Hi friends,
Since my newest personal revelation revolves around my love of reading (who would have thought?1), I thought it might be fun to add a new segment to this newsletter about the books I’ve read recently.
I don’t know how often I’m going to publish this - every week is too much, but my long-term memory is trash, so once a month is too far apart. I’m currently thinking twice a month, but we’ll be fluid about it, shall we?
Also, if you have a better title for this series, please let me know!
The Chrestomanci Series by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)
The Chrestomanci Series is actually a group of 7 books published between the years of 1977 to 2006. I read it as a pre-teen while devouring all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books, and this has always stuck out to me as one of the most memorable series I’ve ever enjoyed. I only found out that the 7th book2 existed when I saw it in a secondhand shop recently, so I wanted to do a reread of the first 6 to refresh my memory and then add on the 7th.
Let’s be clear, these are books for pre-teens, so they’re not very hard to read. I don’t know why Diana Wynne Jones isn’t talked about more though, as she’s one of the main fantasy authors for children. She has inspired so many people (even including the Harry Potter author, yes). Neil Gaiman constantly popped up as the cover blurb in a bunch of her books, even though she was (one of the ones) who inspired him.
But anyways. Besides a couple of things that tend to plague older books (one reference to ‘Chinese eyes’, a few fat=evil characterisations), the Chrestomanci series really holds up! My favourite story, which is one of the short stories in Mixed Magic (book 5), still manages to blow me away with how relevant it is to me and my life.
Even at my ripe old (lol) age of 33 years old, too, I still don't understand a lot of the world building she does in the series. It is immensely complex in a way that you would not at all expect from children’s books; she doesn't talk down to you, but she also doesn't expect you to understand everything. In our current pop culture understanding, there is a tendency to ensure that every small Easter egg or plot point is relevant and explained. She doesn't do that, so there are a lot of things that function as world building, left unsaid and unexplained. It's incredible and I found myself even more impressed at her body of work.
Oh My Mother! A Memoir in Nine Adventures by Connie Wang
If you don't know who Connie Wang is, she's the previous executive editor of Refinery29. She was one of the many fashion writers I followed in the early days of Instagram lol. I don't know a lot about her, only that she's Chinese-American. When I found out she wrote a memoir, I wasn't that interested, until I saw the title, which is the most Chinese person exclamation ever. Plus, it's written with her mother's blessing? How odd. So I borrowed it from the library.
Colour me pleasantly surprised; I found myself relating to the stories she shared! It's probably a testament to her writing, but I think it worked on me too because she's noticeably more Chinese, in the sense that there are very common Chinese words and sayings in the book and she seems to have a strong connection the Chinese culture. It's not just a whole book extolling the virtues of being American, you know? She was literally in China on a family trip when COVID broke out!
I found myself reflecting on my relationship with my mom3, and thinking about her life from her point of view. It was really cool.
Marple: Twelve New Mysteries
I’m not an Agatha Christie fan per se, but it’s impossible to have read any amount of murder mysteries and not be familiar with the source material of Agatha Christie books. I recently played a game based on Hercule Poiriot, another of her creations, so I was more open than usual to see how modern authors interpret Miss Marple.
Then my father-in-law mentioned that he already owns (and read!) this book, so I borrowed it to see whether I could get into it. It was hard going at the beginning, simply because I didn't know Miss Marple enough to recognise the hallmarks of her character. She seemed plain to me?
I did get it after a few stories though, because the same characteristics kept popping up. It was much more enjoyable then, and I really in particular liked the story of Miss Marple in Hong Kong (yes, HK!) by Jean Kwok. The problem with these short stories, though, is that it's often impossible to figure out the case ahead of time because the page limit means that there are so little clues 😅
Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears by Michael Schumann
If you're a pop culture buff like I am, Oscar Wars is for you. It's not a huge detailed compendium of winners or actors; instead, Schumann breaks it down into, I think, 10 parts, based on time periods, where change was happening. So there's a chapter about Harvey Weinstein, there's a chapter about unions, there's a chapter about war propaganda and the post-war Hollywood Blacklist, etc.
I was sorta aware of some of it, especially the latter chapters, which are more recent in time, but it was illuminating to see how the Academy has changed from era to era, in both good and bad ways.
See you soon,
Charing
this is sarcasm, if it wasn’t clear
Which came out a few years after I had finished the original set, I think
Who would NEVER let me write like that lol