Everything to do with books! Mostly book reviews, but occasionally, I have the non-review bookish post too.
I first heard about Dr Gwen Adshead when she was the lecturer for the BBC’s Reith Lectures. Her four talks on the problem of violence were so insightful that after I immediately put a reservation for a copy of her book: The Devil You Know. For me, the book and the talks complemented each other.… Read More Book Review: The Devil You Know by Gwen Adshead
Hello friends! As you know, I’ve been tired lately, and I even talked about how I think I’ve piled too much on my plate. This is a bit of a recurrent topic for me, so I’ve been doing some reading on what I can do about it, and today I want to share five book… Read More Five Books That are Helping Me Slow Down and Refocus
I loved Hanna Alkaf’s debut novel, The Weight of Our Sky, and really liked her other novel The Girl and the Ghost, so I was definitely interested in reading more from her. Queen of the Tiles is different from her previous historical novels as it’s a contemporary YA story about grief, disguised as a murder… Read More Book Review: Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf
After reading River Town, I decided to move on to another book about China – this one about the “return of religion after Mao” (according to the book’s subtitle). One thing I noticed in River Town was that while people didn’t like to criticise Mao Zedong overtly, they were rather willing to admit that he… Read More Book Review: The Souls of China by Ian Johnson
I had a business trip to Suzhou and Shanghai and was too ambitious about how much reading time I had, which is why I started River Town in China but finished it in Singapore. River Town is a memoir of Hessler’s two years in Fuling, a small town on the Yangtze river. Hessler was there… Read More Book Review: River Town by Peter Hessler
Since I have been reading more Japanese literature (and since my memory of struggling through “人間失格/No Longer Human” in the original Japanese is fading), I decided to reread Natsume Soseki’s classic, “I Am a Cat”. I’ve read it years ago and my main takeaway back then was that the first chapter was lots of fun… Read More Rereading: I Am A Cat by Natsume Soseki
I can’t remember where I heard about this book but I’m always up for some fun Singlit so I actually made a trip to the library (instead of looking on Libby) to borrow this! The Formidable Miss Cassidy is a historical fantasy novel set in end-19th Century Singapore. Leda Cassidy has arrived in Singapore to… Read More Book Review: The Formidable Miss Cassidy by Meihan Boey
After reading and enjoying The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett, I was interested in reading more from her. So when I had a long trip, I decided to borrow the book as a palate cleanser between all the nonfiction I was reading. And wow. I started this book only intended to read a chapter or… Read More Book Review: The Appeal by Janice Hallett
After listening to やさしい民俗学‘s series on the history of the kimono, I decided to read Kimono – A Modern History and brush up on my knowledge of the kimono. As the title indicates, this book is about the kimono from 1850 onwards, till about 2014 when the book was published. Split into six very long… Read More Book Review: Kimono – A Modern History by Terry Satsuki Milhaupt
While I was looking for books to borrow for my trip, I saw this and thought it would be a good fit. I might be going to the Near East and the Far East and yes, I am coming from Southeast Asia but all these countries have, in recent times, been heavily influenced by if… Read More Book Review: The Light of Asia by Christopher Harding