Category Book Review
Pondering the Possibility of Being Forever Other
This moment imprinted on me the sense of Malacca as my home, a sense I have never been able to recover anywhere else in the world. To have felt the familiar once is always to feel its absence after. The town through whose streets I mourned publicly, dressed in black, sack, and straw, weeping with […]
We Must Stand Against Each and Every One, or Who Are We?
“The boy must die,” Bernard insisted. “Or the world dies with him. In horror beyond earthly imaginings. What is one boy against that?” “Everything,” Erin said. “Murdering a boy is an evil deed. Every evil act matters. Every single one. We must stand against each and every one, or who are we?” – Innocent Blood […]
Rejection and My Love/Hate Read of Ender’s Game
I received my first rejection letter from a grad school today and the deep waters of my soul are troubled. It’s useless for friends to say rejection is a part of life — of course I know that. It still stings anyway. It still makes you feel like your insides are thunderstorming. My insides have […]
Lunchtime LM Montgomery: Jane of Lantern Hill
My favorite children’s book is Anne of Green Gables, hand’s down. I can’t remember when I first read it or how I came to possess the book. Presumably my mother bought it for me — I don’t think my pocket money stretched to books when I was under ten. Perhaps she bought it for me […]
Notes on ‘And The Mountains Echoed’ and ‘On The Noodle Road’
Well, friends (for so I choose to call you, despite a. not knowing if anyone reads my blog and b. not knowing who it is that reads my blog) I’m back from vacation and deep in the throes of post-travel blues. I think I managed to do quite decently by my reading list, finishing two […]
Notes on The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (Review)
I’m not sure how it is for other readers when they read books written by their fellow countrymen, but as a Malaysian Chinese, reading a book written by another Malaysian evokes a variety of complex feelings. As a writer, there is a certain amount of envy (goddammit I want to write The Great Malaysian Novel!), […]
On My Eternal Crush on Neil Gaiman. Also, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I think we all know how I feel about Neil Gaiman here. I’ve made my feelings quite clear. He writes his books longhand, responds to his Twitter and Tumblr fans (and in a real way, not some half-assed ‘my PR person made me write this’ way), has wildly curly hair and loves his dog (and […]
In Which I Read and Drool and Contemplate My Increasing Age
The first time I went to Black Sesame Kitchen, a small private kitchen here in Beijing, I was extremely apprehensive. Oh, not about the food, which I had heard was scrumptious (people need to bring back this word and retire delicious) but because it was to be a communal dinner. Just me, my boyfriend and […]
On the Many Ways in Which Neil Gaiman Comforts the Small, Scared Child in Me
He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing. Last week, after a day of phone calls and text messages that foreboded an uncomfortable and scary disruption to my cosy world, I went online and bought the entire Harry […]
Buried Beneath All The Lies 