Shari Creates

Books, languages, things I make and notes from everyday life.

Author: Shari

  • Why I Started BacaMalay

    BacaMalay actually began because of my husband.

    He had picked up an interest in learning Malay again, and that got me thinking about what was available for someone who wanted to learn the language. At around the same time, I had also been thinking about starting some kind of project of my own.

    And there was another feeling mixed into it: nostalgia.

    I missed reading Malay.

    Not necessarily studying it or analysing grammar. I missed simply reading things written in Malay — stories, expressions, conversations and the kind of writing that had once been an ordinary part of my life.

    The idea of graded reading wasn’t something I invented.

    I already knew it from learning Mandarin. I had used sites such as Mandarin Bean, HSK Online and Du Chinese. Mandarin Bean and HSK Online offer lessons as well, while Du Chinese is much more focused on reading, but all of them had introduced me to the idea of reading material organised according to language level.

    So I started wondering what existed for Malay.

    There are certainly Malay learning resources. There are books, lessons, folktales, school materials and stories scattered around the internet.

    But I wanted something quite specific.

    What if someone simply wanted to read Malay?

    Not another grammar lesson.

    Not a page of comprehension questions.

    Just something interesting to read.

    And preferably something chosen according to how much Malay they could already understand.

    Then, one weekend in early August, more or less on a whim, I paid for a domain and started building it.

    That domain became BacaMalay.

    And just in case you have been reading that as BakaMalay in your head: baca is pronounced roughly bah-cha. In Malay, the letter c has a “ch” sound. Baca means “read”, so BacaMalay is quite literally an invitation to read Malay.

    I didn’t have some grand business plan behind it. I had an idea, inspiration from the Mandarin resources I had used myself, a free weekend and enough curiosity to see what I could make.

    The structure gradually became Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced readings.

    But while I was thinking about what stories should actually go into this library, something happened that I hadn’t really expected.

    I started remembering things.

    Lebai Malang — the unfortunate religious teacher.

    Pak Pandir — the foolish but memorable character of Malay folktales.

    Badang — the legendary strongman.

    Sang Kancil. Hang Tuah. Hang Jebat.

    Stories and characters that had once been familiar suddenly began resurfacing in my memory. Some I remembered clearly. Others I realised I had almost completely forgotten.

    And I was happy to become acquainted with them again.

    That made me even more excited about BacaMalay.

    It was no longer only about producing reading material for someone learning Malay. I was also rediscovering something myself.

    I began looking again at stories I had not thought about for years and remembering just how rich the collection of Malay folktales, legends and comic characters actually is.

    I wanted BacaMalay to have room for all of that.

    There could be ordinary contemporary stories — waiting for a bus, buying food on the way home, drinking coffee, going to work.

    But there could also be Sang Kancil tricking his way out of trouble, Pak Pandir making another terrible decision, stories about Badang and his extraordinary strength, and eventually many more of the stories that Malaysians have passed down for generations.

    I wanted the site to feel recognisably Malaysian rather than like a collection of generic language-learning dialogues that happened to be written in Malay.

    Building it has also made me notice things about my own language that I would normally never stop to explain.

    What exactly are we communicating when we call someone Bang?

    Why does bungkus immediately make sense when ordering food to take away?

    What picture comes into a Malaysian person’s head when someone says kurus macam lidi — skinny like the thin rib of a coconut-palm leaf?

    These are tiny things. But when you are writing for someone who didn’t grow up knowing them automatically, you suddenly have to think about what they mean and why we say them.

    And yes, I use AI quite a lot while building BacaMalay.

    There isn’t much point pretending otherwise.

    I use it for brainstorming, research, organising ideas, developing stories and solving the technical problems that inevitably appear when I decide I want the website to do something new.

    But I also write. I edit. I change things. I reject suggestions. I argue over words and expressions. Sometimes I rewrite a sentence several times because it doesn’t sound quite right to me.

    The technology makes it possible for me to build much more than I could have built alone, particularly in such a short time. But the choices about what BacaMalay should become are still mine.

    Where will it lead?

    I genuinely don’t know.

    Perhaps people will find it and use it. Perhaps it will eventually make some money. Perhaps it will remain a rather obscure little corner of the internet.

    For now, though, it keeps me occupied, and I enjoy building it.

    There is always another story I suddenly remember, another one I discover again, another expression worth explaining, or another part of the site I want to improve.

    And sometimes I think much further ahead.

    If I keep adding to it over the years, BacaMalay could eventually become quite a substantial collection of Malay stories, legends, everyday language and bits of culture.

    Maybe one day my grandchildren will come across it.

    I have no idea whether they will need BacaMalay to learn the language. I don’t even know what the internet will look like by then.

    But there is something rather nice about the possibility that they might one day be able to look through all those stories and know:

    Their grandmother made this.

    Not bad for something that started with my husband learning Malay, a bit of nostalgia, and me impulsively buying a domain one weekend in August.

  • Oktober — Khor Ewe Pin

    Oktober — Khor Ewe Pin

    Cover of Oktober by Khor Ewe Pin
    Categories: ,
    Author:
    Genre:
    After his mother dies, fourteen-year-old Oktober goes to live with his aunt, uncle and cousins. His mother has left him a series of letters containing tasks he must complete one by one, and following them gradually reveals the truth about his past, his adoption and his biological family.

    I picked up Oktober after not having read a book in Malay for a very long time — probably close to two decades. That made the experience slightly strange from the beginning.

    The Malay sometimes felt unnatural to me, almost as if I were reading a translation rather than something originally written in the language. But I honestly can’t say how much of that was the book and how much was me. After so many years of barely reading Malay fiction, my own sense of what sounds natural on the page may simply have become rusty.

    What I do remember clearly is that the story itself hooked me very quickly.

    Oktober loses his mother before he turns fifteen and is sent to live with his aunt, uncle and cousins. Before her death, his mother leaves behind a series of letters for him. He cannot simply read them all at once. Each one gives him something he has to do before he can move on to the next, and gradually those tasks begin revealing things about his own past and family.

    That structure worked extremely well for me because the book never seemed to sit still. There was always another task, another clue or another piece of information waiting to be uncovered. I kept wanting to know what the next letter would reveal.

    There is quite a lot going on around Oktober as well, particularly within the family he has been sent to live with, so the mystery surrounding the letters never feels like the only thing carrying the story. The different problems keep overlapping and pushing it forward.

    Looking back, that is probably why I gave it five stars despite my reservations about the Malay. I may have occasionally questioned the language, but I was never bored.

    For a book that also happened to be my return to reading Malay fiction after many years, Oktober turned out to be a very entertaining choice.

    Rating: ★★★★★

  • My First Mandarin Words Weren’t 你好

    It was the 1980s, and I remember afternoons in Johor Bahru when television was still something you had to wait for.
    Channels weren’t broadcasting twenty-four hours a day. They started at particular times, sometimes in the morning, sometimes around noon or later. At that age, I couldn’t properly tell the time yet, but I could read numbers and I knew what the clock was supposed to look like. When the short hand pointed towards 3 and the long hand pointed towards 12, I knew it was time to turn on the television.
    My mother had this huge Singer colour TV. At least, it seemed huge to me then.
    We could receive Singapore television from Johor Bahru, and I watched quite a lot of it. If I remember correctly, Channel 5 was mainly the English-language channel while Channel 8 had much more Chinese programming.
    I actually learnt a surprising amount from television.
    I learnt to read partly from watching Sesame Street. But at the same time, without anyone deliberately teaching me, I was also absorbing bits and pieces of Mandarin from Singaporean Chinese dramas.
    And apparently national anthems.
    I learnt to sing Majulah Singapura before I learnt Negaraku. 😂
    For anyone unfamiliar with this little Malaysia-Singapore oddity, Majulah Singapura, meaning “Onward Singapore”, is Singapore’s national anthem. Negaraku, meaning “My Country”, is Malaysia’s national anthem.
    I was Malaysian and living in Johor Bahru, yet somehow I learnt Singapore’s anthem first.
    The Singapore television channels would play it when broadcasting began and ended, and after hearing it over and over again, I simply learnt it. I can still sing Majulah Singapura today.
    Apparently repetition works.
    It also worked on my Mandarin.
    My first Mandarin words were not 你好
    When people start learning Mandarin now, one of the first things they usually learn is:
    你好
    nǐ hǎo
    Hello.
    That was definitely not how Mandarin entered my vocabulary.
    My first Mandarin words were considerably more dramatic.
    The Singapore channels showed a lot of Chinese dramas. I remember period dramas, kung fu, people fighting with swords and, naturally, people somehow flying from tree to tree.
    And because television dramas apparently involved a great deal of kidnapping, fighting and general emotional distress, some of the sounds that stuck in my head were things like:
    救命啊！
    jiùmìng a!
    Help!
    放开我！
    fàngkāi wǒ!
    Let go of me!
    And another sound I remembered for years, which I only understood properly much later:
    求求你呀！
    qiúqiu nǐ ya!
    Please! / I’m begging you!
    Very practical vocabulary for a small child. 😂
    At the time, of course, I didn’t know the characters, the pinyin or even exactly what I was hearing. I just remembered the sounds.
    Years later, after I began studying Mandarin properly, some of those old fragments suddenly became recognisable.
    “Oh. THAT is what they were saying.”
    There is something very strange about discovering that words you are supposedly “learning” have actually been sitting somewhere in your memory for decades.
    The Samsui Women
    One drama that stayed particularly strongly in my memory was Samsui Women — 红头巾, literally “The Red Bandana” (Wikipedia).
    I remembered it as an incredibly long and rather sad drama.
    Looking it up now, I discovered that it was only 24 episodes.
    Twenty-four!
    In my childhood memory, these women appeared to spend half their lives on television. 😂
    The drama followed Samsui women who came from Sanshui in China to Singapore looking for work, particularly in the construction industry. They became known for their distinctive red headscarves and for the physically demanding work they did during Singapore’s development.
    What I remembered, though, was not historical information.
    I remembered women getting older.
    I remembered hardship.
    I remembered that it felt sad.
    I remember following some of these women from when they were young until they were much older, and I vaguely remember deaths as well, although after all this time I certainly wouldn’t trust myself to reconstruct the plot episode by episode.
    I was fascinated to learn much later that these were stories connected to real women who had helped build Singapore.
    The production itself apparently tried to speak with actual Samsui women while researching the drama, although many had already moved away from the places where they had once lived and some were reluctant to talk about their past.
    None of this was something I understood while watching it.
    I didn’t need to.
    I understood enough to know that what was happening mattered.
    Perhaps that is another reason Mandarin stayed with me. Long before I understood the language, I had already learnt that emotion could come through it.
    Mandarin grew on me before I learnt it
    When I look back now, I don’t think there was one moment when I suddenly decided that I liked Mandarin.
    It grew on me.
    Or perhaps it grew in me.
    First there were sounds coming from a television in Johor Bahru.
    Then there were strange words I remembered without knowing why.
    There were Chinese period dramas and kung fu and people flying through trees.
    There was Samsui Women.
    There were years in between.
    And eventually there was me, as an adult, actually sitting down and learning Mandarin.
    Maybe that also explains something about the way I learn languages now.
    I live in Hungary, but I hardly watch Hungarian television. To be completely honest, I don’t even really know how Hungarian television works these days because I simply don’t watch it.
    Perhaps that partly explains why Hungarian does not seem to sink into my brain as easily.
    Mandarin, meanwhile, is everywhere because I keep putting it everywhere.
    I take Mandarin lessons. I watch Chinese dramas. I watch Chinese videos. I read things in Chinese. I look things up. I listen to people speaking it.
    The amount of Mandarin I deliberately consume is sometimes slightly ridiculous.
    If you looked only at my media habits, you might think I was somewhat delusional and had convinced myself that I lived in China rather than Hungary. 😅
    But perhaps I am simply recreating something that happened naturally when I was a child.
    Back then, Mandarin came through the television whether I understood it or not.
    Now I am the one turning it on.
    And after all these years, my first Mandarin words still weren’t 你好.
    They were basically:
    HELP! LET GO OF ME! I’M BEGGING YOU!
    Which, considering the Chinese dramas I grew up watching, feels entirely appropriate.

  • The Third Gilmore Girl — Kelly Bishop

    The Third Gilmore Girl — Kelly Bishop

    Official The Third Gilmore Girl hardcover cover by Kelly Bishop
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    Author:

    The Third Gilmore Girl is one of the very few memoirs I have read — or, more accurately, listened to.

    Kelly Bishop narrates the audiobook herself, apart from the foreword by Amy Sherman-Palladino, and perhaps because I know her voice so well as Emily Gilmore, there were moments when it almost felt as though Emily Gilmore were sitting there telling me her life story.

    Except, of course, this is not Emily’s life. It is Kelly Bishop’s.

    Gilmore Girls has long been one of my go-to cosy dramas, although strangely enough, I don’t particularly like the two main Gilmore girls. Lorelai can be far too over-the-top for me, while Rory’s romantic choices — particularly the way she moves from one relationship to another — made her increasingly difficult for me to like.

    But I digress. This isn’t a review of Gilmore Girls. 😅

    Despite my feelings about its two main characters, there are plenty of other characters I like, and Emily Gilmore has always been one of them.

    She can certainly be a stick in the mud, but I always felt that much of that came from the way she had been raised and the very particular world she lived in. Old money, expectations, appearances and rules shaped her. She was disappointed in Lorelai, but she clearly loved Rory very much.

    I sometimes found myself thinking that I would have liked to have had a grandmother who cared about me even half as much as Emily cared about Rory.

    So when I came across Kelly Bishop’s memoir, I was intrigued.

    I wanted to know about the woman behind Emily Gilmore. Where had she started? What had her life as a performer been like before Gilmore Girls? How did she eventually end up playing Emily, and what was it like to inhabit that character for so many years?

    What I particularly enjoyed was how much of a glimpse the memoir gives into the world of professional performers.

    Kelly Bishop’s career began long before Emily Gilmore. She moved to New York as a young woman to pursue dance, performed at Radio City and on Broadway, and eventually won a Tony Award for her role in A Chorus Line. Her career later moved through film and television before Gilmore Girls became such a major part of it.

    Listening to her talk about those different stages of her life gave the book an almost old-school show-business feeling to me.

    It also made me think about how often people who become very good at something seem to have known surprisingly early what they wanted to do. They choose a direction, keep working at it, hone their skills for years and gradually build a life around it.

    Lucky.

    There were also parts of Kelly Bishop’s political outlook that I didn’t necessarily agree with, particularly when she talked about some of her activism. But that never stopped me from liking her or enjoying the book.

    And I did like her.

    Kelly Bishop has a genuine flair for storytelling.

    The audiobook never felt as though it dragged. She tells her own stories with enough personality that simply listening to her became part of the pleasure of the book. There is something particularly fitting about hearing a memoir like this in the author’s own voice rather than reading it silently on the page.

    I originally picked up The Third Gilmore Girl because I wanted to know more about Emily Gilmore.

    By the end, I was much more interested in Kelly Bishop.

    ★★★★★

  • Talking About Drought, Yoghurt and Hot Springs in Mandarin

    On 11 August, I had another Mandarin speaking lesson with Yufan on Preply. Our main topic was 自然灾害 (zìrán zāihài) — natural disasters.

    The topic was surprisingly relevant because Hungary has been very dry lately.

    I told Yufan:

    匈牙利干旱，很久没下雨了。
    Hungary is experiencing drought, and it hasn’t rained for a long time.

    We also talked about the Danube:

    多瑙河的水位下降了。
    The water level of the Danube has fallen.

    There were already several new words for me here.

    干旱 (gānhàn) — drought
    水位 (shuǐwèi) — water level
    下降 (xiàjiàng) — to fall, decrease
    干涸 (gānhé) — to dry up

    Mandarin lesson vocabulary mind map from 11 August 2026

    Then we moved on to the heat.

    I told Yufan:

    上个星期最高温度是41度。
    Last week, the highest temperature was 41°C.

    She was surprised. She hadn’t expected Hungary to get that hot.

    This week, however:

    这个星期降温了，现在最高温度是35度。
    This week it has cooled down. Now the highest temperature is 35°C.

    Another useful word:

    降温 (jiàngwēn) — for the temperature to fall; to cool down

    We talked about what people should do when the temperature suddenly drops:

    突然降温应该做什么？
    What should you do when the temperature suddenly drops?

    That brought us to 预防感冒 (yùfáng gǎnmào) — preventing a cold — and things like 多喝热水drinking hot water , 多吃含有vitamin C的食物 eating food containing vitamin C  and 穿适合的衣服 wearing suitable clothes.

    I asked whether Chinese say 喝药 “drink medicine” or 吃药 “eat medicine” because in Japanese I know they say 薬を飲みます (kusuri o nomimasu), literally “drink medicine.” To which she said: 看情况 – it depends. It depends on the form. Somehow this led to learning the words:

    液体 (yètǐ) — liquid
    固体 (gùtǐ) — solid

    And this was probably one of my favourite little discoveries from the lesson.

    We started talking about yoghurt.

    In Chinese, it is very common to say:

    我喝酸奶。
    I drink yoghurt.

    Yufan explained that 喝酸奶 (hē suānnǎi) is commonly used even when the yoghurt is quite thick. 吃酸奶 (chī suānnǎi) is also used, especially when yoghurt is treated more obviously as something spoonable, but 喝酸奶 is a very normal expression.

    I found that particularly interesting because we had just been talking about 液体 and 固体. Whether the yoghurt seems more liquid or more solid does not necessarily determine which verb Chinese speakers naturally use.

    我觉得很有意思。 😄

    We also practised:

    室内 (shìnèi) — indoors
    室外 (shìwài) — outside
    户外 (hùwài) — outdoors

    and the sentence:

    不要长时间待在户外。
    Don’t stay outdoors for a long time.

    From there the conversation wandered even further.

    We somehow ended up talking about 温泉酒店 (wēnquán jiǔdiàn) — hot spring hotels — including rose baths, green tea baths, milk baths and medicinal baths.

    And eventually we went back to the topic of 自然灾害 natural disasters again. 

    Wrapping up with the question of whether my country had ever experienced 火山爆发 (huǒshān bàofā) — volcanic eruption.

    So what began as a conversation about natural disasters somehow travelled from drought in Hungary, to the Danube, 41-degree weather, sudden temperature changes, yoghurt, staying indoors, hot springs and finally volcanoes.

    That is actually what I like about these speaking lessons. I never quite know where the conversation is going to go, and along the way I pick up words that I probably would not have deliberately chosen to study from a vocabulary list.

     

    (more…)
  • The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy — Brigitte Knightley

    The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy — Brigitte Knightley

    Official cover of The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

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    Author:
    Assassin Osric Mordaunt needs the help of brilliant healer Aurienne Fairhrim, despite their rival Orders and mutual dislike. Forced into an uneasy partnership by his mysterious illness and a spreading Pox, the two discover that working together may be far more dangerous than either expected.

    I picked this up because I was specifically in the mood for enemies-to-lovers with an antihero.

    And Osric Mordaunt certainly fit the requirement.

    He is an assassin from the Fyren Order who becomes seriously ill and discovers that the person most capable of helping him is Aurienne Fairhrim, a healer from the rival Haelan Order. Aurienne has problems of her own. Her Order is trying to deal with an outbreak of a long-forgotten disease and desperately needs money, which is how she ends up reluctantly agreeing to work with a man she thoroughly dislikes.

    So we have an assassin and a healer who belong to opposing Orders, forced to work together.

    Obviously I was interested.

    I liked both of the main characters, which is not always a given for me in a romance.

    Aurienne is exactly the kind of heroine I enjoy. She is extremely capable and intelligent, but she isn’t constantly trying to prove that she is capable and intelligent. She simply is.

    And Osric?

    Well. Cold, broody, dangerous, morally questionable.

    In this case I was actually looking for an antihero, so he was very much what I wanted.

    But what really made the book work for me was the slow burn.

    I don’t want enemies-to-lovers where they are supposedly enemies for five minutes and then immediately start falling over each other. Give me the resistance. Give me the denial. Give me two people who genuinely have reasons not to like each other and then make them spend enough time together that things begin to change despite themselves.

    This book gave me that.

    And I especially loved that Osric got there first.

    There is something enormously satisfying about watching the cold, broody one slowly realise that he is in trouble. By the time he begins recognising what he actually feels for Aurienne, she still isn’t quite there yet.

    Perfect.

    It meant I got to enjoy him having to sit with those feelings instead of the romance becoming immediately mutual the moment one of them realised what was happening.

    The rest of the story moved at a good pace too. The mystery surrounding Osric’s illness and the reappearance of the Pox gave them something substantial to do besides simply circle around one another, and I kept wanting to know what would happen next.

    But really, I came for the enemies-to-lovers antihero romance.

    And on that front, I got exactly what I wanted.

    Rating: ★★★★★

  • Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime) — Akiko Higashimura

    Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime) — Akiko Higashimura

    Official Princess Jellyfish Complete Manga Box Set cover by Akiko Higashimura
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    Author:
    Jellyfish-obsessed Tsukimi lives among a houseful of female otaku until fashion-loving cross-dresser Kuranosuke crashes into their sheltered world. Their unlikely friendship turns Tsukimi’s jellyfish obsession into fashion inspiration, pulling the whole group into a strange, funny transformation.

    I found Kuragehime through the anime first. Waiting for new episodes was taking far too long, so naturally I went online looking for the manga it was based on.

    That turned out to be a very good decision.

    The manga didn’t disappoint at all. In fact, it gave me much more of what I liked about the anime. The story is longer and much more detailed, and I loved the artwork. It was very much to my taste.

    What makes Kuragehime so much fun, though, is that it is really a story about otakus — people who are completely obsessed with their own particular thing.

    Tsukimi is a jellyfish otaku, living in a house full of women who are equally obsessive in their own ways. There is a train otaku, someone obsessed with the Three Kingdoms, and another whose world revolves around traditional Japanese dolls and kimono. Then there is the mysterious person who apparently lives in one of the rooms but whom we almost never see — and yes, eventually we finally find out who that is. 😂

    They are a wonderful collection of people who have very little interest in fitting into conventional society.

    Then Kuranosuke crashes into their world.

    He loves fashion, Tsukimi loves jellyfish, and somehow those two completely unrelated obsessions become the basis of one of the strangest and most entertaining partnerships in the story. Their talents come together through fashion, and eventually this whole den of NEETs and otakus ends up being dragged into something they could never have imagined — including becoming models themselves.

    I loved that.

    There is also an ugly-duckling element to the story, but I don’t think that fully describes it. Tsukimi isn’t interesting because someone discovers that she can be made pretty. She already has this huge inner world built around jellyfish, and that very obsession becomes part of what makes her talented.

    And then, somehow, this jellyfish nerd ends up being loved by two half-brothers.

    One is Kuranosuke, the beautiful cross-dresser who loves fashion and barges into her sheltered life. The other is his older brother, a thirty-something politician who is painfully inexperienced with women.

    It is such an unlikely love triangle. 😂

    But that is exactly the kind of thing that made Kuragehime feel different from other manga I had read. The romance is important, but the story is also about these strange, obsessive people finding something useful and even wonderful in the things everyone else thinks make them odd.

    I loved the whole series enough that I would happily reread it.

    My only real complaint is the ending.

    I wanted more. 😅

    For me, the ultimate romantic happy ending is still marriage and children. After following these characters through the entire series, I wanted that completely satisfying, unmistakable ending.

    Instead, we at least get Kuranosuke finally coming to terms with the fact that he has fallen in love with Tsukimi.

    I’ll take what I can get. 😂

    Would I reread it? Absolutely.

    Rating: ★★★★★

  • Dear Enemy by Jean Webster — I Think Sandy May Have Been the Beginning of a Type

    Dear Enemy by Jean Webster — I Think Sandy May Have Been the Beginning of a Type

    Dear Enemy by Jean Webster book cover
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    Series:
    Published: 1915
    Sallie McBride takes charge of the John Grier Home and finds herself constantly at odds with the institution’s reserved Scottish doctor, Robin MacRae.

    I loved Daddy-Long-Legs, so naturally I read Dear Enemy too.

    And somehow I ended up loving this one just as much.

    It is the sequel, but instead of Judy, the letters are written mainly by her friend Sallie McBride, who has been put in charge of the John Grier Home.

    Sallie is probably one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much.

    She is funny, stubborn, quite dramatic at times, and not remotely the sort of person you would immediately imagine running an orphanage.

    Also, she has red hair.

    I have a weakness for red-haired heroines. I don’t know why. I just do. 😂

    But the real problem here is Dr MacRae.

    Sandy.

    Cold, serious, difficult Sandy.

    I remember liking him enormously.

    At the beginning, he and Sallie do not get along at all. He thinks she is frivolous and inexperienced. She finds him infuriating.

    Which, of course, made me very happy.

    I love enemies-to-lovers.

    Not necessarily people genuinely trying to destroy each other. I mean that particular kind where two people keep clashing because they completely misunderstand one another, and then somewhere along the way the irritation starts turning into something else.

    And Sandy has that Mr Darcy sort of appeal to me.

    Not that he is Mr Darcy.

    Just that same difficult, reserved man who initially seems cold and judgmental, and then you slowly realise there is considerably more going on underneath.

    And naturally he has a tragic history as well.

    Because apparently being cold and difficult wasn’t enough. 🤣

    I won’t go into it because I don’t want to spoil the book, but learning more about him changes the way you see him.

    That worked very well on me.

    I also loved that Dear Enemy kept the letter format from Daddy-Long-Legs. There is something about reading a character’s letters that makes everything feel more intimate.

    You see Sallie getting annoyed with Sandy.

    Then mentioning Sandy again.

    And again.

    And being very annoyed with him.

    Very, very annoyed.

    At some point you start thinking, Sallie, you are writing about this man quite a lot for somebody you supposedly cannot stand.

    😂

    That is exactly the sort of romance I enjoy.

    The book isn’t only about the romance, though. A lot of it is Sallie trying to improve the orphanage and slowly becoming attached to the children and the work.

    I liked watching her grow into the job.

    She doesn’t suddenly become some perfect, self-sacrificing heroine. She remains Sallie. She complains, gets frustrated and has opinions about absolutely everything.

    But she cares.

    And gradually you realise how seriously she has begun taking the responsibility she was originally quite reluctant to accept.

    Maybe that is part of what I love about Jean Webster’s books.

    There is romance, yes, but the heroine also gets a life.

    Judy gets education and independence.

    Sallie finds work that actually means something to her.

    And then there is the romance on top of that.

    In Sallie’s case, with a grumpy Scottish doctor.

    A tragic one.

    Who she initially dislikes.

    Honestly, what more did I want?

    5/5

  • Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster — An Old Favourite That Still Feels Like Hope

    Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster — An Old Favourite That Still Feels Like Hope

    Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster book cover
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    Published: 1912
    Orphaned Jerusha Abbott is given the chance to attend college by an anonymous benefactor, on the condition that she writes him regular letters about her life and studies.

    Reread: February 2026

    Some books become favourites because you discover them at exactly the right time.

    I think Daddy-Long-Legs became one of mine before I had even read it.

    When I was a child, I knew Judy Abbott through the Japanese anime My Daddy Long Legs. I remember coming home from school wanting to catch it on television. I loved that world — Judy going away to school, making friends, discovering a completely different life and writing all those letters to the mysterious man paying for her education.

    Years later, when I was old enough to properly explore the internet, I discovered that the original Jean Webster novel was available free through Project Gutenberg.

    Naturally, I read it.

    And loved it.

    So this reread came with a ridiculous amount of nostalgia attached.

    Daddy-Long-Legs is told mostly through Judy’s letters to the anonymous benefactor who sends her to college after she grows up in an orphanage. She has never properly met him. She knows almost nothing about him. She has only caught a glimpse of his long shadow, which is how he ends up becoming Daddy-Long-Legs.

    The letter format is probably one of the things I love most about the book.

    You don’t simply get told that Judy changes. You watch it happen through the way she writes.

    She arrives at college having spent her entire life in an institution, suddenly surrounded by girls who grew up with families, books, travel, beautiful homes and all sorts of ordinary experiences she has never had. Then, letter by letter, her world gets bigger.

    She learns.

    She reads.

    She makes friends.

    She develops opinions.

    She gets annoyed.

    She becomes ambitious.

    And she becomes increasingly herself.

    There is something enormously comforting about that.

    I have always loved the period as well. The college life, the clothes, the letters, the expectations placed on young women, even the small descriptions of everyday life give the book a cosy atmosphere that works particularly well for me.

    And then, of course, there is the romance.

    Let’s not pretend the appeal is entirely about education and personal development. 🤣

    There is definitely a bit of Cinderella wish fulfilment here.

    An orphan girl is given an extraordinary opportunity. She gets an education. She discovers that she can write. Her entire life opens up before her.

    And then she falls in love with a rich man.

    I mean.

    I’m not complaining.

    I also realised while rereading it that part of the romantic appeal is very similar to what I love about You’ve Got Mail.

    There is something ridiculously satisfying about two people becoming important to each other while one of them doesn’t fully understand who the other person really is.

    That gap in knowledge creates a particular kind of tension that I apparently enjoy very much.

    And no, I’m not explaining that any further.

    Some things are better discovered while reading. 😄

    What makes the story work for me, though, is Judy herself. She isn’t waiting around hoping somebody wealthy will rescue her. By the time the romance reaches its conclusion, she has already spent the book becoming independent, educated and determined to make something of herself.

    The romantic ending is the cherry on top.

    Perhaps that is why Daddy-Long-Legs has always felt like such a hopeful book to me.

    It is about what can happen when somebody who has been given very little is finally given an opportunity.

    A door opens.

    Then another one.

    And suddenly a life that once seemed completely predetermined becomes full of possibilities.

    Reading it again still gave me that same fuzzy, warm feeling I associate with the story from childhood.

    Part of that is certainly nostalgia. I can’t separate Jean Webster’s Judy completely from the Judy who used to appear on my television after school.

    But I’m not sure I want to.

    Some stories become part of your life that way.

    And after all these years, Daddy-Long-Legs is still one of mine.

  • Behind Five Willows by June Hur — Book Review

    Behind Five Willows by June Hur — Book Review

    Behind Five Willows
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    Published: 2026
    In Joseon-era Korea, an illegal book transcriber and a secret novelist exchange letters without knowing they dislike each other in real life.

    My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

    Behind Five Willows is a historical young-adult romance set in Korea during the Joseon era. At its centre are Haewon, an illegal book transcriber, and Seojun, a nobleman who secretly writes fiction at a time when the government is banning books. Their lives become entangled when Haewon’s older sister falls in love with Seojun’s best friend, forcing Haewon and Seojun to accompany the couple during their courtship.

    Their first impressions of each other are not favourable. Haewon finds Seojun arrogant and irritating, while he is equally quick to judge her. What neither of them initially realises is that they already know another side of each other through the letters they have exchanged anonymously.

    That part immediately reminded me of You’ve Got Mail, one of my favourite films. In the film, the two main characters enjoy writing to each other without knowing that they are rivals—and that they dislike each other—in real life. I have always liked that contrast: two people can understand each other intimately through their words while completely misreading one another face to face.

    Of course, You’ve Got Mail is itself a variation on a much older romantic structure, and Behind Five Willows openly draws from Pride and Prejudice, another of my all-time favourites. Haewon and Seojun have their own version of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy’s problem: both are intelligent and observant, but neither is as accurate a judge of the other as they believe. Their relationship changes gradually as they see beyond social position, pride and their original assumptions.

    The Joseon setting prevents the novel from feeling like a simple retelling. Reading and writing are not merely shared interests for Haewon and Seojun. Because of government censorship, books can place their livelihoods and reputations at risk. Haewon’s work as a transcriber also gives us a glimpse of how stories were copied and circulated when access to them was restricted. The historical setting therefore shapes both the romance and the choices available to the characters.

    I also enjoyed the characters beyond the central couple. Their family obligations and differences in social status are not decorative complications; they influence what each person is permitted to do and how easily a mistake can affect an entire family. At the same time, the book does not become weighed down by its historical and political themes.

    One of its strongest qualities is that it is an easy read. The story moves smoothly, the romance develops naturally, and the historical details are incorporated without making the book feel like a lesson. It has enough substance to make the setting meaningful, but it remains warm and accessible.

    For me, Behind Five Willows combined several things I already love: the misunderstandings of Pride and Prejudice, the anonymous correspondence of You’ve Got Mail, and a historical setting that was much less familiar to me. The result felt recognisable without being repetitive.

    I gave it five stars because it was simply a pleasure to read.