house of huawei - eva dou (2025)

ponderously exciting stuff about international telecoms espionage played out in tangled webs of national intrigue that i speed read to finish before the book is due tonite. especially fascinating because the names and products are current and present. 

as with all still-unfolding history the account is a little lop-sided (heavier on the american-democracy-is-better perspective) a tad disjointed (with open-ended accounts of iran africa 5G networks and even malaysia and the middle east) and lacking a suitably rousing ending. but otherwise it is a decent summary of recent events based on whatever limited sources are available to a western journalist, even if she has a chinese name.

the amberglow candy store - hiyoko kurisu (2022)

continuing with a bagatelle whilst i am on hold for the next ngaio marsh. this is a light-handed charmingly-crafted fable-type little gem from an east asian writer delicately translated for a westernized reader.

this fox is as delightful and satisfying as the other cat and camera and hippo books.

inspector alleyn - ngaio marsh (1930s)

finally starting on these, half a century after first learning her name. agatha christie was just much more easily available at the jaya supermarket bookshop back in the day.

alleyn is my kind of ultimate detective: clever but courteous compassionate generally non-dysfunctional and (so far) quite free of unnecessary angst. so that one can just enjoy the murders.

duoyun

like a magical enclave in the sky. the book culture looks alive and well and it almost feels like a travesty to look at the non-book distractants. dad would have loved a visit here. i buy my first paper book in years, partly because it calls out to me (shanghai! women!) and partly because dad would have bought a book or two as well.

a midnight pastry shop called hwawoldang - lee onhwa (2026)

[spoiler alert] in the usual slice of life-interconnected short stories-with some fantasy thrown in genre that the modern asian writers do best. perhaps a little bit more fantasy than the japanese cat stories or the korean laundromat stories but as enjoyable, although it is taxing to read a series of short stories each of which (you realize quickly) ends in sudden demise. 

nice interlude to my streak of murder stories.

hot chocolate on thursday - michiko aoyama (2026)

delightfully gentle sweetly unexpected and wound through with rainbow skeins of connectivity that surprise you to the last.

michiko aoyama is getting better and better at this.

and after you finish the book you find yourself thinking thru the interconnections and enjoying them again, which is the mark of a really good story.

the convenience store woman - sayaka murata (2016)

highly rated and unfinishable. perhaps because i come to this right after the happy healing hippo of hinode park and find myself slowly being sucked into the stoically impassive thoughts of a neurodivergent woman trying to mask on a daily basis.

i abandon this just as it appears the tension is going to build up some more. because one should not read in order to get exhausted.

the blurb says haunting, dark, and often hilarious. bah.

 

in the shadow of agatha christie

omnibus of crime fiction by female writers from 1850 to 1917. when one is reduced to this you can tell one is a little bit stir crazy and desperate. 

the short stories themselves are surprisingly palatable although they lack the plot lines and build-up of bodies and clues i am used to after half a life-time's diet of actual agatha christie garnished with j.d. robb. the convoluted sentences are correctly fashionable unexpectedly comprehensible and a welcome change from the short fragments favored by ai-generated prose. the editing's a bit shoddy though which is a pity.

excuse me while i return to actual agatha christie.

the rainfall market - you yeong-gwang (2024)

dystopian premise rendered in child-friendly prose and just vaguely reminiscent of enid blyton's magic faraway tree which nevertheless succeeds in warming the cockles of the reader's heart. i suspect it is the kitten motif.

the murder room - michael capuzzo (2010)

the story of how the vidocq society comes about interwoven with the key cold cases they crack over the years and run through with the lives of the main players.

the story takes a bit of time to come together possibly due to writing style. the cases are sometimes riveting and sometimes a bit befuddling. the lives are interesting enough but unavoidably unidimensional.

it all becomes a trifle ponderous and i am relieved to speed read to the end and be done with it. what i need is incisive prose and an unbeatable plot. that, or lyrical prose and homey story. i feel like i am thinking bonhoeffer or a modern asian writer.

alice and gerald - ron franscell (2019)

yikes.

woman kills her third husband marries her fourth who kills his second wife and his adopted sons then woman and man live happily for almost 40 years after that. oh oh maybe woman kills second husband too.

most ghoulishly unpleasant story of the couple that got away.

yikes.

at home - bill bryson (2010)

ramblingly wide-ranging history of modern society as it develops from the medieval to the modern and my one take-home point is that europe (and especially england) of the years up to the present were dark indeed. of especial horror (and most difficult to read) is the chapter on toilet practices. you can practically smell and feel the stuff.

vintage bryson, pretty much.

monsieur mediocre - john von sothen (2019)

disarmingly self-effacing and charmingly self-aware socialist democrat. he writes an especially good counterpoint to the earnest anodyne the newspaper columnists sprout these days.

my year off - robert mccrum (1998)

memoir of a 42-year-old man who suffers a stroke. the account is thoughtful philosophical and surprisingly upbeat. he writes quite beautifully, which restores my confidence in publishers and makes me want to specially read faber & faber books. 

the main beef i have with him is that he is sometimes medically inaccurate, although of course that gives an insight to his perspective. and he is a little medically quaint too, because he writes from a time when people had strokes and left the hospital with just aspirin.

the one thing i learn from him is how fatiguing it can be. 

doctored - charles piller (2025)

 

heavy-going but interesting. a little bit disjointed and kinda messy. you get upset with the villains but unfortunately there is no satisfactory resolution. i guess that is the problem with accounts of history as it unfolds and the end is not written yet. it is a troubling but enlightening read.

the arthur truluv books - elizabeth berg

of which there are 3: the story of arthur truluv (2017), night of miracles (2018), and the confession club (2019).

arthur truluv catches me and holds me tight in his gentle otherworldly kindly embrace and i enjoy his story and lucille's (and iris's and monica and tiny's). but the magic peters out after one-and-three-quarter books and i find myself reading from the final chapter forwards for the last book.

she writes better than debbie macomber but not as well as maeve binchy or marian keyes.

the day i ate whatever i wanted - elizabeth berg (2008)

found me a new writer i like, yes siree! chatty streams of consciousness flow mellifluously along home and friendship themes. not quite the incisive sophistication of james thurber whose essay on dogs i read just before i embark on this, but with a woozy floozy cozy cottage charm.

my favorites are the two letters from flo to her ex-neighbor ruthie. here the charm transcends cottage to enter minimalist modern territory.

moving on to her other books next.

very short stories - sara hill (2011)

short stories for tik tok users, is wot i say. the stories are playful baubles of delightful irreverence hinting at darker themes and contain more hits than misses.

i pick this up because of the story on the cover. quickie read and deviously satisfying too.

the doctor who fooled the world - brian deer (2020)

fascinating narrative of how a scum-of-the-earth type got his come-uppance presented with an unexpectedly rambling chattiness (not my idea of brit understatement) liberally peppered with italics and personal asides and on a rather confusing timeline.

fascinating topic notwithstanding, one gets the sense that this is the blow-by-blow account of how he (deer) got the (totally deserving) guy.

i am more used to a cleaner style à la john carreyrou in bad blood, perhaps. on the other hand brian deer has a most impressive track record and i am in awe of what he has exposed in his time.

my father's brain - sandeep jauhar (2023)

this is a painful read, especially towards the end of his father's life. he is honest about the indignity of advanced dementia the stress of caregiving and the distress of surrogate decision making. i am humbled as an aging person a daughter a care provider and a fellow human.

they need to make this required reading for somebodies.

he writes best when describing gritty unpleasantnesses, by the way. like the choked toilet. you want to retch along.