Read Local

I re-started posting on this blog just over a year ago, to list the books I read in 2022 that weren't for the book club. This post is to list (non-exhaustive) the local books I read in 2023.

In late 2022, I started re-reading The Resident Tourist and completed reading the rest of the series in 2023. In late 2023, I laughed and chortled while reading Bricks in the Wall.

At the start of 2023, Ethos Books published Not Without Us: Perspectives on Disability and Inclusion in Singapore. The book features a contribution from Runninghour buddy Tan Siew Ling. In 2023, I attended two NLB events for the book. On 28 February, the Nature Book Club conducted a discussion on the similarities of nature and persons with disabilities (PWDs), in the local context. On 21 July, I visited the newly opened Punggol Regional Library to attend the discussion about inclusion in the workplace for PWDs.

In 2020, I took a free copy of Dharma's Chariot at Bishan Library and never read it 😛 When I attended the SingLit Book Club Squat for Tradition, Sit for Modernity event on 20 April with the writer Cultural Medallion recipient Chia Joo Ming in attendance, I took the other two One Story titles home. Then I finally read all 3 short stories in 2023.

I'd previously saw My Love Is Blind displayed at library@orchard and I finally read it in 2023. As mentioned in the afterword, the author wrote about many places in post-war Singapore which still exist now. Which is amazing considering the pace of development since then.

Since I'm a sucker for comics and award winners, reading the Winner of Book of the Year and Best Literary Work at the 2023 Singapore Book Awards, Work-Life Balance: Malevolent Managers and Folkloric Freelancers was a no-brainer 😁 

On 11 November I attended the Book Event for Becoming Margaret Leng Tan at Esplanade Concourse. I bought a copy of the book then and there cos Margaret Tan & the author Low Lai Chow were signing copies of the book 😊