a nice dinner (tasted kosher, Leona said) and light on the prayers, thank God. Leona hooked up with two college friends for tea time chats. The only disappointment for me (besides having no sex) was finding the fourth floor music department of Eslite bookstore closed for renovation! I almost cried when I saw the escalators blocked. The bookstore, however, was open, one of the largest English selections in Taiwan. I spent around 2000NT-$64 on six books but got a discount. Here’s what I bought:

 Three Collins Classics: John Keats Selected Poems and Letters, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe*, Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton, an edition that I hope to exchange because I didn’t know doesn’t include three of the most famous tales (“Aladdin’s Lamp,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and “Sinbad the Sailor,” all supposedly added in the 1700’s by the French translator), 1421; The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies, Destiny Disrupted; A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, by Tamim Ansary, and Danube, by Claudio Magris, translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh. (*I hope to exchange it as I already have a copy.) I am lucky to have the time to read but I can’t read more than an hour at a time or I get distracted. I can read in the morning up the river and in bed before going to sleep. The books I’ve been reading before bed, Marco Polo and Helen Keller; The Story of My Life, I’m both about half way through. They are dry and I can only read ten or so pages at a time. Meanwhile, I shot through Clapton; The Autobiography and am shooting through Jews Without Money, by Michael Gold. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road waits in the queue and I’m putting it back in the bookcase for when I’m ready.

      There are five books that I’ve finished reading and won’t be reading again. I want to donate them to Belling’s Deli and Bar where there is a small English lending library or even drop them in one of the city reading boxes; there’s one in front of Chung-Yo. They are: Forrest Gump, Around the World in Eighty Days, Of Mice and Men, Life of Pi, and Light in August.