Some recommendations for reading wanted.

[holger]

Hi,

I'm on my first visit to China at the moment and bought some nice books from a series called 汉英对照 with english on the right and chinese on the left pages (how could it be the other way round I really enjoy reading these as I can always take some pages in english until the story catches me and then switch to chinese and do something for my reading skills. This series feature some of the more famous writers of modern and also premodern time and I think are quite valuable for any chinese lerners. The fact that the english translations are not really excellent and have some grammar bugs even helps because it makes me more curiuos about the chinese text.

I would now like to read some more recent literature, not older than 10 or 15 years. I wonder if threre are comparable dual-language editions, or something similar, maybe in separate volumes with easy lookup comparable chapters etc. available.

Anyway I'll sooner or later start to read books in chinese, without translation so I would highly appreciate any recommendations for titles that fit the following criteria:

+ it sould be not too difficult language niveau for i've only learned 2,5 years up to now. and also not too local style language.

+ it should be something that may have received good or bad critics, but it should have received some attention for whatever reason except pure market advertising.

+ I don't care if it represents mainstream or underground views, actually i'm quite confused about the distinction since i'm here so "both" would be useful, to put it very simple.

+ it should

- give a realistic view into the world of younger urban people's everyday lifes or

- be a historical novel that's based on true events or

- be an utopian story or science fiction about chinese society and

- not be a love story with a happy ending.

I know there's plenty of literature on the web but I'm trying to get away a bit from the screen (at least until my fingers won't tip around in the air while talking to real people)

And btw I'm not searching for guo wai literature translated into chinese.

I was searching a bit on joyu.com but found them not very well sorted, most of the titles occur in any category after a while.. which online-booksellers are good?

Another question. Does anyone know a good second-hand bookstore in Tianjin?

And, where do I have to go for buying some really cheap english reprints "cambridge history of china" or so?

http://n0t.de/v/user_albums/Tianjin/

Thanks so far!

[gato]

How about these? The first is a selection of short stories by Ah Cheng in both English and Chinese. The second is a selection by Lei Da, a well-known literary critic, of some of the best novels written in the last 30 years. This is in Chinese only.

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=445463

阿城小说选(英汉对照)

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=9048183

近30年中国中篇小说精粹

[stoney]

holger,

Could you please give some more info on; "bought some nice books from a series called 汉英对照" Where to buy? ISBN # ? etc.

Thanks

[holger]

Thanks Gato,

I'll take a close look at those. especially the second one seems a very good idea to me.

I bought them in 外文书店... We also looked in some Xinhua bookstores but i think i'll try to order the books i buy online next time.

One title from the series I mean has isbn 7-119-02945-2

"Echo of Classics - Masterpieces by modern chinese fiction Writers" 外文出版社。