This Week's Readings and the Book Club Picks

For this coming week, please read Murphey, chapter 5, on Chinese civilization (22 pages) by Monday and Murphey, chapter 6, for more on Indian civilization (14 pages) by Wednesday. Blog posts are due by midnight on Wednesday.

In addition, please consider possible titles for our Asian fiction book club assignment, and make suggestions in the comments below. Titles that are already on the list include To Live by Yu Hua and The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. That covers China and Laos. How about something for India and Japan and ...?

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Traditional Societies (pre-1900)

The readings for this week are Murphey, Chapter 3 (20 pages), due on Monday before class, and Murphey, Chapter 4 (15 pages), due before class on Wednesday. Blog posts are due by midnight on Wednesday.

Asian Religions

Hope you all had a wonderful long weekend! It's a short reading week for us, so I've assigned just twenty pages (Chapter 2). This chapter is a foundation for everything we talk about going forward, so I will likely quiz you on the basics.

We are still short a few blog links ---->
Please make sure you have sent me your link and created your first post before midnight on Wednesday, or there will be much mocking and grumbling on Friday.

Asia: Continent and Concept

What countries should we include? Why?

Please order your textbook ASAP. You can order it from wherever you prefer as long as you get the correct edition of Murphey (ISBN-13: 978-0205168552). For example, the textbook is available on Amazon. If you find a better deal, please let us know in the comments below. Resist the urge to use the e-text version.

Assignment:

• read the introduction and first chapter of Murphey, pp. 1-26, and make sure that you can answer the review questions on pages 8 and 26 (due in class Friday).
• create a blog for the class and email its address to me by tomorrow (Thursday) at 9 p.m.