What I'm reading...again

Time to inject a bit of real content in my constant meanderings...

• 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies: It's an entertaining read. Just suspend your ability to think critically and just ride it out. Purportedly about how the Chinese circumnavigated the world decades before Columbus thought of doing it, although I'm finding the evidence Menzies has gathered to be all too dependent on whether the reader has bought into his narrative and theories, hook, line and sinker. (For example) It's convenient that the Chinese only managed to set up colonies where the Europeans also landed. You'd think all that coastline in the world, they might move into different neighbourhoods.
• JPod, by Douglas Coupland: I'm enjoying this as much as I did Microserfs. Cynical, witty, by somebody who clearly groks the geek lifestyle. There is one aspect of the book which I find just a bit too annoying for its self-referentialness.
• Assorted kids' books and guilty pleasures...There's some Garth Nix there, some Phillip Pullman (must do a re-read of His Dark Materials before the first movie comes up. Um, I'm not discussing any of the other stuff aloud. Feel free to ask me about it. I probably still won't tell. Or maybe I'll make something up

Between all the blogs, I think this is the first time in a long time I might be writing more than I'm reading. I haven't done that seriously since probably the year I did internship, I think.