“One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride,” begins Angsze Choo’s captivating novel about Li Lan, a young Chinese woman with few marital prospects in nineteenth century British Malaya. What follows is a mixture of romance, a coming-of-age story, a tale of the supernatural, and a love letter to Chinese tradition and afterlife. Li Lan comes from a respectable but bankrupt family. Her mother having died of smallpox years earlier, her father has become an opium addict […]
J. Maarten Troost’s Latest Travelogue: Enjoyed the Wit, Wished for More Substance
I became a fan of J. Maarten Troost when I read The Sex Lives of Cannibals, his 2004 travelogue that describes the time he spent on the little-known (to most Americans, at least) South Pacific nation of Kirabati. The author’s style is amusing and self-deprecating, and he has some worthwhile commentary on politics and the attitudes of the Western world. Nine years later, Mr. Troost published Headhunters on My Doorstep, and while I still enjoy his writing style, the book sadly lacks substance. J. Maarten […]
Mockingjay a Weak Finish to the Hunger Games Trilogy
Last year I decided to jump into the world of the Hunger Games and see what all the fuss was about. I thought the first installment was inventive and compelling (if a little light on characterization), and the second was a fantastic driving force, pushing the reader towards the inevitable climax. The third installment, Mockingjay, left me disappointed. First off, I want to be fair. This wasn’t really the book I was expecting, and that contributed largely to my disappointment. Suzanne Collins focuses on the […]