Currently reading
Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Tristes Tropiques
Richard III
The Dwarf
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Labyrinths
Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
Gravity's Rainbow
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
I lost interest after about 2 hours. The guy's a cultural anthropologist who sat around the Mongolian steepes for five years (after sailing the ocean littoral for several more) eating yak meat in the snow with a group of Mongolian (some, self-styled) scholars. That's very interesting, but doesn't exactly equip him to write a closely focused narrative history (in semi-novelistic fashion) about an individual regarding whom there's not much primary evidence.The first third deals with Jackie's..., I mean, Genghis' youth; the next third with his wars. There seemed to be a lot of stuff about chasing some shamanistic chick across the Gobi... though I'm not really sure... By the time he gets to the big picture (the results of the Mongolian Enlightenment, which cast its shining light from Beijing to the great Uzbek towns..., he claims), the author's lack of competence (as far as I could tell, he can't read the script) and overvaluation of his topic, didn't exactly inspire much confidence.
Better places for my time.
That said, this is kind of neat -- courtesy of a friend.
http://www.360cities.net/image/huhehaote-1#344.50,0.40,70.0