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Around the World in 2000 Books

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Australia and Oceania

Click on the links below to be taken to the list of books for that country, with links to blog posts (once they’re posted).

Australia
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Vanuatu
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Papua New Guinea
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After a year and a half with no posts I finally wrote something this month! In fact, I made two posts in two weeks and I think I might collapse from all the productivity. This painting depicts a Sumatran Rhinoceros and accompanies my post about the 19th century travelogue “A Decade in Borneo.” I also wrote a post about everything I read from Laos—Kao Kalia Yang’s beautiful memoir “The Latehomecomer,” an interesting collection of short stories by Lao-American author Souvankham Thammavongsa, and two somewhat less inspiring collections of short stories by Dok Ked, her sister Douang Champa, and her husband Outhine Bounyavong (yes, my entire selection of Laotian literature from Laos—as opposed to the Lao and Hmong diasporas—comes from the members of a single family. I tried to do better but that was what I could find). I also read the incredible nonfiction work “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman.

After 3 1/2 years, I’ve finally finished my booklist for Burma and am moving on to Laos! It feels like a fog has lifted in the last couple of months; I don’t know if it’s the feeling that the pandemic is finally mostly over, or because my kids are older and finally in school, but for the first time since March of 2020 I am ready for more challenging literature. Feels like I’m finally myself again.

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

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A few things learned from "A Decade in Borneo"

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