Tag Archives: Year of the Asian Reading Challenge

May 31, 2020 · 11:04 pm

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever

Self-help book about how to declutter your home

I first heard about this author a couple of years ago after there was some controversy in the bookish world about applying her methods to books. I had meant to read her book for some time but, like tackling decluttering generally, there always seemed to be something else to do instead. When she landed her own Netflix TV series, again, I thought I should have a go at reading her book, but again, I didn’t get around to it. Then, she found herself in the middle of another controversy. As with the previous controversy, I felt that again people were not properly taking the time to understand the author or her method. During self-isolating, I had been doing a significant amount of decluttering anyway, so although I tend not to go for self-help books as a general rule, I decided to finally buy a copy of her book (an eBook, of course) and see for myself.

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“The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever” by Marie Kondo and translated by Cathy Hirano (though, she is not credited in the eBook edition) is a self-help book about how to correctly declutter your home in a way that is effective, achievable and lasting. Through the KonMari method, Kondo explains that decluttering should happen in a particular order:

  • clothing,
  • books,
  • papers,
  • komono (miscellaneous things), and
  • things of sentimental value.

Kondo also explains that we must first discard all our things that don’t spark joy – everything – before next contemplating where to store the things that we have kept.

This is an interesting (and, very happily, a brief) book with a very simple goal: to assist people to feel better about their lives by helping them tidy their homes. There were quite a few things in this book that really stuck with me. First was Kondo’s message that one of the biggest reasons that people struggle to keep things tidy is not that they are inherently lazy, but rather that they have never been taught to tidy properly. Kondo explains that tidying is a skill, and it is one that she has spent basically her own life fine-tuning. This really resonated with me, because there are so many things that people are expected to be able to do as adults like manage money and write job applications, but that we don’t receive any kind of formal training for. Thinking about tidying as a skill to develop rather than an action that you either do or not do was really helpful for me.

I don’t have a before image
but trust me, this is MUCH tidier

Another thing that I’ve found really helpful is Kondo’s insistence that belongings must be sorted by category and then stored by category. She encourages the reader to find all things of a particular type (e.g. clothing) from around the entire house, sort it all at once, then store it all in one place. She applies this principle to other things like cleaning products, coins, pens that certainly I tend to have scattered around the house with no one clear home. This has also been really useful for getting a realistic idea of exactly how much stuff you really have. I certainly don’t need a pack of ibuprofen and a cache of coins in every single room!

I do want to make a quick point on books. One of the things Kondo has been criticised most about is that she tells people to throw away all their books and suggests that we only keep 30 books in total. Of course, if you take the time to read her book (which I now have) Kondo never says either of these things. In fact, what she says about books is far more interesting. She asks the reader, “[d]o you feel joy when surrounded by piles of unread books that don’t touch your heart?” She then asks the reader to “[i]magine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be?” She is certainly pragmatic enough to acknowledge that her book, too, is an object and encourages the reader to keep “only those books that will make you happy just to see them on your shelves, the ones you really love. That includes this book too. If you don’t feel joy when you hold it in your hand, I would rather you threw it away”.

I’m still on the clothing part (which includes scarves, hats, bags and jewellery), but books are next on my list. I already give a lot of books away to either the Lifeline Book Fair or my street library, but I collect a lot of books and receive a lot of review copies, and my to-read piles are numerous. If anything, hopefully at least by tidying up the rest of my stuff, I’ll have more space for books!

Now, I do want to mention a few things that I wasn’t completely sold on in this book. First of all, Kondo is quite a quirky person anyway, but a few of her ideas (such as drying her dishes outside in the sun and standing carrots upright in her fridge) I don’t intend to implement. I think thanking each object for the contribution it has made to your life is a nice idea, but is honestly a little too labour-intensive for me.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that although the first edition of this book was only published about 9 years ago, Kondo does have a bit of an essentialist view of gender with men and women each having particular traits (though I’ve even heard Margaret Atwood make comments about why men can’t find socks). However, Kondo does gently encourage women to aspire towards elegance and femininity, and her target audience in this book appears to be mothers and housewives. This is not to say that I don’t think that her method could be applied to anyone, but she does seem to view these tasks – organising and tidying – as women’s tasks. I will say that in her TV show, she very happily sets both men and women to decluttering spaces without any concern whatsoever for gender.

Finally, I do think that there is one thing that Kondo doesn’t turn her mind to in this book which is one of my biggest obstacles when it comes to decluttering: how you throw things away. Although in my city we now have green waste as well as recycle, although I have two types of compost bins, although you can drop quality clothing and items off at op shops, although some places accept plastic bags, fabric and even batteries for recycling, there are still a lot of items that simply cannot be donated and are likely going to just find their way to landfill if you throw them in the bin. Things like old teddy bears and out of date or damaged electronics have hung around the house simply because I feel guilty just throwing them in the bin. I think that while reducing the number of belongings you have is a great way to think more sustainably about your life, the act of reducing itself is important and I think that part of the reason why we accumulate so many things is because things are so disposable.

If you want to declutter your house and you’re not really sure where to start, this book is as good a place as any. Although not definitive, especially with regards to disposing things, this book has some unique ideas and helpful tips about how to tackle the task of tidying.

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May 19, 2020 · 11:38 pm

Pachinko

Historical family saga novel about Japanese occupation of Korea

Content warning: suicide, HIV

I have heard a lot about this book and so when a copy made its way to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation’s Great Book Swap I hosted at work last year (go team Yirrikipayi!), I snaffled it up. This year is the 10 year anniversary of this incredible fundraising event, so make sure you sign up (using appropriate social distancing, of course). This is another book that has waited patiently on my shelf for a while, and ticks the box for two reading challenges I’m doing this year: the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge and #StartOnYourShelfathon.

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“Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee is a historical family saga novel that spans from 1910 to 1989 in what is now known as South Korea and Japan. The book begins with the birth of Hoomie, a stoic, sensible man with two visible disabilities in a south-eastern seaside village in Japanese-occupied Korea. As the story progresses, the focus shifts to his young, pragmatic wife Yangjin and their beloved daughter Sunja. Seduced by an older, wealthy man, when Sunja discovers he is married, she is determined to forget him and raise their child alone. However, when a young Christian minister called Isak boarding at their home offers a solution, she travels with him to Osaka, Japan to start a new life. There, the reader meets Isak’s brother and sister-in-law, and we watch Sunja, her children and her children’s children unfurl in a country that, decades on, looks down on ethnic Koreans.

This book is a very compelling read and particularly in the beginning hooks you in. Lee has done exceptional research and the settings and era are fully realised, particularly through food, clothing and cultural norms. I have never been to Korea (and sadly had to cancel my honeymoon to Japan), but I had a number of Korean friends and classmates when I was in high school. A beautiful and unbelievably sweet Korean friend who only studied with us for a year had a similar facial difference to Hoomie. Lee’s exploration of how stigma associated with visible disability, intellectual disability and mental illness impacts not only the individual concerned, but their parents, children and even grandchildren, especially in relation to marriage prospects, gave me so much more understanding of what my friend must have gone through growing up.

I had another classmate who people used to say was part Japanese, was in gangs and had connections with yakuza. Reading this book really unpacked some of the meaning in this kind of talk for me, and how precarious the position was for Koreans who stayed in Japan after the war and ingrained racism became for these people who were no longer as Korean as the people left behind, but also not Japanese enough to be recognised as citizens. Disadvantage is something that marks Sunja’s family – evolving from poverty to racial discrimination. Even after Sunja’s children and grandchildren manage to claw their way to success, they are still marred by their ethnicity and for some, the knowledge that they will never be Japanese is too heavy a cross to bear.

I think one of the most interesting things about this book is it is only the second book I have ever read about a non-Western nation colonising another. I think these stories are incredibly important because it is a Eurocentric idea that the only examples of colonialism were Western examples, and because these themes of power imbalances, direct discrimination, stereotypes and structural inequality are universal themes that still play out around the world today. The title of this book, pachinko, was absolutely perfect. It references a key industry for several of the characters, but it also captures the struggle of trying everyday to win success in life when so much is left to chance and overnight someone tampers with the machine in such a succinct metaphor.

However, there were a few things about this book that I wasn’t completely supportive of. Lee introduces an ensemble cast, and the story skips from one character to another, highlighting a lot of the various social issues they are exposed to. As is tempting in a book of this magnitude, I think there were times where Lee tried to include too many things. Some of the stories As strong a proponent I am for inclusion, the parts of the book that deal with same-sex attraction felt gratuitous and lacking in the depth accorded to their heterosexual counterparts. I felt that while Lee very convincingly describes the situations her characters found themselves, I would have liked a little more development of the reasons why her characters found themselves there. Lee writes about suicides, and perhaps this is me showing some ignorance about the significance of cultural belonging in Japan, but I felt that the reasons weren’t expounded upon enough.

Anyway, a gripping book about a very important part of history in which it was occasionally a little difficult to see the forest for the proverbial trees.

Image of Castor the Sloth, looking through a telescope. #StartOnYourShelfathon The Quiet Pond.

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May 11, 2020 · 10:50 pm

In the Vanishers’ Palace

Vietnamese-inspired queer fantasy novella

It was my turn to host the feminist fantasy book club I’m in, but alas: social distancing. I had chosen this book after coming across a list of Asian-inspired fantasy and this one looked particularly interesting. However, until basically this past weekend, having guests over was basically illegal and that meant that book club was suspended indefinitely. Except, I really wanted to have book club and was missing all my friends, so I decided to host a virtual book club. Three members put their hand up for a DIY dinner pack, and I had a great time foraging for ingredients and containers to put together the bare bones of a two-ish course meal that just needed wet ingredients and cooking. The menu: rice paper rolls, pho and spiked Vientamese coffee. The evening was pretty successful! While there were some technical difficulties early on, and limits to how many could be in the video chat at once, and some mysterious reverberation, it was a great night and I loved seeing what everyone cooked.

In the Vanishers' Palace by Aliette de Bodard

“In the Vanisher’s Palace” by Aliette de Bodard is a fantasy novella retelling of the classic fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast“. The story is about Yên, a young woman who lives in a traditional village governed by strict rules and hierarchies. Unless part of the social elite, a villager is only tolerated as long as they remain useful. Yên, an aspiring academic but yet to pass the requisite exams, instead teaches children and helps her mother, the village healer. When Yên’s friend, the daughter of a village elder, is infected by a plague, Yên’s mother summons an ancient dragon called Vu Côn to save her life. However, in this broken world, nothing comes for free, and the village agrees to give Yên to the dragon to pay the debt. Yên is whisked away to a strange palace where Vu Côn sets her the task of teaching her two spirited children. Once there, Yên marvels at the mysterious and deadly palace and slowly grows closer to Vu Côn. However, with the threat of the plague looming closer and secrets threatening to erupt, the least of Yên’s worries is a broken heart.

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My DIY dinner pack

This is a unique story that takes the general elements of “Beauty and the Beast” and reimagines them in a completely different setting. de Bodard is quite a lyrical writer with a keen interest in language and words, and fuses fantasy and science fiction elements to create the palace that is Vu Côn’s home. One room seems to contain a magical library whereas another contains extremely modern technology, and I enjoyed de Bodard’s interplay between modern and ancient.

Rhiannon's cooking

My friend Rhiannon’s cooking

This is certainly an incredibly inclusive book and aside from queer romance, there are non-binary characters, diverse examples of female leadership and the book itself clearly draws on de Bodard’s own Vietnamese heritage.

However, I wouldn’t say that this would be my first recommendation for a book during the coronavirus crisis. This is quite a dark book, and Yên’s is a world ravaged by illnesses left by the mysterious Vanishers with those who fall ill facing banishment or worse. Given the current times, it was a little hard to want to pick this up to relax after a day spent reading the news.

My cooking

My attempt

In a similar way to “The Black Tides of Heaven“, I felt that de Bodard raced through this story a little and that the concept of the Vanishers could have been fleshed out a little, or at least hinted at a bit more strongly, than simply the ruins left behind. I also felt that the romantic aspect of the book was a little hurried, and some of the subtlety could have been teased out a little further.

Vietnamese Coffee

My spiked Vietnamese coffee

Nevertheless, this is a quick and spirited read that is an original retelling of a classic fairy tale.

Spike's cooking

And, last but not least, Spike using up some of the noodles for lunch the following day

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May 9, 2020 · 5:46 pm

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Ancient book of Persian poetry

I received a copy of this book via one of Beyond Q’s care packages they were offering during the height of the social distancing measures in Canberra. I had quite an exciting experience when I realised that this was one of the books in the pack, because it is of some significance to an unsolved mystery. I don’t read much poetry, to be honest, but this looked both interesting and succinct.

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“Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” translated by Edward FitzGerald and illustrated by Edmund J. Sullivan is a collection of poems by Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet Omar Khayyám. FitzGerald provides a brief introduction to the collection before the poetry begins. The style of poetry is ruba’i: Persian four line rhyming poetry. The poems are arranged in a sort of narrative sequence and are largely concerned with life, death, faith, philosophy and hedonism.

This is a well-edited and nicely illustrated book that transitions smoothly from poem to poem with a clear, over-arching narrative. Khayyám includes himself as an older man grappling with his own morality, mortality and the love of a younger woman. This book has quite a nihilistic perspective, with Khayyám concluding that we’re all going to die anyway, so we might as well enjoy ourselves and love and drink to our heart’s desire. The poems present an almost equal balance between existential dread and enjoyment. The illustrations are incredibly evocative and with one per poem, I think that the contribution they have to the overall impact of the book cannot be understated.

There is quite some debate on how authentic FitzGerald’s translations are and, in fact, to how much of the poetry can truly be attributed to Khayyám himself. Not being any kind of expert in Iranian poetry, I cannot comment on this with any kind of authority. However, with possibly hundreds of poems at least thought to have been written by Khayyám, and only 75 selected for inclusion in this collection, I think that it is sensible to consider this largely FitzGerald’s work inspired closely by Khayyám.

It’s unsurprising to me that this volume was so popular. Even for someone who is not much of a poetry aficionado, it is very readable, clear and complex with universal, timeless themes.

 

 

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April 25, 2020 · 11:01 pm

Braised Pork

Surreal novella about a young Beijing widow

Back in the good old days, before social distancing, I used to go to the gym and listen to audiobooks to inspire me to keep going back. After my last few experiments, I thought perhaps 10+ hours of audiobook was a little long for my limited attention span and memory, so I thought I would try something a little shorter. On Audible, you can set the search terms for books of particular lengths, so I browsed some of the shorter ones (4 – 6 hours). This one was just over 5 hours, and sounded perfect.

Braised Pork cover art

“Braised Port” by An Yu and narrated by Vera Chok is a surreal novella about a young woman called Jia Jia whose husband dies unexpectedly while taking a bath. Childless, largely locked out of his will and without the structure of her traditional marriage, Jia Jia is left with their apartment and a small allowance. As she slowly starts to venture out into the world seeking a new independence through her art, Jia Jia begins to be plagued by realistic dreams of a watery world and the image of the fish man drawing her husband left on the bathroom slink. Eventually, after her attempt at a new romance falls flat, Jia Jia decides to retrace her husband’s last trip to Tibet to try to discover the significance of the fish man.

This is an unusual, dreamlike story the pacing of which mirrors Jia Jia’s own meandering life. I really enjoyed Yu’s writing style. She has some striking imagery that really stayed with me. There was one particular scene where she refers to Jia Jia’s hair as looking like a stroke of calligraphy, and there are quite a few similar turns of phrase throughout. This is an original story with a unique point of view. Jia Jia is an intriguing character who, after having lived her whole life doing what she’s told, suddenly finds herself cut adrift. Although she finds a new purpose searching for the meaning of the fish man, there is still the sense that she is struggling to find her independence from men, be it her belated husband, her father, her lover or even a fellow traveller. Yu explores some interesting nuances of class in Beijing, in particular Jia Jia’s new status as a widow with limited financial resources. Chok is an excellent narrator with a clipped accent and matter-of-fact style that lends itself perfectly to the story.

Although it is a short read, this is a complex story that incorporates a lot of themes, elements and locations. While many of the scenes were themselves steeped with meaning, the story didn’t always feel as though it had a strong central thread to connect them together. I think the part that I struggled with the most was the significance of the watery world and the fish man. I’m not quite sure if I had tuned out while I was doing stretches at the gym or whether the story was deliberately left open-ended, but it felt like despite the several small revelations, the final picture was still kind of indecipherable.

A fascinating debut that perhaps leaves the reader with more questions than answers, I’m looking forward to seeing what Yu writes next.

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April 24, 2020 · 11:47 pm

The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling

Young adult novel about family, culture and mental health

Content warning: mental illness

I mentioned in an earlier post that I went a little overboard in the #AuthorsforFireys Twitter auctions, but there was absolutely no way I was going to let this one pass me by. The author was offering a copy of her book to the top 30 bidders, and each book would have the pages HAND PAINTED. Obviously I had to bid. In fact, I took the bidding so seriously that I kept a list of how many bids there were and for what amount so I could make sure that I didn’t miss out.

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I had planned on hand-making dumplings for the phone, but I just couldn’t face it

“The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling” by Wai Chim is a young adult novel about Anna, an ordinary teenager trying to study, keep on top of her chores and try not to get on the wrong side of the popular girls at school. Except Anna’s family isn’t quite as ordinary. Anna’s mum spends all day in bed, and her dad never comes home from work at his Chinese restaurant an hour north of Sydney. She has to look after her younger siblings Lily and Michael, interpret for her parents who moved to Australia from Hong Kong, and try to convince her school’s careers counsellor that she’s taking her future seriously. Up until this point, Anna had been able to keep everything afloat. However, when her mum suddenly becomes much more unwell, it becomes clear that things can’t continue the way they have been. Plus, there’s a boy.

This is an extremely refreshing take on the young adult genre. Chim has a great sense of place, and I loved the mood of Anna travelling between her home in Ashfield and her father’s restaurant in Gosford – sometimes by train, sometimes by car. I also loved the scenes in the restaurant itself, and watching Anna develop confidence and friendships while working in the kitchen in a way that she struggle to at school. Also it’s very hard not to read this book without being hungry the entire time, and I would highly recommend having something delicious to snack on while reading to complete the experience.

Chim covers a lot of topics in this book: friendship, transitioning to adulthood, young romance, culture, family dynamics and in particular mental health. While I’ve read quite a lot of Chinese literature over the past few years, but I don’t think I’ve read any books that use Cantonese before, in particular the Jyutping romanisation system, which I was really interested to learn about. I thought that the way Chim handled Anna’s mother’s illness was very sensitively done, and found a good balance between impact mental illness can have on families and the distress it can cause the individual who is unwell. Rory was a great romantic lead who was able to provide support and advice to Anna based on his own lived experience. He was also just an absolute sweetheart.

I felt that Chim did a really good job of accurately portraying mental illness, especially around inpatient care, the chronic nature of many mental health conditions and the fact that there often isn’t an instant, magical cure. However, I did feel that the chapters towards the end of the book that explore what a new normal looks like for the Chiu family, while very important and emotionally charged, didn’t have the same pacing and tension as earlier in the book.

Nevertheless, I think this is a great example of modern Australian YA. I think that it’s incredibly relevant and tackles issues that a lot of teens, regardless of their background, will get something out of.

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April 21, 2020 · 11:04 pm

Queerberra

Photobook about LGBTIQA+ people in Canberra

As I alluded to in a previous review, I went a little crazy bidding on things in the #AuthorsforFireys Twitter auctions to raise money following the Australian bushfire crisis earlier this year. I think if I had won everything I had bid on, I would have bankrupted myself. However, I have absolutely no regrets about the things that I was lucky enough to win, and this is one of them. Unlike most of the auctions, the offer for this one was that anyone who donated $100 to a bushfire charity would receive a copy of the book. Not contest, just straight up books for donations. Even better, because it’s Canberra, I got to meet with the producer/editor for lunch on a relatively smoke-free day. This book is a sensory delight. The cover is done in textile, the debossing feels amazing, and before you even open it, you can tell it is an extremely professional work.

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Luckily I still have one of my placards with one of the many We Are CBR stickers that I handed out like candy. I actually donated a lot of the memorabilia I had collected, especially stickers, to the National Library of Australia so I’m glad I still had some lying around for this review.

“Queerberra”, produced and edited by Victoria Firth-Smith with photography by Jane Duong, is a photobook showcasing some of the wonderfully diverse LGBTIQA+ people who live in Canberra.

This is a beautifully curated collection of photographs of 100 humans being authentically themselves around the city of Canberra. The photography is incredible, and the book is sandwiched between a foreword by the ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and introduction by Firth-Smith, and a series of annotated thumbnails or proof sheets at the end with a bit of information about each model. It is an incredibly joyful book to flip through with many familiar faces from the Canberra business, politics, journalism and arts community. Each individual and scene is unique, but there is a real connectedness in this book. A strong sense of unity in diversity.

The timing of this book couldn’t have been better. In a time where we seem to be living through historical event after historical event, it’s incredible to think that this book was published during the 2017 marriage equality plebiscite. While the harm caused to the LGBTIQA+ community by putting their rights to a public vote cannot be minimised, the day that the announcement was made in Canberra was itself an incredible historic event. I ran from the office for an extremely early lunch break to go meet my friends and celebrate, and the street party in Braddon that evening was euphoric.

Initiatives like this were critical to ensuring that this wasn’t a checkbox, academic activity. This was something that affected the rights of real people. The people who live in our city, who we work with, who we sit next to on the bus, who makes our coffee, who represents us in parliament, who helps us when we need help. Our friends. Our families. Ourselves.

So, honestly, to receive a copy of a book like this at such a difficult time for Canberra was a breath of fresh air. If you want something to remind you that the last few years haven’t just been fires and plagues, I cannot recommend this book enough. It is a piece of history.

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January 10, 2020 · 12:20 am

If Cats Disappeared from the World

Japanese magic realism novel about death and the little things

I had noticed this little book a while ago in a bookshop. It has a striking cover, a ink black cat with eyes embellished with gold foil that makes it look like it’s staring right at you. I noticed it, but didn’t buy it. Then one day I was checking my street library, and a copy was sitting right inside. Of course I had to read it.

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Thank you to my colleague Ingrid and her obliging cat Callie for these great photos

“If Cats Disappeared from the World” by Genki Kawamura and translated by Eric Selland is a Japanese magic realism novel about an unnamed postman who is diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. Distraught, the narrator is offered a deal by the Devil, who appears as his doppelganger, as a way to prolong his life. For every additional day the narrator chooses to live, the Devil will remove an item from the world. The first item seems simple: telephones. However reminiscing about his ex-girlfriend and their relationship which was conducted primarily over the telephone, leads the narrator to reconnect with her one last time. The next item, television, also becomes problematic. When the Devil proposes cats, the narrator is faced with making Cabbage, the cat he inherited from his mother and who has suddenly started speaking, disappear.

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This is an unusual little novel with an intriguing premise: how much of the world can you remove before life isn’t worth living? I quite enjoyed the story of an ordinary man, with an ordinary job, who is faced with the reality of his unremarkable life just before his untimely death. I liked how the author explored the way that the narrator had allowed himself to become isolated, and how he had lost contact with those most important to him and how ultimately, in the wake of his mother’s death, he had himself become lost.

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It’s difficult to review a book when you like the idea but not the execution. I want to say something first about the translation, because it’s not clear how much of my criticism is due to the translation, and how much is due to the writing itself. I think that Kawamura has a relaxed, minimalist narrative style that Selland has adapted into a modern American tone. While occasionally drawing on global elements at points in the story such as Christian iconography, the Devil’s choice of attire and his travels with his ex-girlfriend overseas, there is not a very strong sense of place in this book.

While I understand that the narrator is meant to be a generic everyman, with nothing distinctive about his life except his feelings and relationships, I struggled to find a foothold while reading. I think that overall, Kawamura probably spent a little bit too long spelling out exactly what the author was thinking and feeling at any given time, and not really enough on fleshing out the novel’s strength: exploring the idea of what would happen if things started disappearing from the world. Maybe that would be the difference between magic realism and science fiction, but I think I would have preferred Kawamura to have committed more fully to his concept and spent less time the exposition of a backstory that I wasn’t invested in.

An interesting concept that felt like it needed colouring in.

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