Five books a bookshop owner couldn’t live without – Albert Wan’s must-reads for a desert island
From Stephen King to his literary hero George Orwell, bookshop owner Albert Wan has a broad palette. Also on his list are sociological studies of British pubs and American life, and a Sichuan cookbook that reminds him of his mother
Albert Wan, owner of the recently opened Hong Kong bookstore Bleak House Books, grew up in New York and trained as a lawyer. He met the woman who would become his wife in New York and, when she got a job in Atlanta, Georgia, he followed her there and set up a private legal practice, focusing on civil rights and criminal defence. Eight years later, his wife got a job at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the family moved to Hong Kong in December 2016.
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Wan quickly started doing the groundwork for a bookshop, first selling books at local markets and then earlier this year opening the bookstore in San Po Kong. He focuses on quality literature – most of Bleak House’s books are in English and second-hand.
Here are the five books Wan would take to a desert island, in his own words.
by George Orwell, 2000
Orwell’s Complete Works are published in 20 volumes. The first 10 are his fiction and the rest are his correspondence, essays and diaries. I came across it when I was at law school and ploughed through his essays and diary entries, some of which can be quite dry and mundane. Orwell died relatively young and this serves as something of a biography.
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Orwell is a complicated guy. At some point he was an informer, but he was also kind, courageous and not many people know that he was an outdoors enthusiast. When I was a lawyer I used to write, and Orwell’s essays and works taught me how to think and write.