Denver, CO -- July 31, 2007

Reading Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Recently he finished the latest Harry Potter. He’s in summer vacation from Law School. When he has time he reads spy novels, legal thrillers by Baldacci.

He tried to read Oliver Wendell Holmes, but is putting it off for another couple of years until he’s no longer wiped out from Law School.

His favorite book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter Thompson. He loves it--started out as a dream, throw all caution to the wind and live a crazy life, but can day dream. He read it for the first time ten years ago and has read it three or four times since then. On the Road is another favorite. How do these books make him feel? If he were to read them again right now—old. How did they make him feel at the time—it’s hard to explain. He showed the movie Fear and Loathing to his students when he was teaching in China, invited some of them over to his apartment—freshmen and sophomores in college—and they didn’t know what to make of it. In their minds, he thought, maybe Eragon would be closer to reality.

Another good book--Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang which he read 7 or 8 years ago. It makes war more real. He hadn’t ever seen evil in reality quite that vividly before. The author later committed suicide, perhaps related to researching her own family.

If he were to write his own book it’d be a spy thriller. Though, on second thought, he said he’d be more likely to writing American Colonial History. His wife, he said, is the writer. She wants to write a thriller, though he compares her work more to that of Amy Tan, not for the Chinese connection, but for the style.