Review - Stranger in Taiwan by Hartley Pool

For those of you who know I’m an English teacher living in Taiwan, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to write a book about at least one of these topics. Well, wait no more because someone else has already done it. Comedian John Anderson (pseudo name Hartley Pool (from Hartlepool)) has come up with a great little book that I can highly recommend. It’s all in there, all the Taiwan stuff and a lot of the teaching stuff too. In fact I’d have to say that if you are or have ever been an ELT teacher then you’ve got to get this because there aren’t enough books about this job. And if you’ve ever lived in Taiwan then it’s a must.

 

Each chapter reads like a blog entry or an anecdote so sometimes it’s a case of time having moved on in between, which can be frustrating because you want to get more involved in the personal relationship of the 2 main characters. However, to some extent this is to be forgiven because Stranger in Taiwan is essentially a non fiction book; and it started off as a blog.

The only downside is that the humour can be a little old fashioned at times and some “entries” are better than others. So if you want to get a taster of what this book is like you can read the first third of it on the autonomy website (secret tip from one cheapskate to another).

Stranger in Taiwan was released last month on Revenge Ink, an independent publisher from Paris.