Circle of Tsundoku: The Weight of Our Sky

Circle of Tsundoku is a new initiative (if you can call it that) of the We, The Citizens newsletter, in which I give away secondhand books. These are usually books that I’ve collected over the years and either (1) read and decided that I’ll give them away to share the magic, or (2) regretfully accepted that I’ll never actually get ‘round to reading them, and therefore should give them up to new homes. Either way, I’m trying to free up space on my shelves, because I have a really bad book hoarding habit.

As a thank you for your support, Milo Peng Funders get first dibs on these books! When I have a book to give away, I’ll send out a Milo Peng Funder-only issue on Monday/Tuesday. If there are no takers by Friday, I’ll put the book in Saturday’s weekly wrap for the rest of the We, The Citizens community.

Given the cost of postage (which I'm covering), I'm only able to send books out to people based in Singapore.

The book that I'm offering up to a new home this week is Hanna Alkaf's The Weight of Our Sky.

Here's the synopsis from the back of the book:

Melati Ahmad has imagined her mother's death countless times. Plagued by gruesome thoughts she believes are put into her head by a djinn, Melati has developed an intricate set of tapping rituals to tame the monster within and keep her mother safe.

But there are things that Melati can't protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communications down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati's arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn's surging power, and make it back to the one person she can't risk losing.

I've read this young adult novel. I love it. I'm only parting with this book because I know that, with the massive pile of books that I have to make my way through, it is unlikely that I'll be revisiting it any time soon. But I feel like this is a story that needs to reach more people, and it would be good if my copy could do that.

If you'd like to adopt this book, get in touch by replying to this email! Just to make this easy, I'm doing this on a first-come-first-serve basis, so the first person to email me will get it.

To avoid me collecting people's addresses for no good reason, you don't have to give me your address right away; you'll only need to give it to me if I get back to say you're the first in line! I'll then post the book to you. ☺️