It is hard to believe that this mediocre movie, released a decade ago, was a portent of the current state of affairs. When the movie was released in May 2016, Donald Trump was on course to become the US President. Now, Donald Trump is in the White House, in the middle of his second term. In both the movie and real life, a narcissistic megalomaniac has the ability to launch bombs and wreak havoc on international stability.

Recent casualties include Venezuela and Iran. However, the list started long ago and has stretched wide. Since its victory in World War 2, the United States of America has bombed roughly thirty countries across four continents. From the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s, then Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, and Afghanistan in the 1990s. In the past twenty years, the might of the remaining superpower (after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s) was displayed in Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Libya. This is not an exhaustive list.

So, is it the country or is it the leader? We do not know. In this curation, we want to shift the spotlight from the bomber to the bombed. Through this theme, we want to explore the receiving end of “America(n) Psycho.” Through these books, we want to learn what kind of places these countries were, and at what pivotal moment in their history the bombs rained upon them. These are accounts written by survivors, not always the victors. While we might not always have the books that tell of the exact moment the US bombed them, we encourage you to browse our selected titles coming from those countries.

Here’s to no superpowers.

Speaking of the date, Indra and I officially opened Transit Bookstore’s door for the first time on 15 December 2018. It has been 7 years.

When we reflect on it, it was crazy that we started with 30+ books and now we manage around 350-400 books every day. This is a huge number for us because we actually handpick each book on our own. There’s very minuscule influence from publishers, for example, in terms of stocking specific titles. All titles that we choose to stock is based on our own research and curation.

At this point of the year, when Transit Bookstore’s birthday is closing in, I like to ponder upon something that Charlotte Mandell told us during a transittalk!. Mandell basically reminded us that we’re selling English books to people whose first, and maybe second, language isn’t English. That and the fact that we insist to be extremely niche, isn’t an easy feat.

And to survive it for the past 7 years is actually something else.

So, we’re quite enjoying the decision to bring the theme #Reflection back. This theme started in December 2019 when we decided to reflect upon our first year of bookselling.

Sinéad Gleeson

Before the year is over, I think I should finally tell the behind-the-scene story of how we came to be in a literary event with Sinéad Gleeson.

In August 2024, amidst the continuous bombing in Gaza, Palestine, a group of authors held an auction for their books, to raise money to be sent to Gaza. We applauded this direct action very much and we decided to stock as many books as possible by authors who participated. One of the authors whose books we stocked was Gleeson’s.

We’ve loved Constellations for years and Hagstone was just recently published then. We were proud that an author we admire has spoken so loudly about the genocide — and has continuously done so.

So we created an Instagram post to honour her and her activism, as well as her books, of course. She noticed the post and was very appreciative of it.

A few months later, she told us that she had been invited to a literary festival in Bali and was thinking of going and if she was going to Bali anyway, she would love to stop by in Jakarta to hold an event with us.

That was the first time an author contacted us with a possibility of us holding an in-person event. We were ecstatic!

Months went by and at the same time, I had met the (now former) Irish Ambassador for Indonesia in Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. I teased and told him that his staff didn’t seem to be interested in collaborating with Transit Bookstore, even though we have been championing Irish literature since we opened our door. He ended up giving me his card and told me to contact him directly if I had any idea of collaboration.

When I think about this conversation, it still feels surreal that I could tease an ambassador of a sovereign country as casually as that. I can’t imagine — what would happen if I try to pull the same with an ambassador from my own country?

So, I kept the card, just in case.

Fast forward to #AfterBabel, thanks to the Republic of Consciousness Prize (which we LOVE!), we fell in love with an Irish publisher called Bullaun Press. Their concept of publishing is unique and we encourage everyone to check them out!

I braved myself and sent an email to the (now former) ambassador directly and told him about the amazingness of Bullaun Press. We would love to do an event with them and maybe the Irish Embassy is interested in a collaboration?

At the same time, the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival announced their 2025 line-up and Gleeson’s name was there. I became more excited and I sent another email to the people of the Irish Embassy, basically saying, “ummm… are you aware that Sinéad Gleeson is coming to Bali? Is it possible to bring her to Jakarta too because she’s going to Bali anyway? Because she actually dm-ed us that she actually wanted to come to Jakarta (hair-flip 💁‍♀️).”*

*Disclaimer: of course this is an exaggerated depiction. We basically had formal email exchanges discussing logistics etc.

To our surprise, the Irish Embassy in Jakarta also got excited about Gleeson coming to Indonesia so they’re actually willing to bring her to Jakarta too!

And that was that. We had our first ever in-person event with an author who came all the way from Ireland— and I like to think that she came because our Instagram post 😆.

During the event, one of the things that impressed me the most (in addition to meeting Gleeson in person, of course!) was how the new Irish Ambassador for Indonesia is an avid avid avid reader. She has been Gleeson’s fans for years! So, she handles discussion about Gleeson’s books very smoothly. She knows her stuff and I was admiring and nodding and listening to her and Gleeson from the sideline. Can’t help but to wish for any ambassador of my country to be that articulate about literature while they’re abroad.

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A review of Constellation by Ridhwan

To Be Remembered: A Small Reflection on ‘Constellations’ by Sinead Gleeson

‘The body is an afterthought.’

We often do not think much of our own bodies, it is just there, doing its purpose as our sole anchor to this world. Yet our body is more than just an anchor, it is a diary, an archive of the years we have lived. Flesh and memories made the corners of our bodies. Memories of happiness that we cherished or memories of pains that we endure. These collections leave their own marks, constellations of scars welling up in the space we called the body.

Sinéad knows this, in fact, she embraces it. The collection of her own reflections in life, as a woman living in Ireland, brings the body to the spotlight. The body becomes not an afterthought; it is addressed, given a voice to map out its often disregarded experience as it goes through sickness, love, grief, and motherhood. It’s a personal collection yet universally experienced, as we all lived in a mortal body with its own constellations adorning the flesh.

In the very first chapter, Sinéad recounted her own experience with monoarticular arthritis. She contemplated the fragility of our bodies, how we are all mere mortals under the threat of sickness and ultimately, death. She described her journey in finding miracles, her spiritual healing to the groves of Lourdes. She also reflected on her visits to the hospital, the surgeries that she endured and treatments she took.

It is a testament to human resilience. We try to continue living with what we have, but we also try to create our own miracles. Sinéad finds her miracles in surgeries and the scars became a testament of her resilience. ‘Surgery leaves scars; physical markers of a lived experience encountering pain’ she remarked. These scars are an archive, they were etched into the flesh, becoming a map of our lives, as the body continues to breathe. The scars are twinkling stars, in the constellations adorning the sky we wear as clothes.

Buy Constellations here

Thank you for reading ‘till the end. Hopefully we’ll write another newsletter before the year really ends.

Until next time!

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P.S. If you’re in Jakarta this holiday season, please visit us. We’ll be open everyday starting from 22 December 2025 until 29 December 2025. Detailed hours will be announced Saturday, 20 December 2025.

P.P.S. Transit Bookstore newsletter readers have the privilege to early access to our year-end catalogue 🥳. Check it out.

For those of you who doesn’t know, Transit Bookstore is a bookstore with a collection that is driven by a specific theme that we chose. Right now, and since late January 2025, our theme has been “After Babel”. In this theme, we curated books that were translated into English, inspired by the Tower of Babel mythology, when humans were desperately trying to communicate with each other.

There’s been a lot of interesting things that we encountered during “After Babel”. One of the things that fascinated me the most was something that someone said to me in August.

At that time, we just announced that we’re extending “After Babel” to the rest of the year. The comment was something along the line of, “why are you extending the theme? Is there a lot of books that you want to feature but haven’t had the chance?”

This comment took me by surprise. I remember that I simply said “yes” to response to it. Because… how can I explain it?

“After Babel” has been our most successful theme thus far. We sold the most books during this theme.

The topics we brought forward via these translated books varied greatly; from motherhood, to gory thriller, to mundane lives in remote villages; from poetry, to graphic novels, to short stories, to biographies. It’s a wholesome theme.

It has been such a pleasure and an eye-opening experience to be able to put focus on translated literature this past year. We almost wish that we don’t have to put an end in the theme.

So, why change it now? The simple answer is because we would like to grow.

We believe that there are interesting themes out there that we can utilise. We believe that a new theme will bring a fresh outlook to our books, to our collection.

We haven’t decided yet what our next theme would be. But once we do, we will make the announcement here too.

The plan that didn’t work out

On the last newsletter, I had mentioned that there will be more behind the scene stories of the event with Sinéad Gleeson and the Irish Embassy in Jakarta.

Unfortunately, that story isn’t going to be in this edition.

As much as I like to plan out what I wanted to write in this newsletter, this newsletter is a collaborative effort from us at Transit Bookstore. I was actually surprised at how (fairly) easy for the previous edition to came about. But, in turn, this edition was delayed several times.

This is something that I’m still continuously learning as I go along as a leader. The leader can create a perfect plan, but if no one is there to execute your plan, nothing will matter.

Also, I’ve been trying to “let go” as often as I possibly can, and not take over to do the work myself. As a person who live and breathe the bookstore, I find this decision to be one of the most important ones.

So, the plan with this newsletter is still the same: we’ll try to put out a newsletter every 2 weeks. The newsletter will be divided into 2 parts: the part where I’m sharing the behind the scene stories of running an English bookstore in Jakarta, Indonesia and the book review part by one of us at Transit Bookstore.

Please pray for us to get enough motivation, so that we can stick with this schedule!

For now, on to…

The Invention of Morel Review by Aziza

I urge you to read Aziza’s own review on her own bookstagram page here:

But here are the snippets:

The Invention of Morel begins when a fugitive man escaped to the uninhibited island with a mysterious disease. We follow the story of his unreliable narration in the form of diary entries as soon as he landed on the island.

The book only contains 103 pages, yet the beginning feels so slow. Based on my personal experience, it takes time to understand what was really going on in the book.

There were several pages in the book that made me so sure that our narrator was hallucinating, even though the narration itself wasn’t as bleak and eerie as I thought it would be.

Some people says that this book talks about unrequited love, and throughout reading it, I kept looking for the said material. However, the only complaint and comment I had while reading this book was “how could a person ever claimed that he fall in love with a person he never had a conversation with…”

I was also fascinated by this comment, “Parasocial relationship has been going around since 1900s then,” which I feel resonates with the protagonist and what he had been doing with love. I found this funny because I feel like what the protagonist had been doing in regards to love is basically what I’ve been doing in this modern world.

It is so interesting because Classics are being classics for their own apparent reasons. Yet it is always soothing how human emotions from hundreds years ago are still relatable in today’s fast-paced modern world.

The Invention of Morel is still available at Transit Bookstore for “After Babel”. We have the sought-after NYRB edition. Get it now to avoid disappointment!

Buy The Invention of Morel

Talk soon on the next newsletter!

We’ll see you at the store for the last few days of After Babel!

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It’s been a good while! A LOT has happened and we’re slowly crawling back to Substack aka this newsletter — hoping to convince you to buy more books :).

This time, our newsletter will be a bit different.

I (Alien) have had the idea of sharing some behind-the-scenes of bookselling/being a bookstore owner somewhere. After thinking about it for awhile, I’ve decided to write it here, in this newsletter.

Think about it like me spilling tea 🫖 about bookselling.

What is the purpose of all this? To be more connected with readers, of course!

I feel like, more often than not, people who come to our store, both offline and online via Instagram, forget that our bookstore is run by a group of actual human beings. So hopefully, via this medium, we can get to know each other better and we can be more appreciative of each other.

In addition to sharing some behind-the-scene stories with you, this newsletter will also contain book reviews. Hopefully a properly written one, not just a mere star-rating one. We’re going to start with Transit Bookstore team members taking turns in writing reviews. In the future, we’re planning to welcome reviews from you, our readers, who have bought and read books that we curate.

So far, that’s the plan.

To kick off, and to hopefully build your curiosity for our behind-the-scene stories, I will end this prologue now and save a story for the next newsletter. Spoiler: I will tell you all about how we got to be in an event with Sinéad Gleeson — an Irish author whose book(s) we’ve been stocking since 2019.

For now, enjoy a picture of Transit Bookstore team (minus Indra) and Sinéad in Jakarta last week.

And I will let Raia convince you to buy and read Hagstone via her review.

Cheers, Alien

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Hagstone Review by Raia

Sinéad Gleeson’s Hagstone opens with vivid descriptions of its setting. The story is set on a remote island, but unlike the sunny beach getaways with turquoise waters that we associate with Southeast Asian islands, the sand is “viscous” and the dark sea is contrasted against white foam.

I quickly found out that the uneasy, stifling feeling that envelopes you at the book’s beginning remains a lingering presence throughout the book. Gleeson tells us at the beginning of her talk: “Sometimes what contains a story—what your character cannot get away from—is a place.”

Gleeson’s writing makes us feel as though the islanders’ stares linger on our backs as we are introduced to Nell, an artist who lives and works on the island. We learn that the island is a 12-hour ride away from the Irish mainland, and that in an island so self-contained, community can become a double-edged sword.

Nell is unhesitatingly dubbed as “unmarriable” by the other islanders.

Nell agrees to work on a commission by a commune who call themselves the Iníons.

Driven by curiosity, Nell ventures out into Rathglas, the old convent where Maman and the Iníons reside, and begins to work on a piece for the Iníons’ Samhain ceremony.

Their retreat from the world seemingly parallels her own, until Nell begins to notice a sinister shift within the commune of women she has crossed paths with.

Part of what made Hagstone such a captivating read for me is how it is infused with Irish folklore and references to Ireland’s pre-Christian roots.

Hagstone does a brilliant job of depicting the ambivalent lives of women who live outside of the social contract of marriage and traditional community. Discovering the distinct motivations of each sister and the reactions that the Iníons have toward Nell’s entry into Rathglas was so interesting.

Gleeson also insisted (both in the book and during the gathering we attended) that it is important for readers to remember that the Iníons had joined the commune by choice.

In one way or another, they find themselves at Rathglas because the world did not suit them.

I was immediately reminded by the severing of earthly knowledge and connections that many pre-Christian (or pre-organised religion) communities experienced along with colonisation, and the people who fall through the cracks of capitalist competition, only to be told that they are at fault for being ungovernable.

Nell’s work includes sand sculptures, sound installations, and underwater statues, which reveals the intricacies of art and labor and community.

I was struck by how candidly Gleeson writes about the realities of life as an artist. The struggle of applying for grants and funding, the exhausting (and oftentimes costly) effort of turning an artistic vision into a reality, and Nell’s reaction to her work’s sponsors or a disconnected audience, these all resonated deeply with me.

I was moved by how Gleeson depicts the frustration, monotony, and loneliness of seeing the world differently to those around you.

Even the title, Hagstone, evokes the repetitive movements that cause the stone to be weathered and worn, and the folkloric belief that looking through the hole reveals to you “a different view of the world.”

Throughout reading Hagstone, I was reminded of an Ursula K. Le Guin quote that criticises the phenomenon of labeling knowledge as innately feminine: “But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior—women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light.”

I was very lucky to have had the chance to ask Gleeson what she thought of the conventional tendency to “make a cult of women’s knowledge” and whether we could draw a boundary that acknowledges and processes marginalised folk’s accounts and experiences without glamourising it or mystifying it.

She elaborates deftly on why she refuses to label the Iníons as a cult, and points to how women’s knowledge of medicine was associated with witchcraft and heresy because it was posited as a social threat to “modern medicine.” (I was immediately reminded of Silvia Federici’s writing on women and witches.)

Nell’s desire, her profession, her connection to the island, and what she considers to meaningful, set her apart from the rest of the world and she is surrounded by people who see her as a threat to the social order.

She is unlike other women on the island, she chooses a profession that makes little to no sense to those around her, and she is able to hear the ominous sound that thrums from the island.

What truly captured my heart was how Gleeson’s writing unflinchingly portrays Nell’s endurance despite, in many ways, existing in a way that is outside of conventional social behaviour.

Hagstone is still available at Transit Bookstore!

Buy Hagstone here

Until our next newsletter!

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It has been awhile.

August, September and October have been a set of wacky months for us. From Peringatan Darurat, to September Hitam, to one fucking year of israel genocide in Gaza, Palestine, not counting the oppression since 1948 Nakba, which has now escalated to Lebanon and Syria.

There’s a couple reasons of why we decided to push ourselves and write this newsletter again.

One: War and Peace is ending

In case you didn’t know, we started War and Peace in March 2024. Had we stick with our plan of only having 1 theme for 6 months, we would have changed it a couple months ago. But with the endless atrocities around the world, we feel that it is appropriate for us to extend #WarandPeace.

Now, unfortunately we are really saying goodbye to this theme. The theme War and Peace will end on Oct 31, 2024 and by Nov 1st, 2024, we’ll announce a new theme.

This means that from today until Oct 31st, you’ll see us trying to shove as many War and Peace books in your hands. Starting from today!

An Abundance of Wild Roses

Full description can be found here.

As our social media bios said: we bring world literature to a small independent bookstore in Jakarta, Indonesia. Or at least we’re trying very hard. An example would be this book. It is set in the black mountains in Pakistan, a village called Saudukh Das, where every conflict occurring is being watched by the Spirit-Beings. The format of this book is quite unique, reading it is like watching a stage play.

Dawn highlights stage play effect as well, pointing out that by using this style Ali Gauhar “transports her reader into a parallel world” and assures us that reading this book “will leave you breathless.” A review in The Friday Times concludes that this book “is exceptionally well-told and beautifully executed, and is nonetheless exemplary in exploring oft-ignored themes in Pakistani literature with such grace and elegance.”

Ms Davis

Full description can be found here.

We stock all sorts of books by and about Angela Davis during #WarandPeace, including this graphic biography. The opening starts strong, with scenes in cinematic flair during the police attack at the Black Panther Party’s headquarters in 1969.

Comics Grinder writes an in-depth review about both the narration and the illustration, concluding it by saying “perhaps we are not, after all, reading Ms Davis “as history,” but as an artistic statement about history and about the features in Angela Davis’s personal saga that are larger than herself.” Publishers Weekly approaches it objectively, saying that “its superheroine/folkloric overtones can encourage amateur historians to go deeper with Davis’s own 1974 autobiography.”

Slash and Burn

Full description can be found here.

Oh to be a woman in this tested time! This book has it all: written by a woman, translated by a woman, and the main character is a woman who fights to keep her daughters safe through war and its aftermaths, outliving countless men.

Book Page writes that ultimately, this book is “an unflinching meditation on girlhood and womanhood.” Southern Review of Books points out how when writers often take experiences of wars, rape, & violence to build monuments, Claudia Hernandez “has given us recognition and shelter instead.”

Lastly, a tapback to our previous theme #LevelsofLife, which ended in Feb 24.

The Centre

Full description can be found here.

If you’re a reader of mystery books, who loves a twist at the end — plus you’re obsessed with languages, how it’s spoken, how it’s being taught and learned — this book is for you!

Kirkus Reviews points out that while it is a fast-paced thriller, it is also a book that has many social discourses in it. In Publishers Weekly, the review says something similar, how it “packs insightful observations about racism, classism, and colonialism into a dark mystery,”

Two: Mutual Aids!

As we’ve all now seen people being burned alive and starved to death multiple times in the past year, we would like to use this newsletter to invite you to donate to mutual aids.

The plan is to share with you several mutual aids that we and our friends have vetted via a few emails, until 31 Oct 2024. Hopefully, with our newsletter arriving directly into your inbox, you would not hesitate to donate.

Any amount will help someone in need!

In this newsletter, we shall start with 3 mutual aids.

The Sanabel Team

If you’ve been reading our newsletter, you know that we’ve donated some money we raised for this team. It is amazing how this team is still going strong considering what they’ve been through. Check them out, please!

Direct donation link HERE.

Mutual Aid for Raghad

This is a campaign that is close to Alien’s heart because Alien actually helped to set it up. It feels so great to see money coming in because Raghad really needs it. But we’re very far from our goal. Please donate any amount you can.

Direct donation link HERE.

Support a community kitchen in Sudan

Please watch Sara (bsonblast) — she’s inviting us to donate to a community kitchen in Sudan.

Direct donation link HERE.

If you’re up for reading an analysis report on the crisis in Sudan, GO HERE and you’ll find one as of 26 September 2024.

Lastly, we would like to thank all readers who have helped us raise a little bit of money for these mutual aid campaigns by buying Intermezzo (by Sally Rooney) merchandise. We’ll report back how much we raised and where the money goes. We like to think that Sally Rooney would definitely approve that her book’s merchandise is being used to fund mutual aid campaigns :)

Until next time, friends!

Transit Bookstore

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Bookselling has been particularly hard for us this year. But to be fair, all SMEs are struggling around the world, including in Indonesia.

For us, in particular, we’re not only struggling in terms of the physicalities of the bookstore. Sure, financially it’s been hard. Every couple months, a doubt resurface: if we have to lose X amount of money, that means the bookstore has to close. This is simply because both owners cannot afford to loose our own money in the midst of these unpredictabilities. Remember on the last newsletter when we said that we (most of us in the world) are closer to the homeless in the street than a billionaire with a private jet? So yeah.

The biggest blow, certainly bigger than a financial hit, for us is the realisation of how discouraging the bookselling business is.

We, of course, hear it from our author friends from time to time — how their job feel thankless. Well, 2024 is bringing this realisation to the next level.

We look at how easy it is to import a car, albeit electric (also problematic! Please don’t get us started! Argh!), and we look at how hard it is to import books. How discouraging!

We look at how we started this newsletter around the same time israel escalated their genocidal effort in Gaza and now here we are — 1 year later still facing the same shit.

We cannot face 7 October 2024 with any glee whatsoever, because, what do you mean we need post about books written by Palestinian authors yet again as if it is making any difference? What do you mean?

About a year ago, we wrote about Books Don’t Matter, inspired by a panel Alien attended at 2023 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

In this newsletter, we’re echoing the message — it’s just books! They indeed do not matter!

So, with this spirit, we’re going on STRIKE.

There is no normal bookselling activities on 1 October 2024 for Transit Bookstore.

Please do check out our post about what it means to be on strike — for a tiny bookstore that actually cannot go on strike because of our retail commitments.

For more info about this strike, please check out:

And this tweet that we quoted on our own announcement.

We are sick of this shit and every oppressed person from Palestine, to Congo, to Sudan, to Papua, to Lebanon to everywhere else in the world are sick of this shit. If you’re reading this is as an American citizen, we encourage you to please start a riot. Honestly! To everyone else, we hope we can be with you hand-in-hand when we witness the true definition of freedom around the world.

With so much love,

Transit Bookstore

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What a rollercoaster few days!

We had so many plans for #WarandPeace book posts and newsletter. We’ve written a long intro paragraph about how Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, are so helpless than ever before. We’ve prepared a post and link to the Connecting Humanity page, to encourage more people to donate an esim because Mirna kept announcing that they are running out of esim.

But this week’s turn of events in Indonesia made us take a step back.

Transit Bookstore is still a bookstore and even though we don’t sell Bahasa Indonesia books, we still pay attention greatly to a lot of critical issues in the country.

With so much pride, our team watched the demonstration on Thursday, 22 August 2024 via our phones. Tbh, we wished we could have closed the store and go to the protests, but we’re still only a tiny store, bound by a retail contract. No matter how many times we declared that we’re highly independent, truthfully, our situation is just like any other Indonesian middle class. We’re no different from a worker, whose office is at SCBD, who is financially closer to a homeless person than an oligarch.

So, we did throw up a bit when we saw a purchase of US$1,400 baby stroller being flaunted on our screens, knowing that it won’t be charged any import tax by our customs. When we, a bookstore that has been running for almost 6 years, never: a) buy so many books that are worth US$1,400 in one invoice; and b) not worry about how much import tax we need to pay when a parcel of book arrives.

The unfairness of it all.

The audacity to assume that each and every Indonesian is stupid.

If you’re still not in-tune with what’s going on in Indonesia, we encourage you to do your own research.

We admire what What Is Up, Indonesia? has done to educate the younger and bilingual Indonesians. If you’re reading this and your first language isn’t Indonesian, check out this post.

For our fellow Indonesians, please follow Bivitri Susanti if you haven’t already. We’re huge fans of how clearly she explains things.

She also reposted this “to do list”, encouraging us to stay vigilant.

For thorough explanations on things, which can make you feel like you’re in a constant classroom and/or panel discussion, please watch videos/discussions that invite Zainal Arifin Mochtar. We find his sequential explanations about the whole chaos to be quite eye-opening.

Alien and Indra is particularly proud of our alma mater. Students came to Jakarta to protest and there is a firm declaration by a group of professors and the student union.

We highly agree that everyone needs to make a declaration now. No matter what you did in the past, or who you voted for. We all need to blatantly reject any cawe-cawe in regards to destroying our Constitution.

As we are still a bookstore, we would like to recommend books that we posted on our Instagram. We find these books to be quite relatable with what’s happening in Indonesia right now.

Our perpetual hope is to have the freedom to read, to educate ourselves and to express ourselves, no matter who is in power. If you can, please click through each post to see our statements.

Lastly, before we leave you, there are a few things to ponder upon.

First

This week, Kamala Harris declared her continuous support for israel in front of thousands of people at the Democratic National Convention.

This convention was televised all around the US, with the Obamas (arguably the most progressive US President ever) watching on the sideline. If her declaration doesn’t make you want to throw up and hate the USA with every fibre in your body, we don’t want to be associated with you. Please unsubscribe to this newsletter and find somewhere else to buy books from. If you’re an American citizen reading this, please do something! Riot! Reject this woman! Reject the status quo. The world is begging for you to stop the madness that your government created.

Also, btw, Refaat Alareer’s diaries during this genocide was just published. Read as he chronicled snippets of his thoughts in October 2023.

Second

We hope you caught the news about polio in Gaza.

And because of this, we got to know that there also has been a new emergence of a different variant of polio in Sudan. Please google the news yourself, but you can start by reading this. Plus, there’s also cholera in Sudan!

We would like to remind you that the war in Sudan is not forgotten; it is being ignored. It is worth reading this Guardian Editorial for a bit more context.

Third… and last.

Please make our friends Kesukaan rich by showing your distrust in cops.

And we need to keep an eye on the students who were arrested during the demonstrations this week! May they ALL come home safely!

We also heard the call from fellow Indonesians that we need to infiltrate TikTok, so that the message of distrust can reach the root of the grassroots. We’re doing our tiny bit with Transit Bookstore’s account. We hope our readers, fellow kelas menengah ngehe, will join in by making a lot more original videos too!

Until next time, friends!

May Indonesia see a speck of good news next time we send out this newsletter.

Amin.

Transit Bookstore

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We’re delighted that we’ve been selling books at Urban Farm PIK for exactly 2 years.

Our sincere thanks to everyone who came to celebrate our 2nd anniversary at PIK.

A lot of people are still confused about Transit Bookstore’s ‘age’. So, if we may clarify again 😉: Transit Bookstore opened our door for the first time at Pasar Santa in December 2018. This is what we consider as Transit Bookstore’s birthday.

In July 2022, we opened our doors at Urban Farm PIK. Hence, this weekend we’re celebrating our 2nd anniversary there.

Some pics from the celebration yesterday :)

We had a lot of fun yesterday! To have 2 celebrations in a year feels excessive, but considering how wonderful it was yesterday to meet friends who love to read, it makes us want to celebrate something everyday 🥳.

If you couldn’t make it yesterday, we hope you’ll be able to make it to our next celebration. But! We also hope you won’t feel the need to wait for the next 6 months to visit us 🙌🏽.

Anyway,

In today’s newsletter, we just want to tell you about a few of our #WarandPeace bestsellers. Hopefully, because now you know these books are bestsellers, you’ll be even more intrigued to visit us :).

Minor Detail

Full description can be found here.

The first time we stocked this book, our theme was ‘Resist!’ but the requests for this book skyrocketed after the award cancellation last year. There were times when it was difficult to order this book because the publisher was running out of copies 😅. That’s why in #WarandPeace we try to always have several copies in stock.

In a review by World Literature Today, they praise Shibli’s boldness as a novelist and how she artistically aligns the lives of the women even at the ending. Words Without Borders specifically praises her language, the fact that she makes it clear “with every line of her laborious novel, how war and conflict occur on the level of narrative, history, and the individual psyche.”

They Fell Like Stars from the Sky

Full description can be found here.

At Transit Bookstore, short story books tend to be tricky but this one receives an overwhelming appreciation especially during #WarandPeace! Usually it will not be long before a restocked copy flies into another hands. The book consists of short chapters accompanied with small illustrations every few pages. We assume that’s why this book gained so much interest <3.

The reviews have been saying only good things as well! Middle East Monitor says that Sheikha Helawy skillfully tackles Palestinian Bedouin women’s solitary voices, bringing them to life. Critics at Arab News also praise the amount of “emotional weight and moving power to Helawy’s work in these tales.”

Brotherless Night

Full description can be found here.

We stocked this book the first time for #WarandPeace and beamed in delight when it was shortlisted for 2024 Women’s Prize. ‘Brotherless Night’ ended up winning the prize and it’s a well-deserved win! We received a lot of orders for this book when it was announced, so it is in a way, a win for us too 🥰.

Reviews for this book are obviously swarming the internet. Publishers Weekly generously praises the way the novel “credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties.” Book Page says the book is a moving story where the author “shows that by focusing on all of the people involved, both "good" and "bad,” we can learn how and why humans fight—and why it’s so important to stop the cycle.”

Thank you, once again, for all your support — whether you’ve supported us for 5.5 years, 2 years, 2 months, or even 2 days.

We appreciate you all the same. If we could, we would like to thank each and every one of you in person someday. Our wish is for Transit Bookstore to exist long enough to be able to do so.

Until our next edition!

XO, Transit Bookstore

Hari ini kami kembali menyuguhkan rekaman diskusi kami — transittalk! about amuk, bersama penulisnya Khairani Barokka.

Buat teman-teman yang ketinggalan acaranya, silakan download rekamannya untuk dimasukkan ke aplikasi podcast pilihan masing-masing. Atau dengar langsung lewat aplikasi Substack juga bisa, tampilannya juga bagus kok!

Sambil mendengarkan, di bawah ini adalah sedikit teaser berupa foto 3 cuplikan puisi yang dibacakan Okka di acara transittalk!. Kalau penasaran soal lanjutan puisinya, teman-teman bisa beli buku amuk di Transit Bookstore :)

Mau beli amuk, dong!

Buat teman-teman yang sempat melewatkan acara pertama kami dengan Okka, launching buku Ultimatum Orangutan, teman-teman bisa menonton di postingan ini.

Giveaway announcement 🥳

By the time this newsletter reaches your inbox, the winners of the newsletter giveaway have been decided. If you’re lucky, you’ll soon get an email 🙌🏽

Our sincere thanks to everyone who spent time to be active on this newsletter. We hope you'll continue to put this much interest in our newsletter in the future 🫶.

Transit Bookstore is celebrating our 2nd year at Urban Farm PIK

Please do come to our celebration! Bring your friends and family, ya 🥰 We’re looking forward to see all of you!

We’re also thinking of having more discount on the day, so please come! 😆

Just in case you need direction to come to our store, check here.

Lastly…

We’re ending the newsletter by quoting the poet Mosab Abu Toha.

We’re in a celebration mood throughout July, but we continue to think about the massacres in Palestine, Sudan and Congo. We hope you are too.

Again, we hope you enjoy the recording of transittalk! about amuk. We’ll see you in the next edition and on our anniversary at Urban Farm PIK!

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It feels very bizarre that we started this newsletter around the same time as the genocide in Gaza, Palestine, started. Can you believe it’s been 9 months?!

Well, unfortunately we can.

April 2024 commemorated 1 year of genocide in Sudan. Has there been any change? Nothing in sight, so far.

If you’re a true #bookworm, you would know Notting Hill, the movie. Alien rewatched it very recently and was a bit taken aback that there was a line which says something like, “children in Sudan are starving.” This movie came out in 1999 and when you really think about it, there has not been much change in the world. Esp. when it comes to what we consider humane and how we define humanity.

It is quite depressing when you think about it. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about it. As readers, we should continue to read and re-read and be informed. We shouldn’t be defeated by the evil so easily.

Anw, on to the books!

The Gospel According to the New World

Just as April began, we were faced by the terrible loss of a beloved author, Maryse Conde. We had the chance to stock her book, Segu, during #Displacement and for #WarandPeace we have The Gospel According to the New World. It is deemed to be one of her most critical works.

Full description of the book can be found here.

Shortlisted in 2023, The International Booker Prize’s judges wrote that it is a book ‘full of wisdom and love.’ Publishers Weekly assures that readers will be transfixed with the book, as “Condé does a lovely job with bringing her protagonist down to earth, covering the sacred and profane elements of Pascal’s life before his death.”

Humans and Other Animals

Full description of the book can be found here.

Seeing that we went hard on short story collection during #LevelsofLife, we try to tone it down a little this time 😂 But this collection is something we don’t want to miss promoting for #WarandPeace. It contains stories about animals by Vietnamese writers from the French colonial period (1885-1945) to the present-day, carefully selected to accurately represent voices challenging ideologies that overlook the survival and lives of marginalised beings.

There are not a lot of reviews on this book, all the more reason why it should be read by more people! However, it is prefaced by a critical introduction that is so comprehensive, calling the book as “a valuable resource that reveals the complex mosaic of human-animal interaction in Vietnamese culture.”

We also made a post about Southeast Asian books we currently have in stock. A lot of these books are still available, so don’t hesitate to contact us!

Rebel Island

During #WarandPeace, we have the chance to stock more history books, including Rebel Island. This book is a concise & essential guide to Taiwan’s past and present, providing invaluable context at a time of escalating tension over its future.

Full description of the book can be found here.

A contributor at Taipei Times writes how the book is “lively, highly digestible and I don’t believe there’s anyone in Taiwan who won’t learn something from it.” The Irish Times highlights Clement’s brisk narrative, resulting in “a splendid portrait of the layers of identity and resistance in what is no less a settler society than the United States, Australia, or Argentina.”

We had a wonderful time talking about queer books in the namakurhea x Transit Bookstore Buddy Read. It was amazing to see friends sharing books by and about Palestine/Arab/North African authors.

Our next book recommendation can be added to the list of books by an Arab author, about the Arabian Peninsula.

My Great Arab Melancholy

Full description of the book can be found here.

This #WarandPeace graphic novel is one of the books we recommended during Indie Book Day ✨ It is an illustrated chronicle of the modern Arab world, combining travelogue, memoir, history - complemented with gorgeous full-color art. The journey begins in Lebanon, all the way to Baghdad.

The Markaz Review writes a beautiful and in-depth review that calls Ziade’s work as a demonstration of “remaining with melancholy as a way of holding onto moments of potential.”  Molly Crabapple, artist and author of 'Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War' praises the book by saying, “a stunningly stylish, breathtakingly evocative tribute in words and art to the cosmopolitan Levant that exists in defiance of war and empire.”

Our last book recommendation is a very important book to support.

Couplets

The author of Couplets is one of the many who supported #PENAmericaBoycott, a movement that we admire. We are glad we are able to stock ‘Couplets’, a novel-in-verse about coming out from a conventional life in all the ways that is queer.

Full description of the book can be found here.

A compelling review from Cleveland Review of Books describes the experience of reading Couplets as “invigorating” and how it rhymes in a way that is often forgotten in contemporary poetry. Newcity Lit’s review points towards its raw exploration on questioning existence & whether poetry is a way to make sense of life or us trying to make poetry out of life.

A Few Reminders:

• Last chance to be eligible to win a discount coupon from Transit Bookstore! Show us your enthusiasm for our newsletter and may the odds be ever in your favour!
  The winner(s) will be contacted via the email that you use to receive this newsletter.
  Hint: so far, there are 10 readers who are eligible for this discount coupon 😉.

• Preorder My Dream Job and In the Back of My Throat via Transit Bookstore and you will get a special bonus straight from Norman!

• Join our Transit Bookstore #WarandPeace Book Club Pick. Watch the first discussion about the book between Alien and Aziza!

• If you’re into online book club, don’t forget to join Transit Bookstore 2024 Readalong. All info is in the last newsletter.

We end this newsletter with a post on Instagram to remind ourselves of the 9th month genocide in Gaza.

Here’s hoping the world to be a tiny bit better until our next newsletter edition!

XO,
Transit Bookstore

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We’re sending the newsletter in the evening so that you can:

1. listen to the recording of Alien and Sara talking about our second Transit Bookstore Readalong 2024 wrapup before bed

and/or

2. download it on your phone for your morning commute tomorrow.

Books discussed:

• Alien: Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

• Sara: Trumpet by Jackie Kay

Readalong conclusions, thus far:

• Alien finds it easier and more convenient to host a Readalong for a novel, while Sara prefers short stories.

• We both loved the books we read — previous books were The Death of Comrade President by Alain Mabanckou and Milk Blood Heat by Daniel W. Montiz.

• We still have no clues why these books were not selling when we had them in store, at Transit Bookstore.

• We would love to humbly encourage you to check out our “bargain books” and “blind date with a book” shelved when you visit our brick-and-mortar store at Urban Farm PIK. Those books represent the true meaning of “hidden gems” — you might think they were hidden from you for so long, but they are indeed the gems you’ve been looking for.

Lastly, we have chosen the books for the next phase of Transit Bookstore Readalong 2024! 🥳

• Love by Angela Carter

• Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

• Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson

We will start with Love, on August 1st, 2024 and it will be hosted by Aziza.

Please contact us if you want to buy these 3 books from Transit Bookstore!

Count me in for readalong!

A few reminders

• Preorder My Dream Job and In the Back of My Throat via Transit Bookstore and you will get a special bonus straight from Norman!

• There is still time to join our #WarandPeace Book Club! Join us!

• There’s still time to be active on our newsletter! Subscribe, share, comment, like, do everything you do on social media, but for Transit Bookstore newsletter. You have the chance to win discount coupon(s) to buy as many books as you want at Transit Bookstore! Readers who live outside of Jabodetabek can also use the winning discount voucher to buy books online.

  You have until the beginning of July to do so. Winner(s) will be announced mid-July, when it is “tanggal tua” 😆 for most of us.

  Also, you’ll increase your chance on winning if you bought book(s) that you get to know from the newsletter!

• We’re happy that our post that highlighted the mass killing of journalists in Gaza received some attention on #booktok.

@transitbookstoreMonth 8 of genocide If we are exhausted from counting days, imagine being the Palestinians currently experiencing it. Ever since Oct 7, death has been all around them 24 hours and the journalists trying to get their voice heard are killed, injured, or missing. Palestinian journalists are putting a whole new standard for journalism, from their dedication and sacrifice. The proofs they have taken are used in courts, in protests, in articles, everywhere. But it’s not without a cost. Until today more than 108 journalists are killed from reporting what is happening in Gaza. ‘More than 108’ because there are probably more of them, but the people keeping track of the numbers are also killed. In this post, we highlight the passing journalists fighting for the freedom of their people, along with books that talk about what it is like being a journalist at war. ‘A Stone is Most Precious Where it’s Belong’ is a memoir by an Uyghur journalist ‘Black Sunlight’ tells about a journalist reporting on a resistance group often called as a terrorist group. ‘The Dimensions of a Cave’ is where a reporter investigates a shadowy military programme during the desert war. ‘Not Russian’ tells about a reporter covering an attack which happens to be initiated by his close friend. Don't forget to check books about Palestinian experiences as well - they are in the last slide. We pray for every fight of Palestinian’s voice to be heard and protected, so we may see the end to all of this in our lifetime. #transitbookstore #independentbookstore #tokobukuindependen #tokobukujakarta #palestinianbooks #palestinianauthors #urbanfarmpik #warandpeace

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• We’re also very happy that an illustrator whose books are available at Transit Bookstore went viral because he’s giving free illustrations to raise awareness for the genocide in Gaza.

• Don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel! We spoke to award-winning authors and translators and you can find the recordings there! Here’s an example of our short interview with Kevin Jared Hosein, a recently crowned the Walter Scott Prize winner.

That is all from us this week, friends!

No heavy stuff this week because we also need time and space to recover from watching a kid lying on the floor with half of their skull gone in Gaza because of the genocide.

We hope you’re coping and reading well.

Until next time,
Transit Bookstore

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It is month 8 of the genocide in Palestine and in this particular week, there were at least 2 massacres, many many many airstrikes.

Because this is still a #bookish account, we, of course, listen to a poet. In this case, a Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha.

This month also remarks Naksa Day and images coming out of occupied Palestine are horrifying.

Also, there’s a massacre that happened in Sudan just this past week. We really like how Sara from bsonblast recaps everything into short videos, packed with information. This one is really heartbreaking.

Especially after reading news that because we’re not doing anything, and if we continue to do so, 2.5 million people in Sudan could die of hunger in September 2024.

Lastly, even if you’ve been living under a rock, hopefully you didn’t miss this news.

Kalau baca komen-komen di postingan Al-Jazeera English tersebut, banyak yang komen, “kenapa dengerin Al-Jazeera? Bukannya media nasional di Indonesia?”

Menarik juga sebenarnya argumen ini, tapi sayangnya kita harus mengakui bahwa isu-isu lokal, terutama yang menyangkut lingkungan, jarang bisa viral tanpa diangkat oleh pihak asing. Siapa yang ingat dengan kasus Harison Ford? Atau Leonardo diCaprio? Dan kalau tidak viral, jadinya…………

Anyway, because we have yet to mention Congo, first book for this edition is set in Congo, by a Congolese author.

Black Moses

Full description of the book can be found here.

True followers of Transit Bookstore might remember that we’ve been stocking Alain Mabanckou’s books throughout the years and in January 2024, we picked The Death of Comrade President to be the first book of Transit Bookstore 2024 Readalong.

We had Black Moses as we kicked off #WarandPeace, sold it and now we have it back in stock! The book is an African Oliver Twist, where Moses is an orphan who ran away from orphanage to rebel against the orphanage's corrupt director.

In Words without Borders, the book is called to be “a novel that’s as entertaining as it is engrossing, and reads as though you were experiencing Moses’s life as your own. Critics at Publishers Weekly begin their review by praising it as “a small book with a big narrative voice,” and end it by saying how the book “is a journey to discover what is hard-wired in us and what we make up about ourselves.”

Speaking of recent events, June is also Pride Month! We’re very proud to be a strong supporter of queer authors, so please check out our Queer Books post to see what books we have in stock or you also can…

ask us what books are not on the post!

In this edition, we want to highlight one particular book.

Truth & Dare

Full description of the book can be found here.

So Mayer has been a champion for many queer authors and they’ve been speaking out loudly against the genocide in Palestine. We also love their tweets!

Truth & Dare is a short stories collection that brings readers through a ride of queerness, history, trauma, and many more.

A review in t’Art Press assures us that “we are in the hands of a writer who loves language, who rolls words around like wet clay, forming words and then reforming them, linking, playing, subverting.”  Artless also doesn’t shy away from praise, calling the book as “one of the most scintillating short story collections to come out of Britain in recent memory.”

We are very proud to have Truth & Dare in stock — you can find it on our #BooksforGaza special shelf in our store!

Another recent event that happened is one of our #WarandPeace book won an extremely prestigious award in Australia.

Praiseworthy

Full description of the book can be found here.

Last month, it was announced that Praiseworthy won the 2024 Stella Prize. Stella Prize is the highest literary honour given to Australian women author. We have a couple books that were in the longlist and shortlist of the prize. Please ask us which one.

The #WarandPeace book, Praiseworthy, is about Aboriginal community, oppression, ecological disaster, packed in a biting satire & extraordinary imagery.

It was also shortlisted for Dublin Literary Award, in which the judges claim it as a wonder of 21st century fiction. The book is “startlingly original, fiercely political, uncompromising in every respect, Praiseworthy expands the possibility of the novel form.” Meanwhile Kirkus Reviews says how the book is “a rich, dream-like journey through an Aboriginal mythos.”

At the risk of repeating ourselves, Transit Bookstore’s long-time followers might know that it is not our first time stocking Alexis Wright’s book(s). We’re very happy that she won a Stella — very well-deserved!

Speaking of another author whose writings are familiar to us at Transit Bookstore…

[…]

Again, if you’ve been noticing Transit Bookstore’s curation, you must be familiar to the works of Fady Joudah. He’s been translating the works of Palestinian authors for years — some of them were available at our small independent bookstore. We are very happy that we can all savour Joudah’s own words in the form of poetry.

Full description of the book can be found here.

With the genocide in Palestine that intensifies, Fady Joudah’s poetry collection appears with a title that symbolises a gap, a period, something stagnant, representing this time accurately.

In an eloquent review by Words Without Borders, they highlight the unique title, and the fact that the whole collection is a poem itself, “a continuous poem of survivance,” that demands a declaration of faith from everyone including us. Scottish Left Review thoroughly and daringly focuses on the anti-colonial time evoked in Joudah’s poems, and how vulnerable we all are.

Our last War and Peace book recommendation is…

Nimita’s Place

Full description of the book can be found here.

How many times have we found ourselves being nostalgic of the past? What we often forget is how the past is not all merry, barely even. In Nimita’s Place, two different Nimitas from two different generations went through different paths, yet they strangely had similar struggles. Nimita Khosla in 1944 wanted to go to university but ended up in a marriage because of the demands of society and traditions. Meanwhile, her granddaughter in 2014, Nimita Sachdev, escaped India to avoid marriage but was facing all kinds of turbulences in Singapore.

A review by Sharlene Teo (author of Ponti) via Five Books says that “it’s a wonderfully written, witty work of fiction that looks at parallel narratives.” An article by a Singapore online platform that covers arts writing, Bakchormeeboy, highlights the fact that the book “offers a reflection and portrait of home, a means of understanding that home isn’t simply a means of being where the heart is, but to allow one’s self to undergo a transformation as the landscape around them changes irrevocably.”

Speaking of the past, we’re leaving you with a recommendation from our past theme, Levels of Life.

The Mountain Lion

Full description of the book can be found here.

It is a novel about adolescence; how it is to experience coming-of-age in the wilderness, from a point of view of two siblings.

There was something interesting said by Los Angeles Review of Books, calling the book a barely acknowledged classic hidden in plain sight despite being “the most bracing and sorrowful re-immersion into childhood’s waters that one can ever hope to encounter.” Maybe it’s time for more people to pick up this book? 🤔 In 1947, Kirkus Reviews called this book a release that makes Jean Stafford a writer to watch, something that has proven true many years later.

A few reminders:

• Transit Bookstore #WarandPeace Book Club is Hisham Matar’s My Friends. We will read together the book throughout July 2024 and we’ll see you at the end of July, at Urban Farm PIK, to talk about this book while eating tons of cakes! More info:

• Do not forget to check Transit Bookstore YouTube channel. To guide you with the uploaded videos, we’ve created a thread on Twitter. Check both out, please!

• 50% off drinks at Checkarta Chess Club and Cafe promo is still going strong! You’ll receive a coupon for every purchase you make at Transit Bookstore. Also, we just replenished our shelves at the cafe! Check them out!

• Don’t forget you can get a taste of what Transit Bookstore’s books are like by borrowing them from Kutoobuku. You can get all sorts of gems like this best selling book!

• A friendly reminder for you to donate your old clothes to #TukarTambahCelana. Get decluttering and bring those old clothes next time you visit us!

We leave you with a giveaway announcement!

In the beginning of July 2024, we will choose a few readers who interact with the newsletter the most to receive a discount coupon from Transit Bookstore.

Substack actually keeps track of every newsletter follower and how active they are in regards to the newsletter, like so.

So, we’re looking for readers of the newsletter whose activity rating is 5-star, like the above.

In the beginning of July, we’ll see how many readers reach the 5-star activity status, as deemed by Substack, and we’ll decide how many discount coupons we will give away. Bonus point: if you buy a book from us this month and you found out about the book from the newsletter 😍.

That is all from us.

We hope you’re intrigued by the books and that you can join us in prayers for there will be no massacre anywhere in the world that we have to talk about on this newsletter’s next edition.

Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about Transit Bookstore!

🤓🤓🤓🤓

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Have you seen videos of Rafah being burned — including its people in tents? As we are a #bookish account, we encourage you to check the poet Mosab Abu Toha’s account for #alleyesonRafah.

In this edition, you can listen our conversation with Fatia Maulidiyanti, an activist who has been vocal in criticising the government.

If you’re a visual person, the full video is on our YouTube.

Please also check out Fatia’s book recommendations — full list is in this post.

We would also like to share with you that we (finally!!!) have distributed the money we raised during Levels of Life to various mutual aid efforts for Palestine and more.

It took awhile because we want to make sure that every penny will be used as aid and not stuck at any borders.

We also donated an e-sim to gazaesims. You can too! Our esim was used almost immediately and right now the people of Palestine is in dire need of them. Check out their Instagram account for the latest update.

To make sure the money is worthwhile, we also donated to Crips for eSims for Gaza, which is an initiative founded by a few people, including the #MindandBody author Alice Wong. For more info, check Alice’s Twitter and Instagram.

Sincere thanks to our friend Sarah of crypticbatak who has highlighted mutual aid efforts. We donated to Pal.Gaza, a mutual aid effort that she’s been working with even before Oct 7, 2023.

We also appreciate our friend Sofia of sofia_reading very much for highlighting Children Not Numbers. Her Instagram Live with one of its founders was one of the events in which we learn that, yes, aid trucks cannot come into Gaza, but there are commercial trucks being allowed in. This revelation blew our minds — it shows that the colonisers really REALLY want to starve Ghazzawi and that we definitely live in the capitalist world. Unfortunately, the Live recording is now removed by Instagram.

Lastly, we donated a small amount to a fundraise done by our friend Rob in the UK. Pre-pandemic time, Rob used to do a back-and-forth travels between UK and Indonesia. He stumbled upon our store at Pasar Santa and we instantly became friends. He was super kind and he brought us a few books from the UK then.

Rob went running and the money he raised was donated to Childline UK. Please click on the link to learn more about what they do. This organisation is close to our hearts, esp. Alien, because a long time ago, she was also a youth volunteer for a similar organisation in Canada, called Kids Help Phone. She dreamt of creating a similar organisation in Indonesia… maybe someday it could happen :).

There is still about Rp77,000 left in our donation bank, waiting to be distributed. We will continue to raise money during War and Peace and we hope you’ll support our effort by donating your books and/or buying our bargain books collection.

We are grateful that we can do this with all your help and support. Hopefully the effort that centre around books to learn, unlearn and relearn will be a tiny bit beneficial.

From our hearts,

Transit Bookstore

Last week, we are in awe of something called the “Gaza Book Auction”, a bookish community effort to raise money for Gaza, specifically for Palestinians who are trying to evacuate from Gaza. If you go to their auction page, you can bid for all sorts of things, not just signed books. This amazing effort is so commendable — we hope it is being copied around the world ❤️.

On the shitshow side, we read another story of yet another discovery of mass graves in Al-Shifa hospital, making it a total of 7 mass graves in 7 months! We’re not sure how people don’t get angry about this.

If you need an inspiration about what to do to help the cause, our friend sofia_reading has highlighted something that’s very doable for us all.

Also, just in case you missed it: CNN discovered an israeli concentration camp to detained Palestinians and Tempo’s report on Indonesia’s import of spyware from israel (there’s a paywall for the article, unfortunately).

The premise remains: if the mainstream media is able to create this report, imagine what happened ‘behind the scenes’ of the reporting? And what kind of tragedy isn’t being reported in places where journalists’ movements are restricted.

Anyway, bleak. We know.

During War and Peace, our books do not necessarily represent a way to avoid reality. For this theme, we’re hoping that a continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning happen through the books we curate.

Having said that, let’s move on to the books!

We like to think that our current book curation cover a worldwide conflict. However, if you think we’re missing something (a region, a conflict, a topic) and that you need us to cover it, please let us know!

What do we miss?

A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs

Full description can be found here.

The ethnic cleansing of Uyghur people is one of the topics we attempt to put on the surface. This memoir is told from the point of view of a reporter who gradually realized what the government has been doing to her people, and decides to use her influence to raise as much awareness and turn the narrative.

Book Page points out in their review how the book puts the pressure on “grounding the political in the personal” to “remind readers that every missing Uyghur is a person with a story of their own.” The Guardian calls it as a memoir that “conveys the courage & cost of telling a truer story.”

Speaking of a true story…

Heritage Aesthetics

Full description can be found here.

Our rambling on poetry remains steadfast ✨️ This collection is a part of #WarandPeace as it unpacks the travelogues of colonial writers and military men alongside experiences of racism in the present.

Poetry School discussed in depth the political lyricism possessed in Anaxogorou’s words, calling it “a bravura display of poetic dexterity.” In a review by The Friday Poem, the book is described as “a rhetorical roller-coaster, with genuine surprises of language and imagery on almost every page.”

Speaking of imagery on almost every page…

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

Full description can be found here.

This award-winning graphic novel put ideas into your head — ideas that you may have never thought before. When you think you know why Singapore parted ways with Malaysia, this book will confuse you and make you question your historical knowledge.

But take our words with a grain of salt and listen to a review by the locals, via Mothership.sg. They said, “Singaporeans don’t often get the chance to really examine the official … Singapore story”, indicating this book as a way to examine it. Once you read this book, we believe that you’ll join the crowd of critics, such as Publishers’ Weekly, and call this book a masterpiece.

We’re closing the War and Peace book recommendations with this book.

To Hell with Poets

Full description can be found here.

If you have been following our contents on Instagram, you probably have noticed that we dedicated the first week of May to celebrate short story month. This book is written by a Kazakh writer, reflecting the inner discord of the modern Kazakh.

Asian Review of Books highly recommends this book and writes, “we can see our own world reflected back to us through a mirror whose distortions somehow make it all the more familiar”. In Words without Borders, the critics called this book “grotesque & witty.”

Before we go, we would like to recommend you a book from our past theme: Levels of Life.

You, Bleeding Childhood

Full description can be found here.

During #LevelsofLife, we stocked this book for its depiction on childhood imagination and the need for escapism that we often carry into adulthood. Considering its unique and personal touch (+ pretty cover!), we stocked it again!

The book is highly praised in Kirkus Reviews, where they noted the book as “amusing, disturbing, intoxicating tales of childhood terrors and obsessions.” Following along is a review by Publishers Weekly calling the book a work that should not be missed, since the stories are “heartfelt as they are humorous.”

Lastly, some promo and friendly reminders before we go.

Don’t miss our #BooksforGaza / Pen America Boycott shelf

Get 50% off drinks at Checkarta Chess Club

Transit Bookstore x Kutoobuku

And #TukarTambahCelana!

We’ve also been uploading videos to our YouTube channel. Check it out because some of our conversations with authors and translators are amazing! 😆

Thanks for reading our newsletter. We’re thinking of awarding special discount to our loyal and most active newsletter reader(s) to celebrate our 2nd anniversary at Urban Farm PIK. What do you think?

Leave a comment

Until next time!

Transit Bookstore team

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320 bodies were dug out recently.

20 were believed to be allegedly buried alive.

Humanity? 0

April 2024 also marks 1 year of the war in Sudan.

Some people will say: but it’s a civil war! Why should we care?

Again, humanity? 0

These are only the small numbers in 2 countries. We can definitely keep going, but to what end?

Also, no matter how far we go, humanity = 0. Fact.

It is hard to find a tiny speck of hope and positivity in the current world.

But we have no choice.

Just like Jakartans corporate slaves who hate their bosses and jobs; just like Gazans who persisted on getting married and having babies, we have no choice but to keep on living.

And at Transit Bookstore, living = talking about books. In fact, living = eating, breathing, and swarming ourselves in books.

So, on to the books!

The first book is a classic that brings us to the recently-learned acronym: WNCSF. Read a thorough explanation of what this acronym means — an acronym that we’re very sorry to learn about.

Fugitive Pieces

Full description of the book can be found here.

One of the many devastating outcomes of wars is the orphaned children. This should have been a good enough reason to stop all the killings — but will we ever learn? This book took place years ago, set in a buried village, in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is about a seven-year-old whose parents were killed during the war and despite it being set several years ago, its relevance still resonates now.

A review from The Independent talks highly about the author’s prose, saying that “the quality and subtlety of her thought is breathtaking.” Another review from Kirkus Reviews calls it “a stunning work, quite beautifully written, and a lovely homage to the imperiled yet indomitable culture and individuals it celebrates.”

The second book that feels appropriately placed after a novel about the cruelty of the holocaust is definitely a Palestinian book. After all, “Never Again” should be for everyone, right?

Power Born of Dreams

Full description of the book can be found here.

During #WarandPeace, we are determined to recommend Palestinian books from all across genres, presented in all kinds of forms. Today, we’re recommending a graphic novel told from an israeli prison, which gives a lot of vivid and horrifying details on israel’s cruelty.

World Literature Today writes a thorough review, concluding it with, “readers of various political views will find this a powerfully affecting and compelling book”. Publishers Weekly agrees with the powerful message in the book, calling the book as a testament that “will remind readers of the human toll of political conflict, but also how humanity can never fully be taken.”

The third #WarandPeace book is by a Nobel Prize winning author who participated in the Books for Gaza auction.

Afterlives

Full description of the book can be found here.

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s books are known to be packed with history of wars and their legacy — how they impact the people and the world. Afterlives is about how people are torn away from their loved ones because of the atrocities of the war.

There are too many praises of the book to choose. A review by The Guardian highlights the book’s importance, calling it “a compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.” Kirkus Reviews agrees to this by saying that it’s “a novel with an epic feel, building a complex, character-based story that stretches over generations.”

For the fourth book, we’re recommending a book that centres around a horror that is not a war.

Unsung

Full description of the book can be found here.

Unsung is our recommendation for a #WarandPeace nonfiction book. It is a rich and well-documented anthology by Black people that paints the narrative of slavery and the path of its abolition.

Critics at Kirkus Reviews highlight the importance of this anthology, calling it “as comprehensive a collection as now exists and one that should be required reading in history and literature courses.” In a verdict from Library Journal, they refer to the book as “a collection that showcases the vastness of Black thinking and writing” and how it is “a must for all interested in Black history, but unsure where to start.”

The last #WarandPeace book we’re recommending is a poetry book.

Again I Hear These Waters

Full description of the book can be found here.

There is something about a carefully curated book of poems, especially coming from a part of the world rarely shown in the literary world. Again I Hear These Waters is a collection from the ‘Miyah’ community of the Northeast Indian state. From folk river-songs to love poetry, this is one of the poetry books that should be read by more people.

Surprisingly, there are not many reviews about this book yet, but World Literature Today listed it as one of the notable translations in 2023. That being so, we’re borrowing the words from the book’s curator foreword: “this collection shows how one yearns to belong.”

Before we go, we would like to recommend a book from our last theme, Levels of Life.

Rabbit Hole

Full description of the book can be found here.

We stocked quite a lot of books for #LevelsofLife that centre around family, including this one. Rabbit Hole talks about family secrets and whether we know our family as well as we thought.

A lot of reviews praise the book’s use of grief as its device despite being a crime thriller. Kirkus Reviews highlights how it’s “a timely rumination on true crime, internet obsession, and paranoia” that keeps the readers turning the pages. A review on Foreword Reviews recommends it for people looking to read a story about a complicated heroine.

Lastly, a few reminders!

Transit Bookstore x Checkarta! Chess Club & Cafe

Don’t forget that we have an ongoing promotion with our friends at Checkarta! Chess Club & Cafe. Every transaction you make at Transit Bookstore until 30 June 2024 will make you eligible for a 50% off drink voucher.

#TukarTambahCelana

We’re very happy that the #TukarTambahCelana campaign will continue beyond April 2024. Yeay to all good deeds in the world.

So, when you come to visit us at Urban Farm PIK, please don’t forget to bring your used piece of clothing to be donated via houseofcuff x Clothes for Charity.

Transit Bookstore 2024 Readalong on The StoryGraph

Join our current readalong on The StoryGraph — we’re reading Manchester Happened!

The wrap-up for the first 2 books in this readalong can be listened on the below.

Or if you’re a visual person, we’ve uploaded the conversation to our YouTube channel.

Blind Date with a Book

We continue to update our Blind Date with a Book table at the store. Click on the below post to see them up-close.

We hope this program will help new readers to find us, Transit Bookstore, especially those who have been hesitant to try our books.

That is all from us for now.

We’ll talk soon on the 4th edition of #WarandPeace newsletter. Hopefully there will be 0 grave discovery then.

From our hearts xo,

Transit Bookstore.

Then we have to think — what should we do with books that are not moving as fast as we had hoped?

The idea of hosting a Readalong came to us about 2 years ago, not long after we moved to Urban Farm PIK. Our store is small (read: tiny 😆) and we simply have too many books.

Readalong came as an idea where we, Transit Bookstore staff, read the books that are not moving to ‘prove’ that these books are actually great.

In 2024, we finally started it!

Listen to the recording of Alien and Sara discussing the books they choose as we started this Readalong in 2024.

Books were read and discussed, fun was had, premise was definitely proven!

Please join us as we continue the Transit Bookstore Readalong 2024.

Our current book: Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Let us know what books should we read next!

Let us know!

For new subscribers, War and Peace is Transit Bookstore’s current theme. There’s not much to explain regarding this theme, except that books that tell stories of conflicts, which disrupts a form of peace within a society have a chance to be included in our current collection.

One month in, we’ve been trying to cover 3 major topics within our curation of books. Those 3 topics are: wars or armed conflicts that include genocides around the world, oppressions in different forms that include racism and colonialism, and election.

If you can think of a book that you think Transit Bookstore MUST stock for War and Peace, please let us know! We’re always open for suggestions!

On to the books!

One book to get to know Transit Bookstore

Flights

Full description of the book can be found here.

If there is a book that can represent what Transit Bookstore is all about, it is Flights. It was the first ever book that we sold, on the very first day we opened our door. Not long after, the book was nominated in so many literary awards and Olga Tokarczuk eventually won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It then continues to become a reader’s favourite and we’re excited to bring it back again for War and Peace.

Flights is a novel about travel that combines travel narratives & reflections on travel. It also connects what travel means by incorporating an in-depth exploration of the human body, embarking on life, death, motion & migration.

Publishers Weekly mentioned how there are a lot of threads in this book, but those threads “ultimately converge in a remarkable way, making this an extraordinary accomplishment.” Booklist loved the complexity of this book as well, calling it “an exploration into the impermanence of existence and experience.”

A Classic

Guerrilla Warfare

Full description of the book can be found here.

So many revolutions or resistance movements written in history are initiated by a small group of people. Guerrilla warfare is one of the names for these movements. Originally published in 1961, this book quite extensively covers the ‘golden rules’ of guerrilla warfare and how revolutions can be fought and won by ordinary people.

In a review by Hispanic American Historical Review, it said that Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare is of broader and ongoing significance to Latin American revolutionaries. Another review published by Journal of Conflict Studies stated how Che Guevara “holds a unique place in the minds of activists and academics as an icon of the ideal revolutionary.”

A War and Peace/Books for Gaza Book

In Jan/Feb 2024, a group of authors got together to auction the first + signed edition of their books for a charity project they called “Books for Gaza”. At Transit Bookstore, we’re in awe of how dedicated these authors were (and still are) to the cause and we’re honouring them by stocking books by authors who participated in this project.

Of course, we acknowledge that this effort had to be conducted because there’s a lack of response from a lot of governments that are directly (and indirectly) responsible for the genocide in Gaza - as well as the lack of response from a lot of literary communities and big publishing houses.

We praise and support collective and community-based charity project and condemn the systematic blockade of aid distributions.

The Association of Small Bombs

Full description of the book can be found here.

When a small bomb detonates in New Delhi, the Khurana brothers’ lives are taken away. Mansoor, the friend of the brothers, has to bear the physical and psychological effect from that tragedy. Entangled into his life are a young activist, and a bomb maker.

Electric Literature praised this book right from the beginning, calling it “a success in the difficult task of describing the immense, unbearable consequences of a terrorist act.” On the other side, The Irish Times said that “it is a chilling echo of another perspective on the logic of violence.”

A Graphic Novel Highlight

Welcome to the New World

Full description can be found here.

There are many countries around the world currently holding or about to hold elections. This graphic novel shows an implication of an election. A Syrian family is resettling in the United States just in time as Donald Trump was elected. This book reveals USA in all its contradictions, told between the family’s unfolding lives through comic strip-style book.

The Guardian highlighted that while this book prioritises education rather than entertainment, the approach does take readers to unimaginable refugee experiences, ones that are incredibly thought-provoking. Kirkus Reviews gave a similar credit, dubbed the book as “an accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.”

A Levels of Life Look-back

A friendly reminder that we still have quite a few Levels of Life books in stock.

Ask us about LevelsofLife books!

Easy Beauty

Full description of the book can be found here.

In this memoir, Chloe Cooper Jones opens up about her disability and the isolation that comes with it. But it is only when she becomes pregnant that she considers the consciousness-shifting power of beauty, of seeing and being seen.

From Kirkus Reviews, the book is said to be “revelatory, tedious, entertaining, and entirely human.” Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly called it “a brilliant case for the beauty of complexity.”

After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine

We were going to promote this book tonight, but thankfully we just sold our copy :)

Check out the book’s description here and DM us to order your own copy.

That is all for this #2 edition of War and Peace newsletter.

A few reminders

transittalk! about Your Utopia recordings are up on our YouTube channel

transittalk! War and Peace special

A conversation with Fatia Maulidiyanti

Register yourself to join the event!

Thank you very much for reading. See you next week on a transittalk! and until our next newsletter edition!

❌⭕️,

Transit Bookstore

We’re back with the first #WarandPeace edition of Transit Bookstore newsletter!

A tiny catchup if you’re new: at Transit Bookstore, we change our theme every 6 months and when we do, we change our whole collection.

If you still can’t move on from #LevelsofLife, do not worry! We still have a lot of Levels of Life books in stock. So, please do not hesitate to ask us! :)

ICYMI, we changed our theme with this kick-off video.

For the first time in 5+ years, we don’t feel the need to explain why we choose War and Peace as a theme.

You can simply look around you and look at what’s currently happening around the world to understand.

And in case you’re wondering — did we take War and Peace from the “War and Peace” by Tolstoy? Yes, yes we did.

As we mentioned in the previous newsletter, we’ve decided to lessen the burden (😆) of choosing the name of our theme by borrowing titles from published books. We just hope that our War and Peace would do Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” justice.

Onto the books!

(Btw, no one told us that we’ve been having grammatical error that is “onto”, not “on to”? LOL. Perks of having English as our 2nd language 🤪)

A book by a Palestinian author about Palestine

Sharon and My Mother in Law

Full description can be found here.

If we are to count the devastating news constantly occurring in Palestine, we will never finish. But what about their joy, their warm conversations, their funny anecdotes? They are endless too, yet it seems like they don’t appear as often. This book is another side of the coin when it comes to Palestinians’ lives. Suad Amiry filled the book with funny stories derived from her own life as a Palestinian living in Ramallah and it’s a true gem.

Critics said that the writing is remarkable, serves as an important report from the front (Publishers Weekly) and “conveys a determination to endure against the odds in a good-humoured, fragmentary narrative of everyday events.” (The Independent)

A book that just arrived last week

The Book of Collateral Damage

Full description of the book can be found here.

The destruction of a civilisation always includes the abolishing of the historical buildings, libraries, archives and books. There are many reasons why we try to stock and recommend books from oppressed countries and marginalised authors and one of them is to preserve. This book depicts this effort. It is an attempt to catalog everything that was destroyed when the invasion in Iraq happened.

We’re very proud to restock this #KnowYourNeighbour book for #WarandPeace.

In their review, World Literature Today said “Antoon’s rhetoric movingly goes beyond the argument for the human cost of war to giving agency to things and places that the war consumes as collateral damage.” Meanwhile, a review from Arab News highlighted Antoon’s talent to take his readers on a journey that is profound and deeply rooted in Iraq and its culture.

A book by a Sudanese author about Sudan

Lyrics Alley

Full description of the book can be found here.

We have been stocking Leila Aboulela’s books for years and for the first edition of this #WarandPeace newsletter, we would like to highlight Lyrics Alley. It’s a story of both an ending and beginning as it is set in 1950’s Sudan, when the Brits were leaving and the country turns to sovereignty. Aboulela is the author that can brilliantly narrate the struggle of Sudanese people amidst war and conflict.

Safe to say there is no doubting Aboulela’s writing, Library Journal called this book her breakthrough novel, one that feels “real, compelling, and ultimately moving.” Kirkus Reviews hailed it as an elegantly written family epic, rich in detail and showcases Aboulela’s talent for connecting political and personal upheaval.

What are we if we’re not recommending poetry?

I cannot be good until you say it

Full description of the book can be found here.

We would like to recommend a book that we think suitable for Ramadan. This poetry collection weaves Quranic verses in and raises the poet’s effort to reach for divinity in the body, creating an archive that refuses erasure.

Mary Jean Chan, author of Fleche and Bright Fear, said that this collection is a “multilingual verse suffused with a vital musicality and a palpable tenderness.” Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! made a point on how liberating Ahsan’s poetry is, calling it a work that “offers readers a prayer, a song, a hand to hold amidst the amidst.”

A book we think you should get when you visit us for Indie Book Day, published by a small publisher

Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree

Full description of the book can be found here.

It’s March and we are still celebrating International Women’s Day so mentioning this book feels like the right choice. The main character is the only female village chief in an entire county, and the only competent person in the whole government. It also takes place at the time when China had a one-child policy, which occurred from 1979 to 2015.

Xuē Xīnrán, a British-Chinese journalist and author, selected this book as one of her top five books when it comes to books about China because it elevated the unheard voices of those impacted by the one-child policy, among others. Another author, Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012 also praised this book as a courageous and profound book in understanding Chinese society.

More recommendations on books published by independent publishers, check out:

And this:

Also, don’t forget that we’re holding an event with folks of Honford Star!

Register to join the conversation here!

Before we go, a friendly reminder that the #TukarTambahCelana campaign is still going on. So, next time you’re visiting us, don’t forget to bring your used trousers to be donated!

That is all from us today.

Until next time!

We know perfectly well that many of Transit Bookstore readers are also fans of Stranger Things. So, right off the bat, with this newsletter’s number (11th edition - ‘Eleven’), we would like to remind everyone to boycott the series. We do not want to be associated with anyone who thinks zionism is sexy and we are 100% sure that you would agree with us.

To help you with your boycotting action, check out BDS Movement website frequently and download No Thanks App. Very helpful!

On to the books on this very special Leap Day 2024…

This will be the last newsletter for Levels of Life and we’re so excited to announce the new theme tomorrow! Stay tuned on Instagram!

February is the month of L-O-V-E

ICYMI, check out our post about ‘romance’ books.

Wellness

Full description of the book can be found here.

Although none of Transit Bookstore’s members are married, we are surrounded by marriages between our relatives, friends, colleagues. It does make us wonder about it a lot and what better companion to wonderment other than books? Especially if the book is almost 600 pages and is very well-researched (there is a bibliography in this book where the author cites all the journals used to write this story).

The combination of good research and good writing is shown in this book. As Kirkus Reviews said, it is “a warmhearted satire that chronicles our perfectly, stupidly, dreadfully elegant accommodations to life.” The Guardian also said a similar thing, how the book “feels genuinely capacious and lively, full of interconnected rooms stuffed with unexpected fascinations.”

Black History Month in the USA

Did you catch our US Black History Month post?

Don’t worry, at Transit Bookstore, everyday is Black History Month! ✊🏽

A Down Home Meal for these Difficult Times

Full description of the book can be found here.

What a fitting a title for the state of the world we are living in 🥲. We include this book for #LevelsofLife because of its range — it covers various phases of life. From struggling to belong, trying to begin again, and many more. It’s a difficult life, indeed, but joy is still there, even if it’s only in the corners.

A lot of the reviews mention how affectionate this book is, including in Foreword Reviews: “a heartfelt collection about the highs, lows, and ordinary days of Ethiopian life.” Something similar is also mentioned in Kirkus Reviews, where they called the book as “entertaining and affecting stories with a deft lightness of touch.”

Speaking of meals in this difficult time makes us reflect upon the hardships that Indonesians are going through. It is basically a great reason to support more Indonesian creators!

Two Tails

Full description of the book can be found here.

'Two Tails’ is our go-to book to recommend — whenever someone comes to our store and ask for a light read, or a book to entertain children while the parents or guardians browse through the "grown-up" books 😆.

Kifurai's first graphic novel is a complete package. It has cute and striking illustrations, lovable characters, as well as deep plot with some humour sprinkled around it✨️ Also, we had a gambar-gambaran event with Kifurai last year, and it was fun! You can watch the recording here. Maybe we should do more gambar-gambaran event with other creators?

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Books from our Instagram post series

Transit Bookstore Community

Check out the posts about Yomies, Eureka Snack, Bake of Art, and Kopi Se-Indonesia!

Behind the Clouds

Full description of the book can be found here.

This book is another #LevelsofLife book that talks about family, motherhood, and being a woman. It highlights a place and time where a woman’s values still lie on her ability to bear a child. It is a part of the African Classic Series and Transit Bookstore is very proud to carry a few more titles from this series — ask us for recommendations!

We found a lot of academic journals discussing this book, one of them is published by Review of African Political Economy. The author concludes the analysis by saying that the book exposes the ills of Nigerian society while allowing a genuine socialist and feminist view of society. Another review is from The Modern Novel — calling it a fascinating account that shows a woman’s perspective while not painting the man as an irredeemable blackguard.

Books as Zodiac Signs

As it is the start of a new month, it is worth revisiting this series of post: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Men and Apparitions

Full description of the book can be found here.

The main character of this book being in his late thirties is one of the reasons why we chose this book for #LevelsofLife. We also found it rather unique, his profession is an anthropologist and his latest research is: himself. A bit self-absorbed, yes, but intriguing nonetheless.

Critics said that this book is “equally charming, equally frustrating” (Publishers Weekly). Meanwhile, The New Republic calls the book as a work that enlarges our understanding regarding the sense of self we take for granted.

A few friendly reminder before we go:

• Don’t forget to bring your used clothes for a donation via #TukarTambahCelana program!

• If you buy books from our bargain table, all proceeds will still go to Palestine 🇵🇸

• We’re closing in on the February Readalong on The StoryGraph! Don’t miss the March Readalong! You can also catch up on the January Readalong! More info on this post:

• Transit Bookstore x namakurhea buddy read finally returns in 2024! We’re reading Prophet Song and we’re meeting offline to discuss the book on March 8th evening.

  Click to join!

That is all for this edition! We are looking forward to share with you our

NEW THEME

Pssstt: just for you, our newsletter readers, here’s an exclusive sneak peak: the new theme’s name is War and Peace.

What do you think it means?

Until next time!

XOXO,

Transit Bookstore

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What a time to be Indonesians 🙃

Did you catch our post about the election?

And this one?

We received questions about Ashadi Siregar’s book. If you’re trying to find its Bahasa Indonesia version, it was published as “Menolak Ayah”.

Anyway, our main concern in regards to the election is of course about the existence of Transit Bookstore. Here’s to hoping that we will still be able to sell any books freely!

Levels of Life teasers

Have you seen these Levels of Life books?

You might have missed these titles because we probably didn’t have time to advertise them thoroughly.

But we hope you’ll take some time to check out these books!

New Theme teasers

We’re changing the theme on March 1st! So soon! These two books will be on the next theme and we can’t wait for you to see the full collection!

So, guess what our next theme will be! 🧐

Leave a comment

We went viral!

Did you know Transit Bookstore is kind of viral? (based on our own standard :p)

Check out the viral reel below! And share it with your friends so we can be even more viral - for real :)

💕

A short newsletter from us this time. A full newsletter will be sent this coming Sunday. So please keep an eye out!

Until next time 🫶

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