What I'm reading now ... and will probably be for the next 6 months ...

I had originally purchased the hard copy of "Mao: The Unknown Story" for my Uncle Thiam Tong, an avid reader of political biographies, and queued to have it autographed by the authors at the launch.

After a couple of months, I thought I should have a go at it myself. It had the potential to be one of the few Thick Books that I have read cover to cover ... except that I've barely managed to pull through the first quarter of it since starting in February.

I haven't read Wild Swans and I do appreciate that 10 years of fieldwork and firsthand research went into this work ... but the authors dwell excessively on the personal depravity and abject evil of the man in question, that the whole working of the Chinese Communist machinery, as a system, goes unmentioned.

Or, perhaps, I should just be patient and persevere ... the crux might lie in the chapters beyond the photo inserts.