Two Book Nerds Talking

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell was just long-listed for the Women's Prize for fiction. What makes people over five hundred years later still speculate on Shakespeare's life? How much did the death of his son Hamnet influenced his tragedy Hamlet? Was the name coincidental or deliberate? Was it a way to process his grief? Surprisingly we found the main character in this novel is his wife, called Agnes and her inner life and sacrifices...

Our minisode this time brings you a young poet that hails from Sumatera. Ilham was the only emerging poet to be in the Ubud Indonesian writing anthology and we caught up with him during the festival last year. His poem was political and does hit home even though it was an observation on Indonesian politics. The interview was done in Bahasa Indonesian but we have punctuated this episode with explanations and our discussion on it.

Zoiks! We have a special crossover episode for all you geeks and nerds out there. In the studio with us this week are the gregarious Amelia Chen and Nick Dorian from the pop culture podcast Geeks in Malaysia. We chewed through Joe Hill's graphic novels and the Netflix series. First part is all about the printed matter of course while the second part which will be out on Geeks in Malaysia will be on the series. Enjoy!

When Jeanine Cummins' highly anticipated book American Dirt hit the shelves readers were beside themselves recommending it. The mother and son story of being pursued by a drug kingpin fired everyone's imaginations. And then controversy hit, Mexican and Latinx writers came down hard on it citing the fact that it fetishisize their culture and that Cummins wrote at best a summer pot-boiler and not a book that puts forward issues of migrants and social justice. Learn about the controversy surrounding this book in our latest episode.

The secondhand industry has spawned its own sub-culture, economy and entrepreneurs. Dive with us into the world of garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores with author Adam Minter who has spent a lot of his free time poking around secondhand stores and backyards. It's fascinating, compelling and heart-wrenching at times.

As promised from time to time we feature an emerging writer from the region. We met Lita Lestianti at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and talked how she juggles writing with motherhood...

Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other is a candid look into the lives of 12 British black women. The novel is clever, entertaining and experimental but did it deserve the joint Booker with Atwood's testaments. Well we sat down and talked feminism, gender, class, sexuality and all sorts of other juicy things in this week's episode.

Been mad about a certain monster-fighting, white-haired mutant? In this episode special we talk everything Witcher, the books, the games, the series. Love it or hate it, if you have Netflix there is no way you could miss The Witcher that has been storming everyone's feeds. So Toss a coin to your Booknerds and lets go!

With the launch go The Garden of Evening Mists movie, we got author Tan Twan Eng in the studio to spill the beans on borrowed sceneries, horimonos and, the thrill of seeing your characters come to life on the big screen. Of course we needed out on books too!

T'is the end of 2019. How was the reading year for you? We feel incredibly blessed really looking back at the year of reading and podcasting we had. Here are some of our reading highlights and the episodes we loved. We also talked about award-winners and books on everyone's reading list. Enjoy! And catch ya in the new year! qCp70ID9tInfd0anyNWs