Notes from Honey: Hey Booknerds, we are taking a week’s break but here’s one of our favourites from the TBNT archives and fitting too for March’s #tbntbookchallenge2021 | .. |

Ocean Vuong's raw and visceral debut novel takes you by the throat and doesn't let you go. Admittedly not for everyone, you will still be floored by the emotional truth within. Structured as a letter written by a son to his illiterate mother, this work of auto-fiction blurs the lines between reality and make-believe, you won't really know where Ocean ends and Little Dog (the protagonist) begins and in there lies the beauty of it. Also it's August! So it's break your T.B.R. again and there are so many lovely books to cover...

Producers Note: This episode contains content that might be sensitive to some, content includes particular kinds of consensual sexual activity and discussions of LGBTQ+ topics. If this isn't your cup of tea, we suggest you skip this one.
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It's our Thirty Dirty again and for March it's to read a book that has LGBTQ issues in it or a book written by a Japanese author. We thought why not combine and two and was completely illuminated by the fact the Japanese queer writing has had a long history right up to the first ever novel in the world. And seriously all of the books we talked about today is interesting. We are going to pick up some ourselves.

Come meet the first vampire in the world! Did you know that Raja Bersiong actually lived in the 11th or 12th century meaning that it predates Vlad Tepesh? - the real life bloodthirsty ruler that spawned Dracula. Mentioned in Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and then later immortalised on film(s) most people have an inclination of what he is, a mortal man who developed a taste for blood and because of it grew fangs and became more cruel. Tutu reimagines him as a young prince, the heir to the kingdom of Langkasuka and the possibility that this affliction might have come to him from more traditional vampiric means. Catch this interesting conversation!

One of Diana's current favourite author is Charles Yu and we got stuck into Interior Chinatown- one of the most innovative and entertaining books of 2020, hey it won the National Book Award. We went into structure, stereotypes even fonts and foibles. I mean once a nerd, always a nerd. Check it out folks! Our excerpts this week is read by actor and director, Gavin Yap.

Ever wondered what it takes to run the biggest book sale in the world over and over again and still have juice leftover to open beautiful bookstores and push for reading advocacy? Well at the end of 2020 Diana and Honey sat down with Andrew Yap, one half of BookXcess and The Big Bad Wolf sale and we did a real deep dive into the book business. This is deep nerd stuff folks!

To egg you along on our #tbntbookchallenge for 2021 we will be putting up a 30mins show at the end of each month that can get your juices going for the next month. So February's challenge is to read a book by a Southeast Asian author or set in Southeast Asia- we concentrate on Indochina for this episode

Part 2 folks where we cover Asian Lit, middle-grade-YA, translated books and other notable literary fiction coming out in the first half of 2021. Enjoy!

We are trying to keep our shows concise folks so here is the first part of 2021 Anticipated Reads (January-June). In this first part we go into most anticipated books, a huge non-fiction list and speculative fiction to watch out for. We though we start off the year a little chilled, get you groovy on books coming out. Don't forget to listen into Part 2 coming out on Sunday.

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Gymnopedie No. 1 by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3837-gymnopedie-no-1
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Russian Dance
Joey Pecoraro
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXUbxtXlyp-urIb2hRlXRpQ

Sneaky Adventure by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4383-sneaky-adventure
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Local Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300012
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

For those of you who have just started listening to TBNT, these are some of our 2020 highlights. It's been quite a year! We clocked over 40 episodes, launched Patreon, figured out how to do social distancing recording, talked and talked and talked and chewed the fat with lots of wonderful authors and booknerds. We experimented on new formats, topics and even did a narrative show. Save to say we will always try and keep things interesting for you and serve up the variety and voracity of readers in this part of the world. We hope you enjoyed listening just as much as we enjoyed making the shows. Now onwards to 2021!

Our second last little episode of the year! This time we are giving you a quick tour of our reading year. We talk about romantic books, books we'll probably DNF and what some of the books we are looking forward to reading...

Alien Sunset by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Tavern Loop One by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/