What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[pikachu]

Highlights of q1 were:

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
Shadows At Noon by Joya Chatterji
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

Honorable mentions to The Leavers by Lisa Ko, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews.

I don't think it was a great book, but s/o to Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian for uncannily depicting the world that I live in better than anything else I've seen.

(Fwiw I do read stuff which isn't related to Asia in some way or form.)

[pikachu]

Highlights of q1 were:

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
Shadows At Noon by Joya Chatterji
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

Honorable mentions to The Leavers by Lisa Ko, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews.

I don't think it was a great book, but s/o to Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian for uncannily depicting the world that I live in better than anything else I've seen.

(Fwiw I do read stuff which isn't related to Asia in some way or form.)

Rachel Heng is an interesting choice, Singaporean authors don't get read much outside of Singapore. I've actually met her and had my copy of the book signed by her, but haven't been able to find the time to sit down and actually read it. Her previous was a bit of a dissapointment that wasted it's premise.

Yeah, I heard about it on a Japan Times podcast out of all places and picked it up bc the premise was right up my alley. Had never heard of before. This was actually my second Singaporean book - I read The Inlet by Claire Tham last year and liked it also.

[pikachu]

Highlights of q1 were:

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
Shadows At Noon by Joya Chatterji
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

Honorable mentions to The Leavers by Lisa Ko, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews.

I don't think it was a great book, but s/o to Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian for uncannily depicting the world that I live in better than anything else I've seen.

(Fwiw I do read stuff which isn't related to Asia in some way or form.)

Rachel Heng is an interesting choice, Singaporean authors don't get read much outside of Singapore. I've actually met her and had my copy of the book signed by her, but haven't been able to find the time to sit down and actually read it. Her previous was a bit of a dissapointment that wasted it's premise.

Yeah, I heard about it on a Japan Times podcast out of all places and picked it up bc the premise was right up my alley. Had never heard of before. This was actually my second Singaporean book - I read The Inlet by Claire Tham last year and liked it also.

Interesting glad you enjoy Singaporean literature; was there anything specific about it that you enjoyed ?. I'm in the process of setting up my local literary magazine so hopefully it'll have some global appeal

I feel like Singapore as a setting lends itself to two themes that I find interesting. First, and probably owing to my background, I find immigrant stories and how different cultures clash in urbanized setting to be compelling. Singapore lends itself well to that obv.

Second, and this applies more broadly to developed East Asia, is how compressed history is. I really enjoyed this about The Great Reclamation - it's crazy the amount of change that a Singaporean born in the 1920s or 1930s would've seen in their lifetime! Ofc this happened everywhere in the world to an extent, but the rapid transition from colonial outpost to developed economy was most notable there and it's interesting to see its effects on the individual character.