[BHE 234] Loot from the Singapore Writers Festival 2016, Book Gifts, and Pansing Titles

Myra here.

I am very happy to be simply a participant of this year’s Singapore Writers Festival. I feel a sense of liberation that I am not serving in any capacity this year: neither part of a panel nor a moderator, just blissfully a part of the audience.

I am immensely grateful to the National Library Board who provided our book club with free tickets this year. This means that I get to attend the sessions with my 14 year old girl – that was truly a treat.

One of the really great things about being at the Festival is the book discounts at the Festival Bookstore. Naturally, I ended up purchasing quite a few:

Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal, Heaven Has Eyes by Philip Holden

Love Gathers All: The Philippine Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry edited by Ramon C. Sunico and Alfred A. Yuson from the Philippines; Aaron Lee and Alvin Pang from Singapore.

I was simply riveted by Atia Abawi’s presentation at this Festival that I had to buy her book right after listening to her speak. Not sure yet whether I’d have the energy to write a separate post on the notable presentations this year, but I shall definitely try: The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi.

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This Just In

I just bought these two titles today – because I am nothing but weak weak weak: Seven Wonders Book 5: The Legend of the Rift by Peter Lerangis and LONTAR #6 The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction edited by Jason Erik Lundberg.

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Book Gifts

I am also very happy that novelist Catherine Torres, a Filipina based in Germany and one of the SWF speakers this year, brought this for me from Berlin: Mariposa Gang and Other Stories – a collection of her short stories, and The Awful German Language by Mark Twain, a lovely notebook, chocolates that aren’t here anymore, a gorgeous book bag, and a Berlin puzzle in that small box you see in the image above:

Awesome-looking puzzle, really.

The Resident Tourist (Part 1) by Troy Chin, The Island In The Caldera by Lin Xueling – these are books and treats given to me by my teacher-students during our last meeting this semester. They do know my heart.

Pansing Titles

There is nothing better than gorgeous books that arrive for you in the mail. Plus, this needs to be said: Pansing Books has the best titles ever.

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler and translated by Charlotte Collins, The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu, Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck by James Patterson, The World According to Anna by Jostein Gaarder, Goldenhand by Garth Nix, Way Down Dark by J. P. Smythe, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood.

How about you, fellow bibliophiles? What are the books that managed to find you over the past several weeks?