by Sharlene

Library Loot (February 18 to 24)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday and Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the second day of the Year of the Horse, and I’m out visiting relatives and eating tasty lunar new year treats.

What did you get from your library this week?

Claire has the link-up this time.

Here’s my latest library loot:

The Solitary Gourmet – Masayuki Kusumi

So I’ve not actually seen the Japanese TV series Solitary Gourmet 孤独のグルメ (starring Yutaka Matsushige), but I have seen Matsushige’s TV series K-foodie meets J-foodie, which also stars Korean entertainer and singer Sung Si-kyung. In that show on Netflix, they eat at different places in Japan and Korea. Anyway this is the manga that started it all.

Cursed Daughters – Oyinkan Braithwaite

A woman gives birth to her daughter on the day that her cousin is buried, and everyone is convinced the baby is the reincarnation of the cousin.

People Like Them – Samira Sedira

Didn’t mean to borrow two thrillers in the same week, I just thought this sounded interesting (insular French village, new family moves in) and I like that it’s a book in translation by a woman translator and written by a woman.

by Sharlene

Library Loot (February 11 to 17)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?

Here’s my latest library loot:

Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy

Another one of those “best of” books, and this one sounds like a thriller. It’s got a family on an isolated island near Antarctica, and a woman who washes up on the shore.

The Invisible Hotel – Yeji Y. Ham

This Korean book is described as “literary horror”.

Lucha of the Night Forest – Tehlor Kay Mejia (audiobook)

This author has written quite a few books! I seem to only have read one other, Miss Meteor, which was a collaboration with Anna-Marie McLemore.

Womb City – Tlotlo Tsamaase

That cover does require a good second look. It’s very striking, isn’t it? It’s fitting for a story with such a synopsis:

“Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy.”

Corky Lee’s Asian America – Corky Lee

I’m not sure how I came across this book, but it’s a great collection of photos by photographer and activist Corky Lee, alongside essay contributions from prominent Asian Americans like playwright David Henry Hwang and writer Helen Zia.

Tokyo These Days vols 1, 2, 3 – Taiyo Matsumoto

Matsumoto wrote one of my favourite manga series, Sunny, about a group of kids who live in a foster home. So I was thrilled to find this series!

by Sharlene

Library Loot (February 4 to 10)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?

Claire has the link-up this time.

Here’s my latest library loot:

Clap When You Land – Elizabeth Acevedo

I was rather convinced that I had read this one, but apparently I haven’t! I did read Poet X though,

Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare

One of the many challenges I’m working on is the Storygraph’s Read the World challenge. And this is for Albania.

For Her Consideration – Amy Spalding

Can’t remember which challenge this is for now, but I needed something set in the entertainment industry.

Welcome to the New World – Jake Helpern and Michael Sloan

A graphic memoir based on the experiences of a Syrian family who moved to the US on the day of T***p’s election victory.

by Sharlene

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (January 29)

Atmosphere – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reid sure knows how to write a readable story that tugs at the heart. It’s no wonder she’s a popular writer. It’s the kind of airport fiction book. Like, if you’re in need of a decent read that would last you through a few hours of airplane ride, then when you’re done you leave it in the seat pocket for someone else to find because you’ll never think of it again, much like buttered pasta. Why have buttered pasta when there are so many other delicious ways of eating pasta? So, I guess I’m saying… it’s an ok book? Somehow it made it onto quite a few “best of” lists. Why, I don’t know. Best of average books maybe?

The Best Worst Summer of Esme Sun – Wendy Wan-Long Sheng (audiobook)

Reading challenges always lead me down interesting paths. For eg, I wanted a YA book by a POC writer, and also a POC writing about sport. So this kind of fits into different challenges (and probably more besides). This book was a really relatable one about Esme, who is kind of the underachiever of her family, her sisters are all excelling in something, such as being first chair in their school orchestra, or winning awards at school. Esme realises that she’s actually a pretty good swimmer, and starts winning races. But that doesn’t gel with her friend Tegan, the popular girl at school who’s Esme’s new friend. So it touches on a lot of relevant things like coping with friends who want different things, a rather toxic mother who only cares about her daughters’ achievements, dealing with prejudice and sportsmanship. As a kid who grew up swimming a lot, this would have definitely resonated with me. It still does. I’m going to have check out Wendy Wan-Long Shang’s other books.

They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears – Johannes Anyuru

This book hits you in the gut, also in the throat. It will also stomp on your feet and chew on your toes for dessert. It is brutal like that, and so frightening, especially with what’s happening in the world (I’m looking at you, America) today. At times, confusing because of the switch of perspectives. It’s speculative fiction, but is it, really? Because I feel like we are heading towards such times…

A Guardian and a Thief – Megha Majumdar

Sorry to compare this to The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, but A Guardian and a Thief is by far the superior story. I’m basing this comparison on the Lithub’s Best of 2025 list that I’m slowly making my way through. Loneliness was on 21 lists, and Guardian on 18. But I felt that Loneliness was very lacking while Guardian was a deceptively simple story that was actually a kind of morality tale. I was surprised that it’s only just a bit over 200 pages, as it hit so hard and so thoroughly with a plethora of topics, from parenthood to climate change. It was the discomfort and desperation (this family cannot get a break!) combined with the characters’ willingness to do just about anything to survive that is remarkable and admirable. It’s not easy to read this one but I couldn’t stop reading it.

by Sharlene

Library Loot (January 28 to February 3)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?

Here’s my latest library loot:

So I randomly found these books on the library shelves!

Pelican Child – Joy Williams

This was a nice surprise, as it’s on my TBR, as it was one of those books on quite a few “best of” lists. I don’t think I’ve read anything else by Williams. Have you?

Carmen – Prosper Mérimée

This red slim book just jumped out at me somehow. Turns out it’s the novella that inspired the classic opera.

Swallows – Natsuo Kirino

I think I was meant to be at the library that day, as this was also another book that was on my TBR and in fact, was one of my ebook library holds. So I was happy to see it on the shelves! I’ve devoured almost (or maybe all?) all of Kirino’s previous works.

by Sharlene

Library Loot (January 21 to 27)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?

Claire has the link-up this time.

I am still making my way through a few reads from the previous weeks, so I haven’t much loot to report this week!

Here’s my latest library loot:

Someone Like Us – Dinaw Mengestu

One of those books that were on quite a few longlists, I believe, and that I never got to reading.

A Guardian and a Thief – Megha Majumdar

This made so many “best of” 2025 lists! At least 18 by LitHub’s count. I however was not very impressed by one of the books that made even more lists, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (it was fine, I would give it a solid 3.5). So I will see how this one fares!

by Sharlene

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (January 20)

Oh look, I’m attempting to do this two weeks in a row! Let’s see if this continues next week 😛

Meanwhile, I’m still reading a lot of other books, but these are what I finished over the previous week.

Cahokia Jazz – Francis Spufford

For some reason I borrowed the audiobook version, which is 15 hours long. But it was quite entertaining, with the narrator using different tones/accents for different characters. So his narration was pretty good. The story is set in an alternate history 1920s US, where instead of the major strain of smallpox that had eradicated a large majority of the indigenous population, it was a less fatal one and as a result, there’s a large and thriving Native population. And wrapped up in all this is a murder mystery, the main characters are two police detectives solving a gruesome murder that looks like an Aztec ritual. I think the best word to describe this book is atmospheric. It definitely steeps you in this world building that borders on the heavy and over-descriptive, but the detective thankfully is a fascinating hardboiled egg of a character. I looked forward to my morning walks (the only time I listen to audiobooks) and the 15 plus hours passed by quickly.

Infidels – Abdellah Taïa

A short book by Moroccan writer Taïa, but not an easy read. The stream of consciousness style isn’t really my thing, and it was a bit hard to follow as we jump around the different points of view, and the characters live difficult, harsh lives. It’s a collection of characters that seem to be struggling to find their place in the world, the main character being Jallal, whose mother is a prostitute.

We’ll Eat When We’re Done – Dave Chua, Max Loh

A cute comic written by Singaporeans and set in the future where zombies have taken over, and a ragtag group are trying to find ingredients to cook their favourite chicken rice.

Kungfu Dough – Don Low

Another Singaporean comic, this one featuring a young baker who’s really good at marital arts. I really liked the illustration style and how he made the streets of 1960s Singapore come to life. Check out the author’s blog posts about his process here.

by Sharlene

Library Loot (January 14 to 20)

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Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?

Here’s my latest library loot:

The Wilderness – Angela Flournoy

This was one of those books on many “best of 2025” lists – according to Lithub, on at least 14. I haven’t yet read Flournoy’s previous book The Turner House, but it’s been on my tbr list!

The Best Worst Summer of Esme Sun – Wendy Wan-Long Shang

As a kid, I swam a lot, and I’m always happy to read books about swimming! This one is for a middle-grade audience. I accidentally borrowed the audiobook instead of the ebook, but oh well!

Lucy – Jamaica Kincaid

I guess I’ve been leaning towards short reads like this one (164 pages) lately.

by Sharlene

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (Jan 13)

This year, I’d like to try to be better at updating this blog. A lot happened over the past six months and I didn’t feel like writing much here (not that I wrote very much before), and unfortunately, I also find out that someone I once knew in real life subscribed to the blog, so that really threw me off and so I stopped updating about my personal life. I’m not going to write much about personal stuff here anymore, but I would at least like to write more about the books I’ve been reading. Some books are hard to write about and some books don’t really deserve more than a sentence or two, but I will try to keep a better record.

The Stardust Thief – Chelsea Abdullah

I initially borrowed this for my older kid, who’s into fantasy, but he didn’t seem interested, and so this library book sat there for two weeks until I finally picked it up and gave it a try, and I’m really glad I did, it was quite the romp! There’s magic and jinns, and a motley crew thrown together to find some ancient relic in the desert. It starts off a bit slow, but in the end I was really absorbed in the story, which also weaves in a partial retelling of Thousand and One Nights.

Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller – Nadia Wassef

I had meant to read this last year for the Storygraph challenge but didn’t quite make it.

Wassef is one of three women co-owners of an indie bookstore in Cairo in the early 2000s (it’s now a full-fledged chain of bookstores). I’m full of admiration for what she and the other co-founders have done, and I enjoyed learning about Cairo’s literary history and the difficulties they had when setting up the store (like having to personally explain to the censors that Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef wasn’t what they thought).

The Friend – Sigrid Nunez

A rare case of watched the movie first, then read the book. I saw this movie on the plane to (or maybe it was from?) Edinburgh, as there wasn’t that much available on Qatar Airways. A sad read about a friend’s suicide and coming to terms with it, plus having inherited their dog along with it. In the movie, the dog played a far more central role than in the book, which had that very meandering, stream of consciousness narrative, a lot of thoughts about her relationship with the friend, about writing, and so on. So, erm, don’t watch the movie and then read the book, that’s my advice to you.

by Sharlene

Audition by Katie Kitamura

“There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the narrative around it, and the boundary between the two is more porous than you might think, that is both the danger and the excitement of the performance.”

Audition is the story of a middle-aged actress, our unnamed narrator, who’s rehearsing for a stage performance. We first meet her when she’s having lunch with Xavier, a handsome young man, young enough to be her son. The way Kitamura throws us into the story, without any background, and as we try to pick up clues from the narrative, wondering what’s the relationship between these two people, and in the way observers (and readers) make assumptions about a woman and a man sitting together at a restaurant – it’s subtle, and rather clever. But as we move into the second part of the novel and things pitch sideways, I wonder, what is reality and what is fictional. I can see how this is a very polarizing book.

This book is not so much about plot, but there is depth and weight to it. It encouraged me to slow down and take it all in. However, because I felt emotionally distant from the characters, it eventually made it hard for me to emphatise with any of them (or maybe that’s the point?). At any rate, it felt distant and unsettling. So while it’s a quick read (just over 200 pages), it’s not an easy read (tension, constant questioning of others and self).

“Our awareness of the performance is what allows us to enjoy the emotion, to creep close to it and breathe in its atmosphere, performance allows this dangerous proximity.”