Valentin Margulius

I am still battling to finish this book. The main characters are pretty bland and their inter relationships depicted as binding , lacking warmth and credibility. While the author R F Kuang is a briliant and talented academic and scholar born in Guangzhou (historic Canton), the book draws a lot on her personal background and experiences in the UK, Oxford and China. The plot is original as an idea only, but its composition throughout the book is boring with many gaps of incredulity and lack of logical sequencies. Almost half of the book is dedicated to life at Oxford Uni and linguistics, as the four main characters belonging to four different ethnic groups learn to live and cope with their new life under the sterile British scholarship life. There is absolutely no human intimacy relations between them or with other students...is this real? This is all about colonialism, racism and economic wars, all true but presented in an overstretched, hard and fractured way. She obviously wrote this book with her heart and with a lot of background academic knowledge but has not translated all that into a well paced and balanced plot.

This book has been and still is a game changer for me. My Australian specialist put me on Nexium (PPI medication) before I discovered this book. Reading more about PPI and how bad they can be, I stopped it immediately and started searching the net for a Natural way to improve my reflux condition caused by Hiatus Hernia and preferably without medications. This book saved me and now 2 years later, my refluxes have almost disappeared, although they pop up every time I eat some trigger foods like garlic, onion, alcohol or buttery foods. For those complaining about the recipes, I have one advice: Understand first the science behind this and how it relates to your specific condition . Then understand about the importance of PH and learn the foods that YOU should eat. No two persons are the same and so are the trigger foods. Here in Australia we have all the recommended types of food (not brands), so substitutes can be found. The recipes in the original book Dropping Acid are better and easier to fllow than those in the follow up book (in my experience).In addition, the Internet has many healthy recipes in the same vein, that one can slightly modify and adopt to one's needs. Needless to say that I have parted company totally with my Gastro specialist, who originally did not bother to EVEN suggest a change of diet... so BE YOUR OWN DOCTOR FIRST.