The International Search For Fortune And Glory

Today is the first posting for a new blog intended to characterize myself by providing a list of some of my favorite books and music. I am a 24 year old student with one remaining semester which will be spent in Beijing at Tsinghua University and I have spent the majority of my life receiving some form of education in the liberal arts. My education which goes beyond schooling has yielded a great many interests which extend to the study of natural sciences, social sciences, the arts, and popular culture. Beyond that I don't know what profession to pursue and I have never been to a foreign country save for Canada.

This semester is going to be a unique experience and I expect that it will have a more profound effect on my future than all of the media I've absorbed thus far. Many of the books in my list have provided me a unique perspective with which I can view the world, especially A People's History of the United States, and while their study has been challenging toward the lens through which I viewed American history through secondary school, they have only offered me a vigorous exercise in rhetoric.

By contrast, Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History has instilled in me an interest in the physical remains of great societies. Ranging from the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napolean's Army to the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered by a couple of kids playing hide and seek while playing hooky from school, to King Tut's gold laden tomb or the ruins of Troy which proved the existence of the city written about by the poet Homer, these sites offer a doorway into the past which cannot be understood merely by reading about them. One of the sites written about by Patrick Hunt, I will undoubtedly get to see in Xi'an, the tomb of the Terracota Soldiers dating back to the 3rd century B.C. The tomb was discovered in the 1970s by a farmer who was digging a well and has yet to be fully uncovered. In it resides thousands of stone soldiers each with a unique face, supposedly built to protect the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi in the afterlife.

During the semester while I encounter things completely removed from American culture, I intend to document the experience as best I can using words and photographs. I also intend to sharply define myself as an American in a foreign land while cautiously and piously attempting to avoid the aura of a typical American tourist. I want to get the most out of the experience of course but I don't want to accidently alienate myself from the many other westerners in the program.

I will post more of my favorite music, books, movies, and video games on the blog through the summer in attempts to refine my writing for the trip. If I can figure it out I will also post the original music I've been writing and recording over the summer. I suspect that music will occupy a small portion of my career following college and this will serve as the first avenue for spreading the word about the many musical projects of Will Ruff.