I love the weekends because I get to read a lot more! I baked some cookies today and managed to finish a book while waiting for all the batches to bake and cool. And then I finished one after I got home and realised I didn’t have that much to do. Today, I read:

I, Coriander by Sally Gardner – This pick was definitely inspired by In The House of the Magician because after reading that, I wanted more historical fiction! This one is set in the mid-17th Century, and has a girl, Coriander, whose father has to run away for being a royalist and is shut into a chest. While in the chest, she goes into a fairyland and starts on an adventure of her own.

Generally, I really enjoyed the book for the characters (the reason why her father, who was deeply in love with her mother, remarried so soon after her mother’s death made sense, plus I love the supportive cast of supporting characters) but the middle section is a bit confusing. Basically, Coriander goes from twelve to fifteen and the book kind of ages up from MG to YA, which is a bit awkward. I really enjoyed this, because I like historical fiction and fantasy, but I don’t really know who to recommend this to – kids who might not like the romance subplots that appear later, or teenagers who might not want to start with the protagonist’s childhood?

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua – I last read this a decade ago (literally – I published my first review on March 23 2011, so I would have been reading the book around now) and well, I feel a lot more kindly towards this. The first time I read this, I thought it was disturbing and generally inaccurate as to how I (and from what I saw, my friends) were raised.

This time… I see it as a woman who wanted to write a memoir but also wanted to save face (a very Chinese concept). So how does she save face? By talking about how much more superior the “Chinese” method is while only gradually admitting at the last minute that no, it doesn’t really work.

I did find it quite funny that she would just talk about how most Chinese kids were devoted to their parents even though they were raised in a very strict style – I think that’s the kids who also want to save face, and will therefore tell a stranger that they love their parents even if they don’t.

One bright thing about this book – I went through my old blog to find the original review, and I found that around this time, I read (and apparently loved) a book called The Book of Lost Things so I’ve just borrowed that from the library to see if it lives up to the one paragraph of hype I wrote.