{"id":432,"date":"2008-12-12T17:54:43","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T01:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/?p=432"},"modified":"2008-12-12T17:54:43","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T01:54:43","slug":"bangkok-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2008\/12\/bangkok-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bangkok 8: A Nov\u00adel<\/a>, by John Bur\u00addett (his site<\/a>, Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia<\/a>) was the latest book\u00adclub read (yes, I know I\u2019ve skipped a few in the middle, I got this one out of the lib\u00adrary and it\u2019s due back next week, which does con\u00adcen\u00adtrate the mind won\u00adder\u00adfully). It\u2019s prob\u00adably not a book many of us would have picked, but all of us enjoyed it, which is rare, and for many of the same reasons.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a detect\u00adive story set in the pros\u00adti\u00adtu\u00adtion area of Bangkok, with a hero (Son\u00adchai Jit\u00adplee\u00adcheep) who is the child of a pros\u00adti\u00adtute, a half-caste who does\u00adn\u2019t fit into Bangkok soci\u00adety for a num\u00adber of reas\u00adons. The story itself was a little weird, with some weak spots, but Son\u00adchai is inter\u00adest\u00ading. I\u2019ve only ever spent a few days in Bangkok, and that some time ago, but the author obvi\u00adously noticed some of the same things I did and incor\u00adpor\u00adated them very nat\u00adur\u00adally into the story. This includes such things as the Thai belief in anim\u00adism, as well as some cul\u00adtur\u00adal expect\u00ada\u00adtions that dif\u00adfer between for\u00adeign\u00aders (farang<\/i>) and Thai. <\/p>\n

There are lots of amus\u00ading pas\u00adsages, par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly when Son\u00adchai is talk\u00ading to and about an Amer\u00adic\u00adan woman who works for the FBI<\/span> (so he calls her \u201cthe FBI<\/span>\u201d), and when he senses who or what vari\u00adous for\u00adeign\u00aders were in pre\u00advi\u00adous lives, which he gen\u00ader\u00adally does not both\u00ader to tell them, fig\u00adur\u00ading that they would\u00adn\u2019t believe him any\u00adway (this is an example of how nat\u00adur\u00adally those aspects are brought in, as in gen\u00ader\u00adal West\u00adern\u00aders don\u2019t believe that you can look at a per\u00adson and tell what they were in a pre\u00advi\u00adous life). <\/p>\n

Over\u00adall it\u2019s a good read and, if you have some famili\u00adar\u00adity with Thai anim\u00adism and have heard of yaa baa<\/a>, it isn\u2019t too hard to under\u00adstand what\u2019s going on. Hav\u00ading vis\u00adited Bangkok helps, but isn\u2019t a pre\u00adrequis\u00adite (for\u00adtu\u00adnately).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bangkok 8: A Nov\u00adel, by John Bur\u00addett (his site, Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia) was the latest book\u00adclub read (yes, I know I\u2019ve skipped a few in the middle, I got this one out of the lib\u00adrary and it\u2019s due back next week, which does con\u00adcen\u00adtrate the mind won\u00adder\u00adfully). It\u2019s prob\u00adably not a book many of us would have \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cBangkok 8\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}