Anna Tan's Blog, page 33

#bookreview: The Porpoise | Mark Haddon

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This started off really lovely and poignant and sad, and then it became... confusing?

Haddon plays with the various myths of Pericles of Tyre (Appolinus / Apollonius) and it's all very well done, very well written, very heart-wrenching. I don't know the original mythology well enough to tell you how accurate the retelling is or how much liberties Haddon as made. However, taking each section, each shift and retelling on its own, Haddon crafts e...

Deep dive into the novel: Day 2

So. The plan is to go into a deep dive from May 6 - June 30 and write 10K per week to reach 80K (and the end of the novel) over 8 weeks.

Unfortunately, due to events over the last week (last minute plans, unexpected laziness), I did not manage to clear up all the things I wanted/needed to do before the start of the week. Which meant all of yesterday and half of today was spent catching up and finalising consignment statements and accounts, chasing people to reply emails and generally a lot of...

#bookreview: The Beekeeper of Aleppo | Christy Lefteri

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are books that you love right from the start and books that grow on you as the author takes you on a journey to unexpected places. Lefteri's The Beekeeper of Aleppo is one of the latter.

When I first started reading it, I was really all like, what's the buzz? It read like just another refugee narrative, the story of Nuri & Afra's journey from Syria to England--I was drawing comparisons to Abdulrazak's By the Sea--but as...

#AtoZChallenge: Zephaniah the Zarf Zealot

Zephaniah the Zealot had a zarf. It was made of silver, with beautiful chasing and filigree work, and he used it every morning as he sipped his Tazo Zen (TM) tea (a blend of green tea with lemon verbena, spearmint and lemongrass—the perfect way to add zest to his morning) from a glass cup.

The zarf was his prized possession inherited from his late grandfather, the only thing in the world he valued almost as much as his tea, so it came to quite a shock when he woke up one morning to find that i...

#AtoZChallenge: Yellow (also, #musicmonday!)

... because you can't escape.

---

You.

You are beautiful.

No, don’t say that. Don’t give me that wavering smile that means you are listening but you’re not hearing, that you heard me but you don’t believe me. There is a brightness in your eyes, a generosity in your smile, a sweetness on your lips and a glow on your skin that makes you who you are. You are beautiful, inside and out, beyond definitions, beyond conventions.

You are.

You are more than you think you are.

No, don’t deny it. Don’t put your...

#AtoZChallenge: In the Xystus

There was a xiphoid hole in Marcus’ view of the world. It was where his anger used to be, where his hatred and xenophobia once resided. No more. He slumped back against a column in the xystus, exhausted.

“Do what you will,” he said aloud, though there was no one to hear him. “I cannot do this any longer.”

“Who asked you to fight?

Marcus jumped at the words, twisting and turning to see who had spoken. There was no one around. “Who’s there?”

But no one replied.

~
Three days later, exhausted from his...

#AtoZChallenge: Wombats

Winnie had always wanted a pet, but no matter how many times she begged her mother, the answer was always no. She tried asking her father, but his answer was “ask your mother”, so that wasn’t much use. Her best friend Wanda had a  rabbit named Wiggles and even her worst enemy in school had a cat, so it was quite unfair that Winnie wasn’t allowed to have a pet, even though she was almost ten.

One evening, when she was especially bored, Winnie wandered out into the backyard. She was standin...

#AtoZChallenge: Victorious

It wasn’t vanity. At least, it wasn’t to Vanessa, not anymore. It was the need to stay in charge of something, even if that something was just the way people saw her. She needed to look poised and in charge, ready for anything the world threw at her, whilst her life burned down to ashes. If she went down, she would go down looking beautiful, like the queen she was. Should have been.

Vanessa hadn’t understood this when she was younger. She’d looked at the women, both young and old, who populate...

#AtoZChallenge: Unexpected (a #bookreview of A Brightness Long Ago)

I titled this post "unexpected" because I didn't actually expect to get to review this book when I requested to review it on NetGalley. I'd previously been getting rejected quite a lot, especially for "big" books from famous-er authors. Apparently, though, I've crossed some sort of threshold where I'm starting to get approvals. Maybe the number of reviews?

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Brightness Long Ago is a novel about unexpected events that change the co...

#AtoZChallenge: Silence

If there is one thing I enjoy the most, it’s sound of silence. Nothing moving, no one speaking. It is then, in the quietness of your mind, that you find peace.

The stillness sustains you, it is the sustenance your soul needs. Not many people find it. Sam and I have.

My mother-in-law calls it superstition, but her mind is so noisy that she cannot move beyond petty things. Noise is the sepsis of your soul. It eats at you, poisoning you. She calls me a witch.

That’s okay. Her words cannot hurt me f...