Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

In 1862, a young Jewish man has set sail from his home in Calcutta, heading toward Hong Kong  to participate in the opium trade. Emmanuel has left behind his wife Semah, promising to return to her having made his fortune. But while he is in Hong Kong, he falls in love with Pearl, the daughter of his Chinese business partner. He takes Pearl as his wife and builds her the most beautiful mansion anyone has ever seen in Hong Kong. But Semah refuses to let Emmanuel have his new life and she arrives unannounced in Hong Kong to take her rightful place as mistress of the house. Neither woman wants to share their home or their husband but neither is willing to give up their place as his wife and very quickly, life changes for all of those who live in the house.  Inspiredly the lives of his own ancestors, The House of Wives by Simon Choa-Johnston is a beautiful novel about two women who will do whatever it takes to secure a place for their children in the upper echelons of t...

Our favourite socialites, billionaires, and eligible bachelors are back!  And this time, there’s even more shopping, secrets, and scandals. American-born Rachel Chu is about to walk down the aisle and marry the heir to one of Asia’s greatest fortunes, Nicholas Young.  Nicholas, who is willing to sacrifice his inheritance to marry Rachel, hasn’t spoken to his mother in months and has been keeping his wedding a secret from his family.  But something like that isn’t going to stop his mother, especially when she has news that will turn everything upside down. Rachel has never known who her birthfather is.  But when she discovers his true identity she is thrown into a world she could have never imagined.  The upper echelon of Singapore is about to gain a new member. China Rich Girlfriend , by Kevin Kwan, is the follow-up novel to the wickedly fun Crazy Rich Asians and this sequel is just as fun and outrageous.   When I reviewed Crazy Rich Asi...

Rachel Chu has agreed to spend her summer holiday in Singapore with her boyfriend Nicholas Young, a fellow university professor.  Nicholas is returning for the wedding of a close friend and this will be the first time Rachel gets to meet his family.  Rachel is envisioning a quiet vacation, a humble family home, and plenty of time to explore the island.  But what she does not realize is Nicholas is the darling of Singapore's elite society.   Nicholas is the heir of one of Singapore's richest, pedigreed Chinese families.  His humble family home is larger than most palaces.  His family and friends travel by private plane.  And it turns out that Nicholas is one of Singapore's most eligible bachelors.  When word spreads that Nicholas is bringing home a girlfriend, an ABC (American-born Chinese), high society finds itself in a flurry.  Especially Nicholas' mother, who has some very strong ideas about who her son will, or will not, marr...

On a remote island in British Columbia, a Hello Kitty lunchbox has washed up on shore.  Ruth, a writer who lives on the island, thinks it could be debris from the 2011 tsunami.  As Ruth examines the contents she is pulled into a mystery, and a life that has unfolded in the past on the other side of the world, one that she may still have the power to save. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki is an enthralling, beautiful novel about relationships, time, history, and culture.  Right from the beginning it draws you in, slowly unfolding and just when you think it can't, it pulls you in ever further.   Nao is the sixteen-year-old author of the diary found Ruth finds in the lunchbox.  Living in Tokyo, she is an outcast at her school and she decides to take her own life.  But first, she wants to document the life of her 104-year-old great-grandmother, a feminist crusader and Buddhist nun.  As Nao writes, her own life unfolds before Ruth's eyes...

Ava Lee is spending her summer recovering from her last investigation at a cottage north of Toronto.  She has no foreseeable plans to work, but when her mother introduces to her a woman whose family lost millions in a Ponzi scheme, she agrees to take on the easy case.  However, this case is anything but easy.   Ava soon finds herself investigating an Indonesian bank run by a Scot.  After a troubling run with the Scot, she discovers that the bank is in reality a front for a money-laundering operation run by Italian mobsters.  Will Ava be able to successfully return the money to it's rightful owners or is she finally in over her head? The Scottish Banker of Surabaya by Ian Hamilton is the fifth instalment in the Ava Lee series, but the first one I have read.  I must say, I'm hooked on this series.  It's not necessary to start at the beginning in the series and I imagine all of the books would stand alone no matter which order you read them i...

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge party, led by Pol Pot.  The Khmer Rouge is now known mainly for its policies that resulted in widespread famine, disease, and genocide.  Two million people were forced out of the cities and into the countryside to work in the agricultural sector.  Citizens were controlled in every aspect of their lives.  Intellectuals and minorities were killed in high numbers.  Children were separated from their parents, indoctrinated, and taught to fight.  Anyone considered an enemy was arrested, tortured and executed.  Various investigations put the death toll of the Khmer Rouge era anywhere between 1.7 million and 3 million people.  Its four years of power has left a legacy of poverty and violence that still permeates life in Cambodia today. A few years before the Khmer Rouge came to power, Somaly Mam was born into a minority family living deep in the Cambodian forest.  Orphaned at a you...

In Vietnamese, the word "ru" means lullaby.  In French, it means small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, or money.  In Kim Thuy's book Ru , it symbolizes the flow of life across waters, in the form of a beautiful lullaby. The book follows a young woman on a journey from a well to do life in Saigon to a Malaysian refugee camp and then on to a new life in Quebec.  As she adapts to her new life, the American Dream life, she is thrown a curve as she must learn to love in a new way with her autistic son. Each page of this beautifully written book is its own heartfelt memory.  Kim Thuy draws on the memories of her own life in short, emotional clips, jumping back and forth between time and place to paint the bigger picture.  This isn't a book that builds a story from beginning to end or that takes the time to develop characters and give them back stories.   This is a short novel that weaves pieces together to create a life. It wa...

Percival Chen, a Chinese immigrant, is the headmaster of the most respected English School in Saigon.  He is also a father, gambler, and womanizer.  Fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, he has devoted himself to building his business, including bribing government officials to maintain the status of his school, and ignoring the horrors of the violence that are unfolding around him.   But when his son gets into trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival is forced to acknowledge what is taking place around him.  He must send his son back to China to keep him from the war and puts himself in debt to do so.  Percival takes solace in Jacqueline, a woman of mixed French and Vietnamese heritage, and their whirlwind union produces a son.  But on the eve of the Tet offensive, the war lands on Percival's doorstep and he must confront all that he has desperately tried to avoid.   The Headmaster's Wager by Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a...

Last year a book burst on the scene that had everyone talking, not all good though.  Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother had people heated up over her discussion of Eastern versus Western parenting.  Chua, an American born to Chinese immigrant parents, had set out to raise her children in the Chinese way.  For her this meant her kids had to spend long hours playing the violin and piano, studying, and pretty much doing nothing else.  In return, she felt her children would have all of the skills they needed to be the most successful adults.  But along the way, Chua learns a lot about her children as well as herself and finds that it's not about the particular way in which you raise your children, but about the lessons learned along the way. When I first heard all about this book in the media Amy Chua came off as a know-it-all "we're better than you" type of person.  And it's true, she does come across as that in the book, however, by the end o...

Nineteen-year-old Anjali Bose is an ambitious girl born into a traditional lower-middle class family in tiny Gauripaur, India. Successful in school with an aptitude for languages, especially English, Anjali is facing what she has been dreading for a while - an arranged marriage. But Anjali's expat teacher, Peter Champion, sees a spark in Anjali that needs to be nurtured and he encourages her to set off for Bangalore, India's fastest-growing major metropolis. In Bangalore, Anjali quickly falls into the huge, highly ambitious crowd of other young men and women who have come from all over the country to get jobs as call-centre agents. They spend their time immersing themselves in American culture, shopping and partying, learning the right accents from television shows so they can pass themselves off as American on the phones, meanwhile earning more than their parents could ever have dreamed of. Anjali sees her opportunity to Bangalore to leave her past behind and reinven...

In 1993 Greg Mortenson attempted to climb Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain range. His attempt failed and he ended up recovering in a small village named Korphe. As residents of the village nursed him back to health, he made a promise to one day return and build a school. From that promise came an international humanitarian organization which promotes education especially for girls throughout remote areas of Pakistan. This story is chronicled in Mortenson's 2006 novel Three Cups of Tea. Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off, tracing his efforts to build more schools in a new country - Afghanistan. To date, Mortenson's organization, Central Asia Institute (CAI) has built more than 130 schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Stones Into Schools is a fascinating look at an area of the world that we in the West are cut off from (in fact, these ...