During his schoolboy days, New Zealander John Ross, was interested in far-flung places such as South America, Papua New Guinea, Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as books on World War One and Two. He read a lot of youth fiction starting at 10 years old, but as a teenager, had a voracious appetite for nonfiction. In his 20s he discovered a few wonderful fiction writers, but has still kept mostly to nonfiction through the decades.His first books – Willard Price’s Adventure series and Gerald Durrell books on real-life animal collecting. He also read detective and war stories (Biggles) and lots of travel accounts and travel guides.Robert Louis Stevenson was a favorite: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and later discovered that he was a very good essayist. Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.The ancient Greeks left a great impression – Herodotus (The Histories) and Thucydides (The Peloponnesian War)In his early 20s he started reading proper literature – Anna Karenina, Dr Zhivago, George Orwell, and Joseph Conrad. He loved Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game series featuring colorful adventurers and spies in exotic locations. In his early 30s he discovered Raymond Chandler and in his 40s H.P. Lovecraft.For books on Asia and East Asia, he started reading about Burma in the late 1980s, and early 1990s, and Mongolia in the mid-1990s, and increasingly China and Taiwan, and even some works on Japan.Some well known book titles that made an early impression were Lost Horizon by James Hilton, Burmese Days by George Orwell, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, and Jonathan Spence’s China books. Also books on Asia by Maurice Collis.Amy remembers reading Black Beauty (Anna Sewell, 1877), Walter Farley’s series The Black Stallion (1941), and a book called Ponies Plot (Janet Hickman, 1971). She read a lot for school: English literature such as Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, Shakespeare's plays, and American authors: John Steinbeck (1930s–1950s), J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Roald Dahl, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach. Also A Separate Peace by John Knowles and she recalls that in first grade, her teacher read to the class Little Pear, about a Chinese boy, by Eleanor Francis Lattimore.From her parents’ book collection she read Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (1868), and Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bronte as well as stories by Charlotte Bronte.In college she read works by Thomas Pynchon (major works from the 1960s onward), Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird (1965), Blind Date (1977)In high school, her father paid her to read books, and she vividly remembers excerpts from Henry Hazlitt’s The Foundations of Morality (1964). She credits these books for her interest in philosophy.Once she knew she was headed to Japan, she read Edwin Reischauer’s The Japanese Today (1988), and Japan as Number One, by Ezra Vogel (1979). For most of her childhood she preferred non-fiction and didn't start reading fiction seriously till she arrived in Japan and read Haruki Murakami. Now she reads everything!At the end of the podcast Amy & John encourage listeners to ask write to them for suggestions on what books to give friends or family. They'd like to choose one request for each episode and at the end of the show talk about their suggestions. Since the BOA Podcast doesn't have an email address (yet), they ask you submit requests via social media:Follow BOA on Facebook and contact via Messenger.Sign up for the BOA newsletter, from which you can reply directly to each email. Happy Holidays! The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island. and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.The Books on Asia website posts book reviews, podcast episodes and episode Show Notes. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Subscribe to the Books on Asia newsletter to receive news of the latest new book releases, reviews and podcast episodes.

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