meiyan

book + asmr = heaven

323 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1)

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southeast asian fiction

by meiyan

7 books

books written or set in southeast asia

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

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She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

meiyan

Sep 12, 2025

4.0

Enjoyment: 3.5Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0

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The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)

Richard Osman

Alternate cover edition of ASIN B07S5D5TH7 In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

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Pachinko

Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

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Historical Fiction Starter Pack Vol I 🏰⏳📜

💎 // 227 joined

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An introduction to Historical Fiction, these books are part of the cultural zeitgeist or the 'canon' that many would recognize. Look for more niche titles in later Starter Pack volumes.

meiyan commented on a List

books that I feel are gonna be 5 star bangers

by bookbaddie

31 books

my low cringe tolerance can't take anymore 1-2 star books. I refuse to get into another reading slump

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💥

😮‍💨

Where the Library Hides (Secrets of the Nile, #2)

This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom, #1)

What the River Knows (Secrets of the Nile, #1)

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He Who Drowned the World (The Radiant Emperor, #2)

Shelley Parker-Chan

How much would you give to win the world? Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor. But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband―and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan. Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history―and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him. All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…

meiyan commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

AlysasPaiges

Series that should have been longer/shorter

Whats a series you think would have been better had it been condensed OR what is a series you wish had been drawn out longer? I personally think the From Blood and Ash series DRAGGED, the pacing was awful. I had to drop it around book 3 because we were getting nowhere 🙃 Meanwhile I wish we had more books following Sorcery of Thorns. I miss Elisabeth, Nathaniel, and Silas 😭

meiyan commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

archercasper

Favorite "unknown" book?

I always hesitate calling a book "unknown," because what if I just haven't found the people who know it? That feeling aside, I want to hear what your favorite "unknown" or lesser known books are, if you'll listen to me rave about mine!

Last year, I was perusing shelves in a small bookstore in Colorado and spotted the cutest little paperback (yes, I judge books by their covers, sue me), The Fern House by Brooke Hamilton-Benjestorf. There was only one copy in the store, no written reviews on Goodreads, and I had to manually add it to Storygraph. I decided to jump in without knowing anything about it and it is now one of my favorite books. It's a quiet, fairly uneventful book that follows a woman's move to an isolated island. It's captivating and magical and I NEED someone to talk about it with!!

So, what is your favorite book that you have no one to talk with about? I'd love to read your thoughts and check it out!

meiyan commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

LanieBun

Who are your favorite Booktubers/creators?

I love putting bookish videos on in the background while I do chores. Who are your favorites? Bonus points if they are underrated gems. I watch a lot of the popular ones and would love to branch out and find more in my niche.

meiyan commented on a post

books4lyfe

Thoughts from 81% (page 430)

I am serious when I say nothing about this book is original. I am kind of a sucker for corny romance though

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She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

Shelley Parker-Chan

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness… In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.

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Talking at Night

Claire Daverley

Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story. Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered. But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been. What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?

Post from the Talking at Night forum

meiyan

Thoughts from 10%

spoilers

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meiyan commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

mahnoor

Edited

THIS WEEK: "book quotes that made you sigh weakly because you can't believe someone wrote such a beautiful sentence"

Ok, I may have just started this thread because I want to share this gorgeous quote by Zadie Smith with everyone (its quoted in Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson) + I love reading beautiful sentences and looking out into the distance meaningfully.

"There was an inevitability about their road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route" - Zadie Smith, NW

Aaagghhhh!!! 😘😭😩🥰🥹😭❤️❤️

Share yourss! Doesnt have to be from this week ofcourse.

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Talking at Night

Claire Daverley

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