Remember DVD extras? Or maybe I should ask…remember DVDs? Those shiny discs that looked like CDs? (If you now ask what a CD is, then I’m really in trouble.)

Anyway, this is what I consider this episode to be — a DVD extra equivalent for my first novel, Everything Asian. Initially it was the second chapter, featuring a wayward mother and daughter team of shoplifters who ran into the Kim family. As you can imagine, hijinks ensue. This chapter was ultimately jettisoned, but now it lives on here on my Substack. I hope you enjoy it.

And now an extra of that DVD extra — the graphic below comes from an essay I wrote for The New York Times back in 2009, which you can see features a boy showing a pagoda to a customer. It is, believe it or not, a pagoda music box! The novel still has one, too, at the end of the first chapter, and it has a nonfiction counterpart. Confused? I think I am, too…

For this episode’s recommendation of an audiobook, I’d like to highlight the narrator Julia Whelan. She sometimes reads for The New York Times, and her performance of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s essay on Val Kilmer back in 2020 is not to be missed.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sung.substack.com