Two Book Nerds Talking

We are delving into a topic today and it's the 'M' word... yup marriage. Having read Sue Miller's Monogamy and Sarah Crossan's Here is the Beehive almost back to back we were taken aback by how many similar themes it touches. So join us as we peel back the layers of matrimony like the proverbial onion, it's pungent and there might be tears but cooked long and slow it might be still be a dish worth...

After a month's break, our TBRs are bursting and though our heart's go to everyone who is putting out a book this year, our hearts rejoice that there are so many tasty, tasty books to sink our teeth into (even if we moan that it's impossible to read them all). We kick back with nerding out on Super Thursday and what it means for all the people involved in the publishing world and then sink into so...

Zen Cho is back with a brand new novella called The Pure Order of the Moon Reflected on Water. She calls it a tropical wuxia, inspired by martial arts yarns and period C-dramas, follow her band of merry bandits as they careen around a fantasy take on Malaya's emergency with a kung-fu nun in tow. It's rip-roaring, tender in places and way... way... too short. We ask her all the questions!

We hung out on a thunderous afternoon with Julya Oui and talk campfire tales, the private life of Silobans and the fact that there's really nothing to be afraid of. Having exorcised her demons on her page she cheekily says, "it's someone else's problem now..."

As everyone knows, there are too many books being released atm. As a spillover from last week's episode since we could not fit everything in an hour this week we thought you might like to know the stuff we really liked reading lately plus more interesting books to sink your teeth into.

We chill out with each other, over some delicious beverages and talk about happenings in the book world. Everything from ConZealand to is Rothfuss going to finally finish his book to the Booker Longlist. Also listen to Honey trying to convince Diana to read Midnight Sun even though deep, deep down inside she secretly wants to. Heh.

Hanna Alkaf is back with her first middle grade novel The Girl and the Ghost. A little girl inherits and peleset (generational spirit) from her bomoh grandmother and makes it her friend. But Pink (what she named her peleset) is made of darker stuff. Can a friendship between a girl and a ghost survive the pains of adolescence? We talk supernatural, young betrayals and the creative life during MCO....

Kevin Kwan's romp-com has big stilettos to fill. After the Crazy Rich Asian trilogy, everyone is waiting with bated breath what the next glittery read would be. Well wonder no more! In Sex and Vanity we are back in the world of the super rich with an outlandish wedding (a Kwan specialty) and this time he's set it in Capri and New York. Listen to our episode this week and check out what we thought....

Bumper episode coming up folks! This week we have a whopper so sit back, relax and let Rutger pretty much take you through his book about a hopeful history of us. It's fascinating and his theories are backed by tons of research. If there is one non fiction book you should pick up this year, this might be it because God knows we need a bit of brightness with the year we've been having. There is muc...

We chatted with Yeoh Jo-Ann the author of Impractical Uses of Cake with Elaine from Lit Books. This was supposed to be a live event but well, that pesky little virus happened to we ended up doing a FB LIVE instead. Sigh... there would have been cake if there was an event. Still... it was a cool conversation about male protagonists vs female, Singapore as back drop, cake and how has it been writing...

It's been quite a while since we've done a Break your TBR so here's an entire episode dedicated to books that are out in May/June and some which are up-coming. There's no rhyme or reason really... these are just books that's been buzzing and those were ourselves are looking forward to. Loads of local stuff too folks! This episode is in collaboration with @definitelybooks

We have all been there. Awkward marital questions at family gatherings, trying to get ahead in your work place where everyone looks like an enemy, torn between two delectable men... (err... okay maybe that one is wishful thinking). Thank god for books like Last Tang Standing where it not only entertains but gives you useful urban survival tips. We finally got back to our physical studio (reunited....

Many know Emily St. John Mandel through her gentle dystopia novel Station Eleven. Now back with her 5th novel, The Glass Hotel feels at times dream-like and other times like you have stumbled upon a parallel universe to her novel before. And she acknowledges this, weaving a story out of time with characters you've met before but in a different life, this is a novel about counter-lives and conseque...

We came out from our little Ramadhan break to discuss the Nebula Awards nominees. Find out about the novels that is exciting the speculative fiction world from magical doorways to lesbian necromancers in space, there is even a novel that eerily mirrors the restricted movement world we are currently in at the moment. Life imitating art or art imitating life? It's four book nerds talking this week n...

One of the most highly anticipated fantasy offerings this year, Sarah J. Mass' House of Earth and Blood is her first 'adult novel'. We chewed through angels, faes, shifters, merfolk and all sorts of other magical creatures in an urban fantasy setting. Why are her books so popular? ( There's over 22k reviews on Goodreads alone and the book is just newly launched ) and is the adult label correct? So...

Intan Paramaditha joined us from her home in Sydney talk to us about her choose your own adventure book, The Wandering. A fable, an adventure, a commentary on mobility and boundaries this is a book you can pick up again and again to go on a different adventure. It's a choose your own adventure but at the end of the day, how much agency do you have in life when a lot of things are predetermined bef...

Most people have heard of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle but few outside of his native Japan know Seshi Yokomizo. The master of murder mysteries especially the locked door kind, his detective Kosuke Kindaichi has starred in over 70 books. Translated sporadically before by a US Independent press, now Pushkin Vertigo has released The Inugami Curse, one of his classic murder most horrid novel...

Rhik Samadder wrote one of our favourite memoirs of last year. Called I Never Said I Loved You, it's on life, death and things unsaid. It is laugh out loud funny but also painful in places, Samadder goes into his depression and mental health issues with such honesty and grace you can't help rooting for him even though, he paints himself unflinchingly as a self-sabotaging loser with issues up the w...

We've got an episode we recorded in Ubud for you this week. Since world poetry day was a few days ago on the 21st of March, this episode is in conversation with Lemn Sissay, poet, presenter, performer and speaker. It was after his festival session on his memoir, My Name is Why so the conversation will meander through his thoughts on poetry, festivals, what he thought of his session to name a few....

We met the charming Jenny Zhang in Ubud and cornered her for an interview about her first book of short stories, Sour Heart. This collection is set in the 90s and told from the point of view of little girls on the cusp of adolescence. Alongside the loss of innocence, experimenting with the world and living with an immigrant identity, her stories also show the ugly side of the American Dream and th...

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell was just long-listed for the Women's Prize for fiction. What makes people over five hundred years later still speculate on Shakespeare's life? How much did the death of his son Hamnet influenced his tragedy Hamlet? Was the name coincidental or deliberate? Was it a way to process his grief? Surprisingly we found the main character in this novel is his wife, called Agnes a...

Our minisode this time brings you a young poet that hails from Sumatera. Ilham was the only emerging poet to be in the Ubud Indonesian writing anthology and we caught up with him during the festival last year. His poem was political and does hit home even though it was an observation on Indonesian politics. The interview was done in Bahasa Indonesian but we have punctuated this episode with explan...

Zoiks! We have a special crossover episode for all you geeks and nerds out there. In the studio with us this week are the gregarious Amelia Chen and Nick Dorian from the pop culture podcast Geeks in Malaysia. We chewed through Joe Hill's graphic novels and the Netflix series. First part is all about the printed matter of course while the second part which will be out on Geeks in Malaysia will be o...

When Jeanine Cummins' highly anticipated book American Dirt hit the shelves readers were beside themselves recommending it. The mother and son story of being pursued by a drug kingpin fired everyone's imaginations. And then controversy hit, Mexican and Latinx writers came down hard on it citing the fact that it fetishisize their culture and that Cummins wrote at best a summer pot-boiler and not a...

The secondhand industry has spawned its own sub-culture, economy and entrepreneurs. Dive with us into the world of garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores with author Adam Minter who has spent a lot of his free time poking around secondhand stores and backyards. It's fascinating, compelling and heart-wrenching at times.