Love in a Fallen City (傾城之戀) / Eileen Chang 張愛玲 – English review

After finishing the short story collection Love in a Fallen City (傾城之戀), I finally understood why Eileen Chang is considered a giant figure of Chinese language literature, and why she has inspired such devotion among the literary and artistic circles of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Walk into almost any major bookstore in Taiwan or Hong …

Love in a Fallen City (傾城之戀) / Khuynh thành chi luyến (Eileen Chang / Trương Ái Linh) – Karen S. Kingsbury (Translator)

Đọc xong tuyển tập tiểu thuyết ngắn Khuynh thành chi luyến, tên tiếng Anh là Love in a Fallen city, mình đã hiểu vì sao Trương Ái Linh là một tượng đài văn chương Hoa ngữ, vì sao giới văn nghệ Đài Cảng mê mẩn tác phẩm của bà đến vậy. Đi vào hiệu sách …

Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsun

Second book completed in first days of the year. I bought in a nice bookstore in Tromsö, Norway half a year ago as it was recommended by the bookstore employee there as a good work of Norwegian author and that have brought the author the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. I was a bit …

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 – Cho Nam Joo

I managed to finish the book at the beginning of Christmas holiday last year. I first saw a friend recommend it on Facebook several years ago, and only when I reached the final page did I realize that it was published back in 2016, nine years ago. This made me wonder whether the situation of …

The Great Reclamation – Rachel Heng

When I had friend visiting Singapore last time, I quickly checked on Reddit about some interesting history fiction titles about Singapore and was suggested with The Great Reclamation written by Rachel Heng. The book with roughly 450 pages turns out to be an easy read. I managed to finish within a week as the story …

The Joy Luck Club

Recently, I have come back committing to reading books more frequently with an attempt to keep myself consuming too much time on screen. I saw the movie adapted from the book 10 years ago but it was not until last year that I saw it on a bookstore in Helsinki and decided to read it. …

2025 Wrap-up (it is not written by AI)

I keep procrastinating until the final day of the year to write my one and only post for this year. It has been more difficult to have a proper idea for writing, let alone keeping writing as a routine as I used to do many years ago. To be honest, I also try my best …