2012 South China Book Festival
2012 South China Book Festival opened today on the 17th here in Guangzhou and it was my first time to visit the book festival. It truly is a book lover’s heaven! Books in simplified Chinese for all taste and reader, books written in traditional characters at the Taiwan pavilion and English books section right next to it.
South China Book Festival is open at Canton Fair Pazhou Complex (Area B) until the 23rd. The festival is free and we didn’t even need any tickets to enter the area.
If you are in Guangzhou or close-by and want to buy books, including cheap English books, you should visit South China Book Festival. Besides books you can also find lots of stationary products there.
There are so many books at the festival so it’s hard to know where to start! Most of the books were in some kind of discount, for some you could even get 90% off! The cheapest English books were 15RMB, that’s very cheap.
Books I bought
I bought Peony in Love and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See, I’ve read some of her books before and liked them a lot. I haven’t read anything from Hong Ying before, but her K: The Art of Love sounded good so I decided to buy it. It’s hard for me to resist any cheap books about China! K: The Art of Love is a true love story between Julian Bell and Lin Cheng in 1930’s China.
A true story is also Aisling Juanjuan Shen’s memoir A Tiger’s Heart, which is a story of a modern Chinese woman who was born in 1974. I’ve always liked memoirs and autobiographies from Chinese writers, I’ve read dozens of them, so I couldn’t leave this book behind.
Then I saw A Good Fall by Ha Jin. I’ve heard the name before and had the impression that he is regarded as an excellent writer so I decided to buy his book. And just now I remembered that I have read his The Crazed and it’s in my bookshelf!
The last English book I bought I had been wanting to buy for a while now. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua caused a stir when it was published and finally I can read it myself. Have any of you read it?
Some of you might remember my goal to read five books in Chinese this year. I’m now reading my second book and I have to keep up in order to finish that and three more during the next few months. Because I’ve noticed that translated books are usually a bit easier to read, I decided to buy Twilight by Stephenie Meyer in Chinese! I’ve read the second book two years ago in English when I was in a hospital and seen two movies, so familiar story will make reading easier too. The language in translated books like this is closest to my level so it’s excellent study material even though it might not be the greatest work of art.
My boyfriend asked when do I have the time to read all these books. I replied that he has no idea how many books I have in Finland that I haven’t read! Besides reading, buying and collecting books is a dear hobby of mine. Most of my books are written by Chinese authors or are about China. Some in Finnish, many in English, and hopefully later on I will have many more in Chinese too.
