Comments on: Book Review: A Stress Reliever and History Lesson in One

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:55:23 +0000

@Ryan,

While I totally agree, I feel like Zhang Yimou has really gutted the work of Mo Yan to a degree where it is completely unrecognizable.

By: Avi

Avi — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:58:08 +0000

This sounds awesome. Some historical insight with entertainment value as well. I just placed an order for a copy. Been itching for something good to read lately.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:08:55 +0000

John – you do well to populate my “to read” list. Cheers man.

@Sean – Do you know of a director that doesn’t do that? I think the fact of it is, it is a rare literary work that directly translates well to the screen.

By: Sean

Sean — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:33:46 +0000

Mo Yan is excellent. I have enjoyed all the books I have read of his. Red Sorghum and the Garlic Ballads are just two of his books that I found exceptional.

The only bad outcome from reading his books might be a little less respect for how Zhang Yimou always changes Mo Yan’s stories to become movies. Night and day really.

By: JohnG

JohnG — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:08:34 +0000

Yes there definitely is a lot of humour spaced out in between the pages to make it really enjoyable. Thanks for the recommendation I will check it out.

By: One More Quick Note « One-Eyed Panda’s Journal

One More Quick Note « One-Eyed Panda’s Journal — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:54:21 +0000

[...] One More Quick Note Jump to Comments For those of you who didn’t click on the links in my last post, I’ve started to write for Lost Laowai again. You can find my latest post here. [...]

By: Last Day in Canada « One-Eyed Panda’s Journal

Last Day in Canada « One-Eyed Panda’s Journal — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:51:08 +0000

[...] also been doing some serious reading again. I finished Chinese novelist Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out and am now devouring Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief. The two novels are different in [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:48:40 +0000

Sounds like there’s a lot of room for humor there – the idea of remembering past lives as you reincarnate as various animals could become quite slap stick unless the author cares about his or her characters – looks like there’s no trouble of that happening here.

I’ve been keen to read anything on Chinese history, historical fiction or straight out non-fiction, since I read Yuan Tsang Chen’s book “Return to Middle Kingdom”, which chronicles 3 generations of her husbands family fighting through 3 separate revolutions. It’s a great book for anyone wanting to learn more about the birth of modern China, and because of it I found this blog and your review and will now seek out Mo Yan’s book. Nice one, thanks!