Books on China not to buy

Are you looking for something to read in the upcoming May holidays? Access Asia breaks with a tradition in reviewing books and lists in this week's newsletter three that are actually so bad, you should not buy them. So in AA's great tradition of not being afraid to piss people off, you should not buy:
By Will Hutton: The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy.

The Windbag of the Third Way displays a profound and deep lack of knowledge of (or even passing acquaintance with) China, but still manages to stuff his bank account with royalties anyway.

By Sid Smith:China Dreams.

We can only assume that Sid Smith is a fake name for a teenager somewhere in Wimbledon who’s turning in these manuscripts to his uncle’s publishing company. Nothing to do with China, or anything much else for that matter, except some lunatic dreams that make no sense whatsoever – the only good news is that it’s less than 200 pages long.

By Guy Delisle: Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China.

Another in the “oh I’m a foreigner and China’s really weird” school of books. For 150 pages! As bad as a language student’s blog (and they are all really bad) covering strange food, funny accents, they’re not really like us at all, and on and on and on.

More at the Access Asia Website.
The reviews all bear the hallmarks of our celebrity speaker Paul French, who is working through our Speakers Bureau. Are you interested to hear his critical view directly, do not hesitate to drop me a line.