“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have spent all my time studying and done all the things I really wanted to do,” thinks Yukari Hayasaka, dramatically believing she’s about to die. As a diligent 18-year-old preparing for high school final exams, her academic goals have thus...
Only when Louise Erdrich won this year's National Book Award for The Round House, did I learn that House is the middle of a planned trilogy that begins with The Plague of Doves which, most serendipitously, was already loaded on my iPod. A bit of...
Last seen on bookshelves sharing cover credit with National Book Award-finalist Gene Luen Yang on Yang's latest, Level Up, Thien Pham makes his solo debut with this slim heartbreaking-to-heart-recovering tale across continents and cultures. "What am I doing here," Scott wonders as he wakes to another...
OMG. Think gruesome wreck you can't turn away from and you probably won't even get close to the horrors of Gillian Flynn's debut novel, which pubbed six years before her mega-breakout Gone Girl, which is currently turning up on new major 'best-of' lists daily. So freaked out...
Runners/walkers/movers: in case you ever wondered – yes, a gluttonous John Green-binge stuck in the ears really makes the miles fly by (public displays of sudden, extreme emotion notwithstanding). I began backwards with the latest of the JG-oeuvre, the incomparable, luminous The Fault in Our...
Today – December 7, 2012 – is the 71st anniversary of the "date which will live in infamy," as named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in describing the assault on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base and launching the United States into World War II. That the attackers...
The draw here (couldn't resist, ahem!) is the ever-spectacular art of Caldecott Medal-winner Ed Young, this time using "cut paper, textured cloth, string, and colored pencil" to give dramatic motion to Barbara DaCosta's debut kiddie title. As the clock strikes midnight and everyone sleeps, the nighttime ninja climbs,...
Here's my 'why-I-read-this-book-scenario': a 21st-century equivalent to the mail-order bride from Bangladesh, her middle-class white American engineer sponsor hubby, the suburban New York life they attempt to share ...
Surely this deserves some sort of supreme irony award: Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's recently ousted president, was one of the leading champions of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, completed in 2002 where the greatest library of the ancient world – the original Library of Alexandria – once stood some 2300 years ago....
Early this year, at almost 18 years old, Kaya Press flew the nest. Leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of New York's publishing world, the non-profit indie specializing in "books from the Asian diaspora," moved offices across the country to Los Angeles. Now comfortably ensconced...
So enthralled by Diana Thung's August Moon earlier this week, I immediately ordered Captain (her first and only other title thus far), and was delightfully tickled to find a blurb on the back cover from Gene Luen Yang (of first-ever National Book Award graphic novel finalist-fame for American Born Chinese): "Goofy and endearing...
Canadian eco-architect David H.T. Wong's debut defies simple categorization: while clearly a graphic work for younger readers (much of the language is soooo totally tweenage vernacular), Escape covers some 200 years of history through the fictional story of a Chinese Canadian American family, also named Wong, whose experiences...
In the genre of memoirs (which includes based-on-a-true-story, autobiographical novels), I've noticed two distinct categories: the titles you read for the importance of the story, and the memoirs that also turn out to be fabulous examples of great literature. Psychologist Rahimeh Andalibian's writing debut represents the former;...
Get ready for surreal delight. When a mysterious creature with an imbedded bullet turns up, Fi and her scientist father head to the town of Calico – linked "to the rest of the country! and the world!" by a single bridge. They'll be staying with Fi's Uncle...
Please allow me to share a so-called North Korean political joke: “Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin ...
Although Vincent Lam's first novel hit shelves months ago, I waited (and waited) to read it because I was afraid – seems to be my modus operandi for follow-up titles to books I've cherished, unable to move on for fear of grave disappointment. Lam's interconnected story...
If you feel a vague sense of déjà vu reading this novel, that may be because, like me, you're strongly reminded of another dual-timed story featuring a bold Englishwoman trekking through faraway lands whose expectations-be-damned!-uncommon-life-back-then is pieced together through left-behind words and pictures by a descendant living...
Bestselling Canadian anti-war activist Deborah Ellis’s four nonfiction titles (thus far) for younger readers should be bundled together and sent to every policymaker throughout the world. Two of those four, Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely through a Never-Ending War and Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak, give voice to children living...
Perhaps you might label me odd (true) or contrary (no way!) or even disrespectful (dohhh!) to post about cancer and death today of all days, but let me just assure you that this really does make sense. Books like this are the best reminders to...
Little White Duck is a visual feast that showcases the childhood memories of author Na Liu, and vibrantly enhanced by her artist husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Liu introduces herself with an adorably grinning "Ni Hao!," explaining that she was born in Zhifang, a suburb of...
