Skip to content

Around the World in 2000 Books

(give or take a few)

Home
About
Top Rated Books
The Complete List
Reviews by Region
- Australia and Oceania
- Southeast Asia

Four Reigns

Readings from the week: ceremonial rigidity in turn-of-the-century Thailand

January 26, 2020January 26, 2020 ~ Kelly Dunagan ~ Leave a comment

This week I’ve been reading Four Reigns, Kukrit Pramoj‘s doorstopper of a novel about life in the Thai court in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Continue reading →

Search for:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 200 other followers

Email Address:

A slightly belated #burmese #bookstack

I have been reading this book since November. It’s not terrible or anything; in fact it’s a pretty compelling story of a young woman who marries a man who doesn’t understand her and treats her like a doll, determining what she eats, what she wears, when she sleeps, and (most harrowingly) whether and how often she can see her family. The heroine’s passivity in the face of all these ever-tightening restrictions is a little frustrating to me, but it’s set in Burma in the 1930s, where women were pretty much expected to be passive and compliant all the time. It’s not exactly a page-turner, but I don’t think that’s why I’ve stalled out on this book. I don’t know whether to blame the pandemic or just life with two small children, but for perhaps the first time in my life I just haven’t felt like reading. Might as well say “I haven’t felt like breathing,” but there it is. But at last I’m nearly finished with “Not out of Hate,” and I decided to download the Kindle edition of “Letters from Burma” and the audiobook of “Burmese Days” so that hopefully I can get a little more reading done during the long long hours I spend nursing my toddler to sleep in a dark room. I would very much like to reach a stage where parenting and reading are not in conflict, but I’m afraid that day might never come.

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. Frankly it’s been a while since I read anything that wasn’t by NK Jemisin or Stephen King. But I still have all these books from Southeast Asia that I’ve read and haven’t written about, so I jumped back in with quick takes on a whole bunch of books from the Philippines, including this fantastic buddy-cop serial killer mystery starring two Jesuit priests.

Folsom Street Fair, 2015

#tbt to my last blog post of 2019: America Is in the Heart, by Carlos Bulosan

Drawings from today’s blog post, Philippine Food and Life by Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Link in profile.

Goodreads

Top Posts & Pages

Florante at Laura: Two guys crying in a forest, essentially
Shadow and Solitude: A play in one stupid act
Monday Miscellany: Polynesian poetry
Which Way, Big Man?: Exit stage left (before we fall asleep)
The Complete List

Archives

Archives

Tags

Asian Literature Australia Australia and Oceania Australian Literature Book Review Books Fiction Indonesia Philippines Southeast Asian Literature

All text and images
© Kelly Dunagan 2017

Blog at WordPress.com.