03.Jul.2010 Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Love in a Fallen City was picked by Claire for our Asian Book Group. It’s a perfect selection after The Good Earth, because both women wrote in the same era, both about China. Buck is even mentioned in the Introduction by Karen S. Kingsbury, the translator. “[Chang] tried , with little success, to break into [...]
19.Jun.2010 On Hong Kong
I haven’t done any Short Saturday for a while, because I’m reading short stories from Love in A Fallen City by Eileen Chang for our Asian book group this month which I will talk about after I finish the collection. I love that the book is set mainly in Hong Kong. Having been there three [...]
27.Mar.2010 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
“In had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung fruit from it and from the fruit, silver.” ~ p31 In The Good Earth we follow the story [...]
12.Jan.2010 Waiting by Ha Jin
I have other things to post, but I almost can’t wait to talk about this book! I read it sometime at the end of December during my vacation, brought over to January, so I’ll just count as my first book of 2010. And what a great start it was! Waiting is written in English by [...]
01.Jan.2010 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was a nice surprise. Yes, many of you have raved about how good the book was, but somehow I had managed to keep my expectation low. Most probably because it’s written by a woman, who despite of her Chinese heritage, is looking very white :). I don’t know how [...]
06.Sep.2009 China Challenge: Embracing Roots
My grandfather from my dad’s side came to Indonesia from China by boat in his youth carrying a single suitcase. Only in recent years that I knew at that time he also left a wife and two children. He later married my grandmother and never went back to his birth country. He’s my closest link [...]
04.Jul.2008 The Updated 1001 Books
So apparently they changed the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. They took out and added not only a few books, but 284 books! That’s a whole lot of changes! Almost a third? So now we have the 2006 version and 2008 version. I wonder if they will change the list every [...]
12.Jun.2008 A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
This book is shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, interestingly. I was flipping through the first few pages at Borders and was intrigued, so I borrowed the book not long after from the library. As funny and interesting the main character’s thoughts were, I quickly got annoyed with the deliberate writing of [...]
01.Aug.2007 The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
This is the 3rd book from Amy Tan, her first book that I read. It’s about Olivia, a half Chinese-American, that meets her half sister from China, Kwan. A lot of stuff about ghosts, reincarnation, and basically all Chinese superstitions. There are two parallel stories going on, this life and previous life. Both’s equally interesting [...]
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The first book from Amy Tan. It’s collection of stories about mother daughter relationships (four pairs to be exact :). Again, I feel it’s so captivating by each and every word. It’s like magic, fairy tale, and reality put together. I wish I could put all the quotes that caught me here, but then I [...]