One of the things I wish I could talk to people more about is books. I only know a handful of friends who read actively and it’s always fun to ask “What are you reading?” and then launching into a conversation about books. :)

Personally, I’ve been a huge reader for as long as I can remember. According to my parents, I started reading regularly since I was a child and I guess I just never stopped! I love it and I still read quite regularly, although these days with the internet, a little less than I prefer.

Anyway, I really wanted to share about books on my blog too, so I browsed through my Goodreads from 2014 and here are a few books I found that I really enjoyed last year. :)

• Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops + More Weird Things Customer Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell

Both Weird Things books are a short, quick read and the book is made up of quotes that customers have said to the author (who also works at a bookshop). As a reader and fan of bookshops (although living in Hong Kong has me very dependent on shopping online for books), I really enjoyed these books because the quotes were funny, completely weird and others just everything in between. I also liked the fun illustrations to complement the quotes!

New book alert: Jen Campbell recently published The Bookshop Book and I’m itching to get my hands on it!

CUSTOMER: If I were to, say… meet the love of my life in this bookshop, what section do you think they would be standing in?

• Graduates in Wonderland by Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale

I really enjoyed Graduates in Wonderland! I’ll definitely recommend this book to any fresh graduate or twenty-something in this generation. Since the book consists of real emails between the authors, it’s incredibly honest, funny, sad, confused, happy and real.

At times, I felt like Jessica and Rachel lived more exciting lives than a regular twenty-something since they both move abroad and navigate lives in different cities but what makes this book awesome is that at the core of it, through Jessica and Rachel’s emails, you realise that they were also trying their best to figure it all out and not having a clue along the way either.

I think no matter where you go, you’ll be happy as long as you know why you’re there.
― Rachel Kapelke-Dale

• Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav

My friend from Singapore recommended this book to me, telling me about how popular it was and how she really liked it. I was a little skeptical when I heard it’s a book of poetry since I’ve never really been a fan of poetry but I’m glad I gave this book a chance!

It’s funny that the reviews on Goodreads are either love it or hate it, but I did enjoy Love & Misadventures and found it worth sharing! Lang Leav uses very simple words in short poems yet manages to express a lot through them.

Xs and Os

Love is a game
of tic-tac-toe,
constantly waiting,
for the next x or o.

• Foreign Babes in Beijing by Rachel Dewoskin

This book was actually required reading for a class I took in university, we were only going to cover a few chapters from it, but I enjoyed it so much I read the whole thing! I tend to have little interest in any form of material relating to expats in Asia but Foreign Babes in Beijing was so much more beyond the story of an American expatriate in Beijing.

Rachel Dewoskin shares her experiences living (and filming a Chinese drama!) in Beijing during the 90s. Her writing is thoughtful, humorous and she shares her experiences both good and bad openly. It’s a fascinating look into a rapidly changing China from the perspective of a foreigner. I really enjoyed this book and recommend this for anyone interested in finding out more about life in China, its culture and people and its traditions and thinking.

In 2002, after the huge success of Who Moved my Cheese? a management manual that sold 1.6 million copies in China, there was a rush of books inspired by it.

Titles included Whose Cheese Should I Move?; Can I Move Your Cheese?; Who Dares to Move my Cheese?; I Don’t Bother to Move Your Cheese; Agitating, Alluring Cheese; No One Can Move My Cheese! The New Allegory of Cheese; Make the Cheese by Yourself!; A Piece of Cheese: Reading World Famous Fairy Tales; Management Advice 52 from the Cheese; and No More Cheese!

Finally, there was my personal favorite: Chinese People Eat Cheese? – Who Took My Meat Bun?