From nobody to somebody

Yoshikazu Kato, a successful Japanese columnist in China, may be one of the most suitable people to write a book on how to inspire young people to lead a life of achievement.

Having lived and traveled in China for nine years, the 28-year-old has risen from being a "nobody" to a celebrated critic and an influential China watcher.

His newest book differs from previous ones that are on social and political issues. To the Confused Young People is a conversation with readers on sharing personal experiences and ideas. In the book, Kato talks about education, the future, generational differences and his own life stories. In addition, he offers a cross-cultural comparison with Japanese youngsters.

- Mei Jia

Learning Chinese at turbo speed

Saurabh Sharma, an Indian who came to work in China four years ago, has developed a method of learning Chinese characters fast. He shares his secret with over 500,000 working expats in China in his new book Turbo Chinese, published by Foreign Languages Press.

Having a full-time job and no prior knowledge of the language, Sharma got frustrated with his "abysmal performance" when he first started learning Chinese. The need for learning fast prompted him to use the characters as visual triggers for images embedded in his mind.

It is in this way that he began to tap into his experiences and develop his own interpretation of the characters in a way that could help him remember them.

According to Sharma, learning Chinese has less to do with memory and more to do with technique. He believes that Chinese comes alive when the learning is inspired by life experiences.

In the book, he talks about his experiences with the inner nature of Chinese, and introduces visualizations for 100 Chinese characters and some Chinese characters that have been derived from English or other languages. He also outlines 20 words that describe relationships and introduces more formal rules of remembering the characters and pronouncing pinyin.

- Yang Guang

Desperate Dan seeks a new home online

Britain's longest-running comic book is facing closure after 75 years in print.

The publisher of The Dandy said last Tuesday it is reviewing all of its magazine titles to meet the "challenges of the rapidly changing publishing industry".

Circulation of the weekly comic book, first published in 1937 and best known for cartoon cowboy Desperate Dan and Korky the Cat, dropped to less than 7,500 in the second half of 2011. At its peak in 1950 it sold some 2 million copies.

Scotland-based DC Thomson stresses it has yet to decide on the future of The Dandy, but will ensure all of its characters live on in other platforms - hinting that their adventures may soon be available only online.

"There are many challenges within the industry at present, but we're excited that the digital revolution has also given us an opportunity to innovate and develop," the publisher says in a statement.

The Dandy chronicles the adventures of Desperate Dan, a strong, big-hearted cowboy with a weakness for "cow pies", or enormous meat pies with horns sticking out of them.

- Associated Press

The Hunger Games is Amazon's No 1

Amazon.com announced on Friday that The Hunger Games trilogy has replaced the Harry Potter saga as the online retail giant's best-selling series of books.

"Since debuting in 2008, Katniss Everdeen and the Hunger Games have taken the world by storm, much as Harry Potter did a decade before," says Amazon.com books and Kindle editorial director Sara Nelson.

The trilogy by Suzanne Collins about children forced to fight for their lives in a Roman circus-style televised blood sport in a dystopian world has outsold Potter even though J.K. Rowling wrote seven books about a boy wizard.

"To achieve this result in just four years is a great testament to both the popularity of the work and, we think, the growth in reading digitally during that time," Nelson says.

Hunger Games titles have consistently made it into Amazon.com's Top 10 lists in print and in digital format for the Seattle-based firm's Kindle electronic readers.

- Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 08/21/2012 page19)