Book Review — Front Desk by Kelly Yang
Shi Min Xie This book has been making waves on social media and I knew I had to read it because it had a Chinese protagonist. Besides, the cover art completely sold the…
2018
Things I learned as a teacher: Always go for bubble tea
Years ago, I taught debate at a secondary school. The students were great and they warmed up to me very quickly. Within a few weeks, they were asking me this…
My favourite pens
One of my writer friends posted a rather extensive list of favourite pens online, which she said that she spent quite a lot of time reading. That got me to…
Favourite Villains
I was getting ready some materials for a webinar that I was supposed to do at work. I had to touch on character development, and I got to think about…
The year of submitting dangerously
I want to say that this is the year of submitting dangerously, and when I think about it, it is. This year, I submitted my work a lot more and…
The Dragon Prince — A Review
My idea of what dragon princes are come from old Chinese tv serials that I used to watch as a kid, so when this came out on Netflix and R…
Memorising ‘good phrases’ isn’t really the way to teach kids how to write
I get slightly exasperated when students’ parents ask me if there is a list of phrases that their child can memorise to get ready for their composition examinations. I don’t…
In many Asian stories, the women are either ghosts or wives
I just finished reading a comic book that was written by an Asian writer and I was sorely disappointed by its content. I don’t want to name names or even…
Halloween favourite: Paranorman
I must confess that I don’t like horror movies very much. Often, I cannot fall asleep after watching one and I can conjure up the ghost’s/demon’s/devil’s/serial killer’s image in my…
Inadvertently ignorant things people say to writers
I thought for a long while about doing this entry, even though my blog is supposed to be a force for good and also mostly for me to review books…