Expat Books part 3

I have to say, I liked reading this book. Since it was originally a blog, it reads like a blog and the very short chapters get a little distracting after a few dozen. But maybe this is a brilliant marketing strategy. Most people have very short attention spans these days. Today's readers get impatient with fifty-page chapters. Maybe chapters that last one page will be more popular.

From Taiwan to Texas is easy to read. I mean that as a compliment. I just read a similar English-teacher-in-a-strange-land book that was the most pretentious thing I've ever seen. The author of that book thought having a part time job as an English tutor in a foreign country for a remarkably short amount of time made him Mother Teresa. He did not seem to realize that temporary EFL teachers are a dime a dozen. We're all supposed to be impressed that he just came home from doing what thousands of others have already done. The author of Taiwan to Texas isn't trying to impress us. He's just telling us his story in a candid and relaxed style that should appeal to those of us who love to read all day as well as those who can only read one page at a time.

My main gripe with this book is that it's a sequel. The author tells us in the introduction that we don't have to read the previous one to understand this one. That's true. The stories are easy to follow without knowing what happened in the first book. But now that I've read this one, I have to go and read the first one.