Slightly Peckish Wednesday: Shanghai Crab Noodle
19 March, 2014
is back again. Follow my culinary infatuation with Hong Kong and check out what other delicacies I unearthed on my trip there at Umami Mart: Slightly Peckish. This week is all about Shanghai crab!
In bookish news, I’m dying to see Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (The Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favourites) twinned with the sudden surge in interest in the novels of Stefan Zweig who is Anderson’s muse. I happened to come upon one copy of Zweig’s work, The Post Office Girl, at my library and nabbed it. I also got a copy of Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat as I’d been meaning to read her and it’s short.
The last few months have also seen the phenomenal popularity of Joanna Walsh aka Badaude’s year-long celebration of women’s writing which has swept the country. Read Women 2014 began as a series of cartes de voeux which Joanna drew with names of her favourite women writers on the back. As she solicited recommendations on twitter, it snowballed and showed how much interest there was in women’s writing from both women and men.
I’m compiling books by some of my favourite and often neglected women writers such as Françoise Sagan, Marguerite Duras, Amélie Nothomb, Ann Patchet and more and hope to join in too. Follow the hashtag #ReadWomen2014 on Twitter and check out Joanna’s blog.
What about you?
chasing bawa 
19 March, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Thanks for that information on Read Women 2014. I read only books by women in February of this year. Extending that to a year is quite a challenge.
19 March, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Well done! I never really keep tabs but I’m hoping to be more conscientious this year.
19 March, 2014 at 5:50 pm
I really shouldn’t visit your Slightly Peckish blog when feeling exactly that – it’s only 5.45, some time until supper! The eggs looked wonderful. I do hope you manage to fit in the Wes Anderson. Saw it last week and loved it – who knew Ralph Fiennes could be so funny.
19 March, 2014 at 5:58 pm
I got hungry just writing the Slightly Peckish post!
26 March, 2014 at 3:05 am
Hi! Your pekish post looks authentic! The dishes are quite different from what you get in Japan, I find. HK seems to be THE place.
Thanks for the headsup for ”the grand budapest hotel”! I love the style and quaint air of his movies. Enjoyed ‘the darjeeling express’. But, this looks super promising, and all the cast!
I’ve finished ‘ghostwritten’ by David Mitchell recently. And I’ve been feeling that it might be the most special book I’ve read in years… I was impressed by the deapth lying in his modern, historical, criminal and spiritual themes depicted with this tempo. It is obviously fun to travel through different places through the world in the book, too. And the way he lets the reader collect hints of coincidental connections between each story.
I have restarted ‘the master and margarita’ by Bulgakov, which apparently is one of Mitchell’s favorite. I’ve just got the short stories of Nabokov, cos they looked the easiest to approach. Thanks for your tips on him : ) So, it’s going to be Russian week(s) for me.
26 March, 2014 at 10:59 am
I like the sound of Russian week – I think it’s a perpetual theme for me, there is something about Russian literature that just keeps calling to me every since I failed to read The Brothers Karamazov when I was a teen (that was a hard book!) Anyway, am still trying to get through War & Peace. I really loved Ghostwritten too – it’s beautiful and ephemeral. Must really get to his newer books! And you must go to HK if you have a chance – it’s a wonderful place.