Blaming the Moon

I think John Blofeld (see previous post) would like that I started to read his next book, Old Pu's Travel Diary, on the eve of Zhongqiu Jie (Mid-Autumn Festival). It appears to be an expansion of City of Lingering Splendor, a bigger memoir and all the more poignant because he wrote it while he was dying, in Chinese, no less. I will think of him as I drink tonight while gazing at the moon from my lanai.

It's always a little hard for me to decide what to read next; the options are infinite. Pawing through my over-abundant to-read pile, I considered Lamb by Christopher Moore; the latest Botswana book by Alexander McCall Smith; a couple of "serious" books considering whether Jesus went to India or Tibet during the missing years; and another China memoir, "Socialism is Great", by Lijia Zhang, a post-Cultural Revolution testimony and coming-of-age story.

I chose Blofeld. I blame it on the moon, which also happens to be the name of a terrific restaurant (named after a song) where I dined in Palm Springs just about exactly a year ago. I think there was a full moon then, too, though it might not have been Zhongqiu Jie.