A final look back at the old year brings us to the bestselling titles of 2015. As a comparison, the top title in Britain was the execrable EL James's Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, which sold over a million copies! We...
We are very honoured to be co-organising – together with the Penang Institute – a public talk (actually described as an "intimate session") with the great Johan Galtung. The theme of his presentation is the intriguingly titled "A Theory of China: Space/Dynasty vs Empire" and will...
When the late Felix Chia published The Babas in 1980, it was the first popular book to document the rich and fascinating lifestyle of the Baba-Nyonya or Peranakan communities, especially those of Malacca, Penang and Singapore. It deservedly won critical acclaim. Landmark Books, Singapore has just...
Following the feature on the bookshop in this month's Penang Monthly, there is a nice piece from last week's The Edge by Emily Chow. She's titled the piece "The Soul of the Island" and explores some of the people who are helping to shape the...
It was a total pleasure to have Tony Reid and his wife Helen in the bookshop yesterday, thanks to Tan Boon Kean and Chee Heng Leng. Tony Reid has fair claim to be the doyen of Southeast Asian historians; he not only exudes warmth and...
Less than two years ago, an almost forgotten book became – seemingly out of the blue – the must-read novel of 2013. John Williams published Stoner in the mid-1960s. It was respectfully reviewed and sold modestly well. And then was consigned to the margins. And...
The third edition of the excellent lifestyle zine Something is already on the shelves. It's bigger and better than ever before – with features on diverse topics like cycling, music, photography and stationery! And the magazine smells great. How so? Because Issue 3 comes with...
We've recently acquired two books that offer thoughtful appraisals of two vernacular architectural traditions in Malaysia. Wan Hashim and Abdul Halim Nasir's The Traditional Malay House (ITBM) is an accessible introduction to traditional styles of Malay domestic architecture, nicely illustrated with colour photographs and architectural...
For well over two centuries Penang's history was made at the confluence of where the monsoons meet – shaped by the protean diversity of peoples from wider worlds. Two important histories chart this vibrant story. Penang and Its Region: The Story of an Asian Enetreot...
With two lauded collections of short stories and two superb novels, Jhumpa Lahiri has a claim to being one of the very best authors writing today. Her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won a string of awards that culminated in the Pulitzer...