I am calling you! come home.

I have been reading too many, and not reviewing enough, books lately. Here are a couple of short reviews so I don't have a backlog:

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell.

I liked this! I wasn't very interested, but it was well-written!

Rice Bowl, by Suchen Christine Lim.

This was fascinating in that it read like a social history of civil society in Singapore (it's not - it's a novel about four friends who involve themselves in social issues under the guidance of their teacher, who's a nun), or, at the least - the concerns of liberalism in Southeast Asia in the 60s/70s. I didn't find this hugely compelling otherwise! I get that Marie's supposed to have a pretty limited point of view, but I couldn't really find it in myself to like her very much - I found her patronising, privileged, and quite often boring.

Rape: A Love Story, by Joyce Carol Oates.

( short, but spoilerific, so I'm cutting this! suffice to say I didn't like this very much. tw for rape discussion. )

Eston, by Stella Kon.

Sci-fi by local feminist author! Should have been awesome, and could have been - but I felt that she didn't do enough world-building (I think you can do really fascinating stuff with angels and extraterrestial battles and alternate universe cities, but it didn't really come together very coherently) and her characters were two-dimensional a lot and, ugh. Could have been way more well-written than it really was.

Saraswati Park, by Anjali Joseph.

Novel about 'suburban, petit bourgeois world of Bombay' - I... liked this somewhat, but you can just really really tell this was a debut novel, because it didn't hang together and/or have as much plot ad it could have to make this really gripping. Some bits I liked, like the one or two moments of really gripping description (but she doesn't really manage to sustain it for more than a sentence or two) and Ashish ( cutting this quote )

and Madhavi (needs more Madhavi!!!) but there were several parts of the book where you felt like there wasn't much happening and it was kind of like, '... so?'

I'd still read other books by Anjali Joseph, though!

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And now for the long one:

The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman.

( Clash between a small country hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. )

ETA also I'm just gonna leave this link here as a reminder that The Spirit Catches You's portrayal of the Hmong people is not to be taken wholly at face value (when is it ever?): Hmong Net review of Spirit


Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan | Miss Seetoh in the World, by Catherine Lim | Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee | Jointly & Severably, by Eleanor Wong | Wills & Secession, by Eleanor Wong | Mergers & Accusations, by Eleanor Wong | GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singaporean Poetry & Prose, edited by Ng Yi-Sheng | Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier | Gone Case, by Dave Chua | Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell | The Waters & the Wild, by Francesca Lia Block | Growing Up: Getting Along in the Sixties, by Tisa Ng | Oreo, by Fran Ross | Caucasia, by Danzy Senna | Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by Owen Jones | Racism: A Very Short Introduction | Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter | Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, by Margaret Waters | A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin | Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean | Sons of the Yellow Emperor, by Lynn Pan | Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, by Katharine Quarmby | Tipping The Velvet, by Sarah Waters | Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro | The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli | Brick Lane, by Monica Ali | The Savage Detectives, by Robert Bolano | Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell | Cat On A Hot-Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams | Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson | The Moon By Night, by Madeleine L'Engle | To Live, by Yu Hua | Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer | The Next Competitor, by K.P. Kincaid | Raffles Place Ragtime, by Phillip Jeyaretnam | Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes | Mao's Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin | Marie, Dancing, by Carolyn Meyer | Man Walks Into A Room, by Nicole Krauss | How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby