Book Club: A Spoiler-Free Conversation About ‘Last Tang Standing’ With Author Lauren Ho

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2020

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s the Nerdette Book Club! And today we're talking with Lauren Ho, the author of this month’s selection, Last Tang Standing.

It's a wonderful summer romance that follows the story of Andrea Tang, a 33-year-old Chinese-Malaysian lawyer, as she tries to make partner at her Singaporean law firm while fending off the unhealthy interest her relatives have in her love life.

Before she wrote this novel, Lauren herself was a Chinese-Malaysian lawyer living in Singapore. So ahead of our panel discussion later this month, we talked with Lauren about the reasons behind her huge career change, where the similarities between her and Andrea begin and end, and how Andrea was born “from the ashes of a comedy set where I bombed. Badly.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WB EZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen wherever you get your podcast.
0:35.7	From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdad.
0:38.9	I'm Greta Johnson, and you are listening to an episode of Nerdat Book Club, which is just like a regular book club, except sometimes the author stops by to chat.
0:45.0	And that is what's happening today. We're going to talk with Lauren Ho about her debut book. It's our July
0:50.4	book club pick Last Tang Standing. Last Tang Standing is written in diary form and it follows the
0:57.7	story of Andrea, a 30-something Chinese Malaysian lawyer as she tries to make partner at her law firm in
1:03.9	Singapore and she's also got very intense family members who are very concerned about her love life.
1:12.6	Lauren herself was a Chinese Malaysian lawyer living in Singapore for a while.
1:17.3	She also worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and Doctors Without Borders.
1:22.0	And she's also lived in Luxembourg and the UK.
1:25.3	She told us she speaks four and a half languages,
1:28.5	which is approximately three times the number of languages I speak.
1:33.2	In this chat, Lauren and I talk about what I liked so much about the book
1:37.1	and about how her time as a stand-up comedian helped her craft the main character
1:41.4	and how similar her own life is to that of Andreas.
1:47.7	Lauren, hey, welcome to Nurdette.
1:50.3	Thank you for having me.
	...

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