It gets into this whole world that I knew nothing about, the world of Korean plastic surgery, how important it is to look a certain way, the whole K-pop craze, the obsessions these young women have. It's set in contemporary Korea, about five young women basically trying to survive in different strata of Korean society. 'This one's more serious, but no less riveting. 'It's a satire of a dissipated, crumbling aristocratic family, losing their land, losing their money, losing their minds, I just laughed my way through it.' 'House of Trelawney' by Hannah Rothschild. Set at the turn of the century, it reads like it could be 'Gossip Girl' today - nothing has changed about New York society.' 'The Custom of the Country' by Edith Wharton. This was my first escape book when lockdown happened, and it was such a respite from the early days of when no one knew what was happening and you were afraid to leave your house or touch any surface or breathe - the one book that got me out of my head and out of all the anxiety and fear.” “It’s set in Venice in the summertime, and it’s kind of a ‘Talented Mr. “A Beautiful Crime” by Christopher Bollen. He also offered several other suggestions: Kwan's witty 'Sex and Vanity' is a fine beach read on its own. Years ago, he wondered what a contemporary Lucy might be like, and dreamed up Lucie Churchill - a young biracial New Yorker, struggling with being not Asian enough for one side of her family and too Asian for the other, visiting Italy and finding love. Kwan pointed out that Forster's heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, is struggling to find her identity between two eras: the repression of the Victorians and the more modern Edwardian age. In 'A Room with a View,' written in 1908, a young Englishwoman goes to Europe for the first time, in the company of a fussy chaperone, and falls in love there with a freethinking young man - but takes a while to realize it. 'It's a very simple story,' said Kwan, 'and yet it was very progressive and ahead of its time.' Kwan, in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home, said he'd loved Forster's book (and the 1985 Merchant Ivory movie) since he was 'probably 15 years old,' and had for more than a decade been thinking about writing a book inspired by it.

Crazy rich asian books