Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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Category: Books

  • Broken Dreams by Tom Bower

    Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football This is a frustrating book. Unfortunately Tom Bower’s previous experience as an investigative journalist isn’t enough to overcome his lack of knowledge about professional football. He has built his reputation writing about a series of famous people, and has usually managed to uncover information that…

  • Nigel Slater: Toast

    Fumier recommended this book to me, and funnily enough I had considered buying it last time I was in the UK, but annoyingly I saw it in a bargain book shop (the hardback for £3 or so rather than the £16.99 cover price) but hesitated – on the grounds that if it was that cheap…

  • Martin Booth: Gweilo

    Martin Booth approached the task as a novelist, and happily he succeeded in creating a work that is absorbing, evocative and funny. The reader gets a real sense of Hong Kong in the 1950’s, but from the perspective of a young boy. It’s a good read and a fascinating insight into life in Hong Kong…

  • Book Review – Jonathan Fenby: Dealing with the Dragon

    Jonathan Fenby was editor of the South China Morning Post from (I think) 1995 to 1999. His book is ostensibly a diary of one year (1999), though actually it’s about Hong Kong over a longer period, obviously including the handover. It starts with an interesting and quite entertaining chapter about Hong Kong. Reading this it…

  • Boring books

    The Irish writer Roddy Doyle has caused a certain amount of controversy in Ireland by criticising James Joyce. I have to say I’m with him on this one! When I studied English at ‘A’ level, we weren’t given a very attractive selection of books – there was the obligatory Dickens (Bleak House) and Shakespeare (Coriolanus!),…