In this Meet the Bookseller column we chat with Tracy Hwang, one of our excellent Emporium booksellers! We talk about her favourite part of bookselling, treasured recent reads, and what she'll be reading next.

Describe your taste in books.

I mostly read fiction. A lot of it is Asian lit and translated fiction, and I’m especially drawn to stories written by and about diaspora. While these sorts of stories are what make up the bulk of my reading lately, my greatest love has always been fantasy (adult and YA) so I get extra excited when there’s crossover between these genres (which, hooray for me, we are seeing more and more of these days).

What is your favourite part of your job?

I had a sort of epiphany recently—about how significant a single bookseller or team of booksellers can be in determining what books are stocked on the shelves of a bookstore. And thus, as a flow on effect, what books customers will be exposed to when they might not have been otherwise. A backlist title from five years ago that fell beneath the radar, an unknown author from an underrepresented minority, a subject matter that’s a bit taboo, can all experience a renewed wave of interest and support, because of a bookseller’s choice to stock it and hand sell it. This personal involvement in curating the types of books we want to offer customers has been a really rewarding part of the job, and one that hopefully differentiates Readings and other physical bookstores from chains/online retailers.

What are the best books you’ve read this year so far and why?

If you keep up with our What We’re Reading column, you might remember that someone (me!) had been reading Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess. Well, I finished it, and it was everything I had wanted from it and more. It was sweeping, wondrous and romantic, but even more than those things, it honoured Chinese culture and mythology with so much love and care, and I will never forget the immense warmth I felt because of this. It’s the book I wish I had growing up and it makes me happy that it can be that book for readers today.

I have to mention Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, as well. This novella is so sparkling, and so honest and it was really a perfect case of ‘right book, right time’. It’s a tender, beautiful ode to life and a hopeful look at moving on after tragedy. It’s also a spotlight on the comfort everyday people and everyday spaces can provide, transforming mundanity into something special. It’s kind of like a more eccentric, literary cousin of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

And finally, a recent favourite has to be Yiyun Li’s latest novel, The Book of Goose, which absolutely blew me away. You can read my review of it here, but it is one of those novels where nothing that can be said will do it justice, only reading it and loving it will.

What books are sitting on your bedside table right now?

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin
• Babel by R.F. Kuang
• A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin
• Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.