Currently Reading

I'm currently reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. It's the story of a family during China's cultural changes from being dominated by the Japanese in the early 1900's through the Communist reign of Mao and through the current times. I love reading generational stories and biographies about women and their fight with their families for a better life always draw me in. This one is no exception. Here's the synopsis from the back of the book because I'm no good at explaining what its about much less giving reviews. LOL.

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the femal experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love. Jung Chang describes the life of her grandmother, a warlord's concubine, her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of foureen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving---and ultimately uplifitng---detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

And to boot, I found it at Books A Million in their cheap book section. As I've said before I love going there and finding these little cheap treasures.