Month: May 2025

Monthly Wrap-Up | April 2025

Posted May 6, 2025 by Haze in Monthly Wrap Up / 3 Comments

Welcome to the Monthly Wrap Up hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction to share our monthly wrap-up posts that summarizes our month in books, our favorite books of the month, what we did on our blogs, and anything noteworthy we want to share.

April 2025 Wrap Up

I’m posting April’s wrap up a little late, it turned into quite a hectic month for me and I have so much to catch up on with the blog! I didn’t finish as many books as I wanted either; I overcommitted to too many buddy reads in the last few months and I have learned my lesson! I’m making good progress in finishing the ones I’ve committed to though, and I’m a lot more careful about signing up for more. I’m also missing a lot of books I want to read that aren’t buddy reads, so I’m excited to make space for them as well. Still, I love buddy reads and I can’t give them up completely. If only everyone else wanted to read the books I want to read at the same time I want to read them! 😂

My April 2025 TBR Intentions

Five out of six of my TBR intentions aren’t bad. And the only reason I didn’t get to Stoner is because the library hold is still 3 weeks out at the time of this writing. I’m probably going to defer it to later since I already missed the deadline for the buddy read, but I’m still very much interested in reading it eventually.

  1. Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
  2. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
  3. The Terror by Dan Simmons
  4. The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
  5. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  6. Stoner by John Williams

Books Read in April 2025

  1. The Terror by Dan Simmons
  2. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  3. Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
  4. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
  5. The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
  6. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Notable Books This Month

The Terror, Little Fires Everywhere, and Sunshine were all really amazing books for me this month!

The Terror was weird and a little trippy, but I was surprised by how invested I got into the characters and what happens to them. It’s a fictionalized account of real events, but I’m not very familiar with the history of the expedition so it was interesting trying to figure out what was real and what was made up.

I watched the adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere with Keri Washington and Reese Witherspoon and loved it, and it was nice to read the book and see that the show stayed quite true to the story. I got a lot out of the book, some of the nuances of the rich and privileged’s thinking processes were quite jarring to see on the page, but so incredibly well-written.

Sunshine was a reread. This is the third time I’m reading it and I’m still loving it! There were definitely some things I didn’t notice the first couple of times that I noticed now. The relationship stuff were… questionable, in that I’m curious as to the kind of relationship Rae actually has with the people in her life, but the story was amazing nevertheless.

May 2025 TBR Intentions

These are some of the books I’m planning to read in May. I read fewer books in April than usual and I’m definitely hoping to read more than five in May, but these are the priorities and after that, I’ll see where my mood takes me!

  1. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (The Wayfarers #4) by Becky Chambers
  2. Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  3. Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage
  4. The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
  5. Rose Madder by Stephen King

How was your month in April? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful May with lots of great books!

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Top Ten Tuesday | Malaysian Authors

Posted May 5, 2025 by Haze in Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Book Memes / 28 Comments

Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.

Today’s topic is Authors (or books by authors) Who Live In My State/Country (submitted by Jennifer @ Funk-N-Fiction) 

I currently live in Canada but I am from Malaysia and I absolutely love today’s topic because I am able to promote a couple of my favorite authors and also discover some Malaysian authors I haven’t read! I didn’t love all the ones I’ve read, but I hope that sharing them here anyway will help the right audience find them. Clicking the link on their names will bring you to their author page on Goodreads.

Top Ten Tuesday Malaysian Authors

  1. Yangsze Choo – My absolute favorite Malaysian author, she has written The Ghost Bride, The Night Tiger, and The Fox Wife, all of which I’ve read and loved! Her first two books are steeped in Malaysian Chinese folklore and have wonderful fantastical elements. The Fox Wife is not set in Malaysia, but has the same beautiful storytelling. I recommend these books to as many people as I can. In fact, The Ghost Bride is my in-person bookclub’s current book of the month!

  2. Zen Cho – My next favorite Malaysian author, although I have only read The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. She writes sci-fi and fantasy and has a good number of successful books. I loved The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water and I keep meaning to pick up more of her books.

  3. Tash Aw – He grew up in Malaysia but has since moved to England. There was a lot of hype around The Harmony Silk Factory when it came out, and I’ve read it but don’t remember very much about it except that I was underwhelmed, unfortunately. I haven’t read any of his other books.

  4. Vanessa Chan – The most recent Malaysian author whose work I read. I really wanted to like The Storm We Made but unfortunately couldn’t because I’m a character-driven reader and some of the characters’ behaviors in the book was just not believable for me. I was quite disappointed with the book but others have liked it and regardless of my own feelings about the book, I always wish success for my fellow Malaysians and hope they find the right audience.

  5. Vanessa Len – She is nationally Australian but has Malaysian Chinese roots. Her Monsters series has been quite successful, but unfortunately I dnf’d the first book of the series. It wasn’t for me but I hope others might find her and love her.

  6. Hanna Alkaf – I just found her through researching for this post and I am very excited about reading her books. It looks like she’s got several books with great ratings; I’m most excited about The Weight of Our Sky because it’s historical fiction set on May 13th, 1969, the day there was a racial war between the Chinese and the Malays in Malaysia. I grew up hearing about it as a cautionary tale but was never given details so I’m very curious to read this book!

  7. Tan Twan Eng – Another Malaysian author I just found out about and whom I’m excited to read. He writes The Gift of Rain and The House of Doors. These books are historical fiction set in the early 1900s in Malaysia. I’m just really starting to appreciate the intricate history of Malaysia/Malaya during the British colonial times, a lot of which we were never taught in school, and I’d love to read more about it!

  8. Sue Lynn Tan – She is the author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Heart of the Sun Warrior, two books in the Celestial Kingdom series. I have these books on my TBR but I haven’t gotten around to them yet. I don’t think I knew the author was Malaysian, but now that I do, I’m moving them up the TBR list. These are fantasy books about Chinese mythological figures, something I’m very excited to dive into!

  9. Rani Manicka – She has written four novels, two of which are set in Malaysia. The Rice Mother is her first book and is about a girl who moved to Malaysia for an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen and had several children by the time she was nineteen. She grows up quickly and takes care of her family through WW2 and the Japanese occupation. It sounds absolutely fascinating!

  10. Selina Siak Chin Yoke – The author has written two books in the Malayan series; The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds and When the Future Comes Too Soon. Historical fiction set in British colonial times in Malaysia, which I’ve mentioned I’ve become more appreciative of. These books weave many of the different, rich Malaysian cultures into the story and I love seeing multicultural aspects of Malaysia being represented so I can’t wait to read these books too.

Have you read any of these books and/or authors? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?

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