Musing Mondays: December 9, 2013

For my second Monday meme, I have Musing Mondays which is hosted by Should Be Reading. Every Monday bloggers should muse about one of the following:

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

Today I’m super excited about a few new books coming to me in the mail! I’m always desperate to find more Thai literature in translation and this week I discovered a great website to buy books (AbeBooks) where sellers had some of what I was looking for on sale for really cheap. In the next couple weeks I’ll be getting the following books in the mail:

• Many Lives by Kukrit Pramoj. One of the first Thai novels I read was Pramoj’s Four Reigns and I’m looking forward to another historical novel. Many Lives takes place in 1950s Thailand and I’m interested to see if I still enjoy Pramoj’s writing style this time around.
• The S.E.A. Write Anthology of Thai Short Stories and Poems, compiled by Nitaya Masavisuth. As the title suggests, this is an anthology of works written by winners of the S.E.A. Write award in Thailand translated into English. The anthology is old, published in 1996, but I’m excited to get more exposure to semi-contemporary Thai writing. I wish the publishers of this anthology would do a more recent version.
• The Teachers of Mad Dog Swamp by Khonkhai Khammaan is about the building of a new school in Isan, Northeast Thailand. I’m not sure what to expect from this read but it’s one of the few translated works out there and is about teachers, so it sparked my interest.