Tsundoku #11 - July 2020

If you're out of lockdown lucky you - you can go to the park and read. If you're still in lockdown then you can stay in and read. It's all reading...and so this July here's some choices. Admittedly publishers are still defering lots of titles to later in the year in the hope of more bookshops getting back in business and the return of browsers, but still...


Janie Chang's The Library of Legends is set in China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff must walk a thousand miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.

I know i rarely mention romance books in this column and a couple of people said i should, cause they read them. So here's Julie Caplin's The Little Teashop in Tokyo. For travel blogger Fiona, Japan has always been top of her bucket list so when she wins an all-expenses paid trip, it looks like her dreams are coming true. Until she arrives in vibrant, bustling Tokyo and comes face-to-face with the man who broke her heart ten years ago, gorgeous photographer Gabe.

 Nicole Chung's All You Can Ever Know is a memoir by a Korean-born author who grew up in Oregon is a touching meditation on twofold cultural inheritance, adoption and finding your roots. All You Can Ever Know tells both a personal story and a universal one, discussing reverently the experience of growing up in a community where something about you endlessly sets you apart.

 Paek Nam-nyong's Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists' past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years.

the Much anticipated Amy Stanley's Stranger in the Shogun's City the daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces – and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval – she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.

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 Peter Harmsen's Japan Runs Wild 1942-1943 is the latest volume in his multi-volume history of the war in Asia. In early 1942, the Japanese Army and Navy were advancing on all fronts, humiliating their US, British and Dutch foes throughout the Asia Pacific. In a matter of just months, the soldiers and sailors of the Rising Sun conquered an area even bigger than Hitler’s empire at its largest extent. They seemed invincible. Hawaiians and Australians were fearing a future under Hirohito. For half of mankind, fate was hanging in the balance.

David Freeman's Seeds of Control is a rather original title. Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1905–1945) ushered in natural resource management programs that profoundly altered access to and ownership of the peninsula’s extensive mountains and forests. Under the banner of “forest love,” the colonial government set out to restructure the rhythms and routines of agrarian life, targeting everything from home heating to food preparation. Timber industrialists, meanwhile, channeled Korea’s forest resources into supply chains that grew in tandem with Japan’s imperial sphere. These mechanisms of resource control were only fortified after 1937, when the peninsula and its forests were mobilized for total war.

 And lastly a little old Shanghai with James Carter's Champions Day. 12 November 1941: war and revolution are in the air. At the Shanghai Race Club, the elite prepare their best horses and most nimble jockeys for the annual Champions Day races. Across the city and amid tight security, others celebrated the birth of Sun Yat-Sen in a new centre which challenged European imperialism. Thousands more Shanghai residents attended the funeral of China's wealthiest woman. But the biggest crowd gathered at the track; no one knew it, but Champions Day heralded the end of European Shanghai. Through this snapshot of the day's events, the rich and complex history that led to them and a cast of characters as diverse as the city itself, James Carter provides a kaleidoscopic portrait of a time and a place that still speaks to relations between China and the West today.