Everything to do with books! Mostly book reviews, but occasionally, I have the non-review bookish post too.
It’s pretty hard to look for books about Japan and not come across Lafcadio Hearn’s works. Well, I somehow managed to avoid it until recently, when I was looking for books on Japanese folklore and stumbled across this collection of essays of his. Divided into roughly two parts, Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan comprises of 18 essays… Read More Book Review: Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan
A long time ago, when dragons still roamed the earth, there was a local lord of the manor named Piers Shonks. One day, he returned home from a holiday to discover a dragon was terrorising his village and desiring the peace of his village, he made battle with the dragon and finally defeated it. The… Read More Book Review: Hollow Places by Christopher Hadley
Last year, I listened to the BBC podcast Incident at Ong’s Hat and found it fascinating. So when I found this book, Legend Tripping Online, I was intrigued. It covers Ong’s Hat and the Incunabula Papers AND it’s from a folkloric point of view, which you know are two topics that I’m interested in. Legend… Read More Book Review: Legend Tripping Online by Michael Kinsella
When I first heard of the Folklore podcast, I decided to start from the first episode, which turned out to be on Slender Man. Intrigued, I googled the Contemporary Legends journal mentioned in the episode and found this book that was based on the journey/ Slender Man Is Coming is a collection of essays on… Read More Book Review: Slender Man Is Coming Edited by Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill
“But folklore isn’t only about the past. It grows, flowers and seeds every day, because of our innate desire to control our world by means of satisfying narratives.” Have you ever wondered how Terry Pratchett came up with Discworld, with all its wonderful (and sometimes strangely familiar) customs and history? As it turns out, folklore… Read More Book Review: The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
As you are probably aware, I’ve always been interested in myths and legends, as well as folklore more generally. This year, I’ve been trying my best to read up on folklore as a field and well… it’s time for me to start talking about it on the blog. But first, what is folklore? The online… Read More Exploring Folklore
Lately, I’ve been immersing myself in Makoto Fujimura’s books. I mean, I have a really really long TBR list (probably everyone here knows that) but I reread Silence and Beauty a month after I finishing it because the books have just had that much of an impact on me. As you also know, I’ve been… Read More What I’ve learnt from Makoto Fujimura
I heard about this Korean mystery/thriller from a book podcast that I listen to and since it combined a murder mystery with books, I really, really wanted to read it. The only catch is that the book has not been translated into English – as far as I can find, it’s been translated into Japanese,… Read More Reading in Japanese: The Memory Bookstore by Chung Myung Seob
When I was in university, I read a lot of Japanese books – after all, it was mandatory since I was studying in Japanese. But after I graduated and moved back to Singapore, my exposure to the Japanese language dropped dramatically; I went back to reading and speaking and thinking in English. But sometime last… Read More My Happy Marriage: The Light Novels That Resparked Reading in Japanese
Kaikeyi has been on my TBR for ages but I’ve always put it off because I’ve not read the Ramayana and I wanted to read that first. But since I had a trip to India planned, I decided now was the time to read both books – and I did! For background, the Ramayana tells… Read More Book Review: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel