23

All across the globe (with the exceptions of the UK and Ireland), World Book Day is celebrated every 23 April 2025. Reading should be something that appeals to all ages. Therefore, this day is observed by children and adults. For 2025, the theme is Read Your Way. What better way than to promote books that are thought-provoking, filled with lessons beneath the magic, and inspire change? Depending on your financial capacity, you may either borrow books from an actual library or a virtual library, borrow from those within your network, or buy whenever there’s a sale or if the book is affordable enough for you. With e-commerce and e-books, reading can be closer to you or far from you, depending on where you live. Book echanges can happen and also offer you a way to discover and explore new genres, depending on how vibrant your reading community is. 

• Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (2023) is yet another way for Lisa See to recognize and appreciate her Chinese heritage thanks to her Chinese great-grandfather, having grown up in the US. Much of the story is on a physician who’s well-versed in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and acupuncture. The physician has to go through challenges during the olden days to bring the best in terms of medicine and advice. At the same time, this particular physician is tied to societal expectations, especially after her family of the elites make her go through an arranged marriage.
• Rose Gan’s Pearl (2022) is the second book within a series known as Penang Chronicles. It is a thoroughly researched book and deserves to be on your shelves, especially if you wish to know more about Penang and its history – even if its fictionalised. For those who grew up in Malaysia or has any background about Malaysia, you’ll notice the use of different languages and colloquial expressions, which are a major part of being part of the Malaysian society. Trade surely influenced the many distinctive flavours and colours found in this book, and is an essential part of history that I’m glad has not been left out and told as it is. Rose Gan is British, married to a Malaysian spouse of Chinese descent.
• Vincent Lam’s book The Headmaster’s Wager (2012) is yet another piece of historical fiction. It blends medicine, the Vietnam war, historical facts, the family, a central element to the Chinese and Asian cultures, as well as romance with a woman of mixed ancestry, excellently. I’ve to pick it up again, if you ask me. Being familiar with Chinese culture helps, and of course, it doesn’t hurt to learn about the cultures outside your own. So be prepared for a gripping and beautiful story of love and betrayal. Born to an expatriate Chinese family of Vietnam, they live in Canada. Lam pursued medicine and is now a practitioner of emergency medicine in Toronto.
• Deaf Sentence (2008) by David Lodge equates and makes light of the condition of being hard of hearing to something that will go on for life. Influenced and helped by his linguistic ability as an English professor at University of Birmingham from 1960-1987, Lodge wrote this novel as a form of catharsis and celebration of his post in academia. Upon retirement from his position, Lodge devoted to writing novels at a full-time capacity. As one might expect the play of words is a signal that this book is going to be full of humour, although it does take some time to get the jokes, at times. Interestingly, this book was placed in the two books for 50TWD section in the Eslite department store near Taipei 101, where I got it. I have no regrets.
• All The Light We Cannot See (2014) by Anthony Doerr is yet another one to do with historical fiction and the war in the 1940s. I’ve yet to reach the end of the novel, but perhaps you should. What I do know is that a particular streaming giant has adapted this novel into a miniseries. It is touching because it tells the story of a visually-impaired girl who uses the means of audio/radio to express herself and reports what’s happening, until of course, the French capture her for something her father did previously.
• In praise of the book, The Declaration (2007) by Gemma Malley is on par with The Handmaid’s Tale by Margeret Atwood. It’s a children’s book that’s suspenseful, fantasy-like and futuristic. The Declaration is part of a trilogy.