Author Archives: memoriesandsuch

2017 Week 50 Update

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Merry Christmas everyone!

I’ve made a mistake in my calculations of the weeks and so will end up short by one week this year.

After a long time, S and I drove across the border to shop in Johor Bahru in Malaysia. It was a fun trip and we really loaded up on groceries but it was not fun being stuck in immigration both sides of the border!

We’re counting down to the last week of the year as well as the last week of my parents being in Singapore. Life will go back to regular programming from next week. I have lots of plans to clear clutter once the children go back to school.

Have a blessed Christmas and an awesome week!

In My Hands Today…

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The Last Brother – Nathacha Appanah, translated by Geoffrey Strachan

90839941944 is coming to a close and nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily struggle for his family. When a brutal beating lands Raj in the hospital of the prison camp where his father is a guard, he meets a mysterious boy his own age. David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazi-occupied Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent on to indefinite detainment in Mauritius.

A massive storm on the island leads to a breach of security at the camp, and David escapes, with Raj’s help. After a few days spent hiding from Raj’s cruel father, the two young boys flee into the forest. Danger, hunger, and malaria turn what at first seems like an adventure to Raj into an increasingly desperate mission.

In My Hands Today…

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The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai – Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry, Susan Chan Egan

3114060Set in post-World War II Shanghai, “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” follows the adventures of Wang Qiyao, a girl born of the “longtong,” the crowded, labyrinthine alleys of Shanghai’s working-class neighborhoods.

Infatuated with the glitz and glamour of 1940s Hollywood, Wang Qiyao seeks fame in the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant, and this fleeting moment of stardom becomes the pinnacle of her life. During the next four decades, Wang Qiyao indulges in the decadent pleasures of pre-liberation Shanghai, secretly playing mahjong during the antirightist Movement and exchanging lovers on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Surviving the vicissitudes of modern Chinese history, Wang Qiyao emerges in the 1980s as a purveyor of “old Shanghai” – a living incarnation of a new, commodified nostalgia that prizes splendor and sophistication – only to become embroiled in a tragedy that echoes the pulpy Hollywood noirs of her youth.