198 Followers
127 Following
355 Posts
writer-photographer, but reader first
published essays & reportage, currently experimenting ✍️
re-imagining a gentler world 🌱🐮
📍berlin / kuala lumpur
Websitehttps://www.emilyding.me
Readingshttps://www.emilyding.me/readings
Newsletterhttps://movableworlds.substack.com
Instagramhttps://instagram.com/emilydingwrites

Speaking of the escapist, I've been digging back into the retelling of classic #mythology having enjoyed Madeline Miller's Circe when it first came out. (I was reminded of her recently when I read her essay about how long Covid has impacted her life and her writing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/09/madeline-miller-long-covid-post-pandemic/.)

I picked up this novel by Pat Barker not realising it's the second in her trilogy reimagining the Trojan War through the eyes of the women....

#bookstadon #books #readingcommunity #reading

#edreads

Long covid has derailed my life. Make no mistake: It could yours, too.

No matter how immortal we feel, we are all — still — at risk of developing crushing, life-altering symptoms.

The Washington Post

I read #Wool a loooooong time ago and realised recently that it had been adapted into an Apple TV series called #Silo. I've quite forgotten how the book went, so watching the series was itself an adventure and at the end of it I still have so many questions! So I might go back to the book, and then read the other two in the trilogy—titled Shift and Dust—even if it might spoil me for Season 2... If you're looking for something escapist away from work, this is great :)

#edreads #ednotwriting

An excerpt:

// While ambient sounds provided a soundtrack for my thoughts—in one village, it was the muezzin; in another, a neighbour partaking in a passionate karaoke session that seemed to swell the air above the open water—what kept coming back to me was the memory of entering the village of Pitas Laut, narrowing into a winding tributary under the hooded shelter of #mangrove trees. We could do so only because the water was “turned on”, as the villagers describe it in Malay...

#edwrites

I also have an essay on the #river journeys I've taken in the latest issue of #MekongReview.

You can read it here: https://mekongreview.com/peering-around-river-bends/

If you don't have a subscription, get one here: https://mekongreview.com/subscribe/

#edwrites #reporting #travel

Peering around river bends - Mekong Review

I've often come to forks while travelling. Do I stop where I had planned to arrive, or do I keep going? Maybe if I go on a bit further, I might find something I have never quite seen, in quite the same way, before.

Mekong Review

I read #DeborahLevy's Real Estate over the pandemic—and recently completed her trilogy of memoirs: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2021/05/deborah-levy-real-estate-living-autobiography-interview

I've said before: "She’s so deft at elevating the simple details of life, which we’ve all surely come to appreciate more in this pandemic, to connect with larger themes—segueing smoothly from one memory into the next, and the next. Every detail on its own can seem insignificant, but strung together they make up a lively tapestry of meaning."

#bookstadon #reading

#edreads

Deborah Levy on the art of living

Real Estate concludes the Booker shortlisted author's celebrated trilogy of 'living autobiographies'. Here she reflects on their innovations of style, learning from Virginia Woolf and what makes for a good life.

Can't recommend this book enough. Human health, animal health, and environmental health are inextricable from one another. Sonia Shah shows us the many surprising, invisible connections of our world in vivid historical detail, which will make you see the world in a whole new way—something I think we all sorely need today. I honestly feel this should be essential reading for everyone!

More about the book here: https://soniashah.com/pandemic-the-book/

#bookstadon #reading #zoonosis

#edreads

Pandemic – Sonia Shah

& Here's a piece I published on my newsletter in May that I had neglected to share: https://movableworlds.co/p/eating-with-other-families

#movableworlds #newsletters #writingcommunity #newstoriesforthetable

Eating with other people's families

Thinking about everyday feasts and reunions, surprising human connections, and the lives that happened before us.

Movable Worlds

Just finished this novel and it gave me, as they say, all the feels. It deserves all the attention it’s been getting. Parts of it really moved me, and the ending actually made me cry. (Yes, I am the kind of person who cries at books 😅) Reading it, I felt like I was “growing up” along with the characters...

#bookstodon #reading #books #readingcommunity

#edreads

Attended a wedding in Indonesia recently and turned it into a holiday. This was my beach read—definitely a pageturner! Though it did feel a little like it was mostly all plot and not so much reflection...

#bookstadon #reading #books #readingcommunity

#edreads

I'll be writing extended reflections on this for my #newsletter at some point too. Sign up here if you'd like to read it and catch up with the archive in the meantime: https://movableworlds.co—thanks in advance!

#MovableWorlds #edwrites

Movable Worlds | Emily Ding | Substack

Letters about trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world and our place in it—by reading, walking, writing. Dispatched from Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, and places in between. Click to read Movable Worlds, by Emily Ding, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.