Short Great Wall book reviews

[chinoook]

Hello,

I very much appreciate the collection of Great Wall books. I here discovered the Si Lai "Journey Along the Great Wall" and already got a (used) copy of it. Great!

May I ask everyone who introduces a new book to write at least a very short review? Something like "a very good book" or "bad text and average photographs" could be sufficient.

Our goal shoud be a complete database of Great Wall books with additional information.

Last proposal: We should not write a whole thread for every book. I think the writer of the first post should add all comments to the first post by editing it. So later reviews should be sent to him and he or she adds it.

Thanks

-chinoook

[Bryan]

I think this is a very good plan.

When I posted the Great Wall books, I did all of them at one time and I didn't spend much time describing them. But all of the books on the list are books that I actually own, and I have read every one of them at least once. As time permits, I will try to write a few comments about each one, especially the ones that I liked. It makes sense to me to put these reviews in the same place, as they are already organized by subject, and that would keep all of the information in one place.

I have not read the books I listed under future books, of course.

If anyone has read these books and would like to submit a review, they should certainly feel free to do so. Also if anyone has information on additional books, they should feel free to share that information too.

Later, I will try to add some short reviews for the videos too, as some are much better than others.

Additionally, I'm planning to create a thread listing Great Wall magazine articles that I have read, and I will try to provide a short review of each of these as well.

Eventually, it would be nice to have a review of all Web links as well. But the books and videos are a higher priority in my opinion. It's easy for anyone to check out the Web links by investing only a little bit of time.

[chinoook]

Sounds good.

I offer to write short reviews of many books as well. The books you listened I own and some more. I will check my books at the weekend and try to help completing this list.

One more recommendation: I would rather like to have all books in _one_ thread in alphabetical order. It is very difficult to tell wether a book is a history book or a general if it is both. I don't think the splitting helps to find the books for someone who is looking for a special book.


-chinoook

[Lingyu]

Hi, Li an, you look so cool on the photo. Can you tell me where you took this picture? By the way, I have been waiting for your more pictures, especially for Dunhuang.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by chinoook

Sounds good.

I offer to write short reviews of many books as well. The books you listened I own and some more. I will check my books at the weekend and try to help completing this list.

One more recommendation: I would rather like to have all books in _one_ thread in alphabetical order. It is very difficult to tell wether a book is a history book or a general if it is both. I don't think the splitting helps to find the books for someone who is looking for a special book.


-chinoook

Your reviews would be more than welcome. I will be interested to hear about your additional books. I would guess many of them are in Chinese; I thought I had most of the available English language Great Wall of China books.

I thought about how to organize the books and I considered alphabetizing them. But I figured people would be looking for ideas on new books to read rather than looking for a specific book, so I decided to organize them by topic. You're right, it was not always clear which thread to use as many books fall into more than one category, like books with both photos and historic information.

If one wants to look for a specific book, of course they can always use search.

A database or spreadsheet with columns for name and type as well as author and so forth would be ideal as the list could be sorted as desired. However, vBulletin doesn't offer this sort of functionality and I am not sufficiently motivated to write it myself.

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Lingyu

Hi, Li an, you look so cool on the photo. Can you tell me where you took this picture? By the way, I have been waiting for your more pictures, especially for Dunhuang.

It was made at 山丹 (Shan(1)dan(1)). In the background you can see the Ming dynasty Great Wall, behind (some 50m) there is the Han dynasty Great Wall.

Yes, I will show my pictures, give me some time ;-).


-chinoook

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

Your reviews would be more than welcome. I will be interested to hear about your additional books. I would guess many of them are in Chinese; I thought I had most of the available English language Great Wall of China books.

I thought about how to organize the books and I considered alphabetizing them. But I figured people would be looking for ideas on new books to read rather than looking for a specific book, so I decided to organize them by topic. You're right, it was not always clear which thread to use as many books fall into more than one category, like books with both photos and historic information.

If one wants to look for a specific book, of course they can always use search.

A database or spreadsheet with columns for name and type as well as author and so forth would be ideal as the list could be sorted as desired. However, vBulletin doesn't offer this sort of functionality and I am not sufficiently motivated to write it myself.

Ok, I understand your point of view. What about making an alphabetical list of our own and link to the threads? I would consider this a step forward of this forum. I like the scientific approach ...


-chinoook

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by chinoook

Ok, I understand your point of view. What about making an alphabetical list of our own and link to the threads? I would consider this a step forward of this forum. I like the scientific approach ...


-chinoook

That makes sense! I will add it to my list of things to do.

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by greatwallforum

That makes sense! I will add it to my list of things to do.

You can count on my help considering most issues which improve this forum. So if it is to much work at a point just ask ...


-chinooook

[Kim]

I recommend that publishing company, year of publishing and ISBN is included in future descriptions of books, that would make it a lot easier to find the right book