Adult Readers Archives - Page 16 of 154

It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be by Lizzy Stewart [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Award-winning British children's author/illustrator Lizzy Stewart makes an impressive adult graphic debut with interlinked short episodes observing, analyzing and celebrating women's friendships. The nine chapters in It's Not What You Thought It Would Be could each stand alone, but Stewart cleverly relies on shades of orange to...

Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For most of her first seven years, Anna Qu was "the girl without parents; a father dead, a mother who left to start a new life." And yet those years held the "love" Qu names in the subtitle of her bittersweet debut, Made in China:...

Two-Week Wait: An I.V.F. Story by Luke C. Jackson, Kelly Jackson, illustrated by Mara Wild

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

The intimate struggles of a husband and wife desperate to become parents might not be universal literary fare, but with millions of couples worldwide attempting conception via IVF, Two-Week Wait will surely, deservedly find sympathetic audiences. Luke C. Jackson and Kelly Jackson "began their own IVF...

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So [in Booklist]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Nine electrifying stories comprise Anthony Veasna So’s debut, and while many were previously published, when read together their magnificence is enhanced as they create an interconnected Cambodian American community. Most autobiographical is “Human Development,” in which the narrator is also Anthony, a gay, Stanford-degreed...

Let’s Not Talk Anymore by Weng Pixin [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean creator Weng Pixin's vibrant Let's Not Talk Anymore began with a "big 'f*ck this, f*ck you!' kind of attitude" after one of her "many disputes and disagreements with [her] Mom." The work made her think more deeply about not just her mother, but her...

My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa [in Booklist]

29 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South Asian American, Sri Lankan American

Shifting back and forth between present-day San Francisco and a private orphanage in Sri Lanka in 2002, Jayatissa’s debut thriller takes every opportunity to lead readers astray. Paloma Evans was adopted at 12 by wealthy white parents. At 30, she’s living in a grim apartment,...

The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

28 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The book is labeled fiction, but the extraordinarily haunting narrative is inspired by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s mother and two elderly survivors of Korean War separations who were briefly allowed to meet their North Korean families; Gendry-Kim’s mother still hopes to glimpse her sister. That survivor...

Rebecca & Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor by Pascal Girard, translated by Aleshia Jensen [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Translation

A book about a possible murder, award-winning French Canadian Pascal Girard's Rebecca & Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor guarantees delight – if nothing else but to laugh with Girard himself. Here in his vivid graphic world, translated by Aleshia Jensen, Pascal Girard...

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When Kristen Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This) began writing Seek You in 2016, the world was rather different. "Loneliness is one of the most universal things any person can feel," her author's note posits, but still-looming, pandemic-mandated isolation imbues her spectacular graphic memoir with...

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

The incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II is undoubtedly one of the most egregious episodes in 20th-century U.S. history. Third-generation Japanese American Naomi Hirahara carves a little-known sliver from that grievous experience and layers it with mystery to create her...

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

In 2007, the New Yorker published "Sweetheart Sorrow," which became the first chapter of David Hoon Kim's enigmatic debut, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost. The duration of the novel's opening 30ish pages is the only time Fumiko – a Japanese student in Paris who...

People Like Them by Samira Sedira, translated by Lara Vergnaud [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

Samira Sedira's first English-language title, translated by Sara Vergnaud, is clearly marked "a novel" on its cover, and yet so much of the story is true. People Like Them is a fascinating amalgam of gruesome headlines – French newspapers in 2003 reported that an entire family...

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Powerlessness pervades Ha Jin's perceptive A Song Everlasting, as his protagonist leaves fame and familiarity in one country to flee toward ambiguity and adaptation in another. Freedom, Yao Tian reasons, is his driving motive. National Book Award-winner Jin (A Map of Betrayal), notable for empathically crafting...

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel [in Booklist]

10 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When 15-year-old Talia is shocked by the inexplicable, brutal murder of a cat, her outraged sense of fairness immediately takes control and she punishes the feline killer with similar torture – landing her in a remote girls’ prison school for youth offenders. She devises...

Disquiet by Zülfü Livaneli, translated by Brendan Freely [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Translation, Turkish

Former UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Zülfü Livaneli's startling Disquiet requires multi-layered engagement: to appreciate it as a penetrating novel about a Turkish family confronting murder and to acknowledge it as intense sociopolitical testimony of contemporary, too-little-known, ISIL-led (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) genocide of the...

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin [in Booklist]

07 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

As if channeling the success of her debut, Ayesha at Last – a contemporary Muslim Pride and Prejudice – Jalaluddin’s new rom-com doesn’t stray far from Austenian independent women and their recalcitrant partners-to-be. Chasing broadcast dreams, titular Hana Khan interns at Radio Toronto and anonymously podcasts on her own, spurred...

Colorful by Eto Mori, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Young Adult Readers

“I want to write a novel that will allow young people who are tired of living to have a break from their own lives.” This is the starting point for Eto Mori’s tale, first published in Japan in 1998 and now a classic. Issues challenging...

Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Katherine Silver, afterword by Fernanda Melchor [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Mexican poet, writer, and essayist José Emilio Pacheco's novella Battles in the Desert returns in a glorious 40th-anniversary edition, re-translated by Katherine Silver from her own decades-old original. Award-winning author Fernanda Melchor appends an illuminating afterword that contextualizes the coming-of-age classic in the Mexican canon. Carlos, still...

The Silence by Don DeLillo [in Booklist]

03 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

At under two hours, Don DeLillo’s latest is easily a straight-through listen. What happens during that short time proves mind-bogglingly far-reaching: a worldwide technological shutdown. Jim and Tessa are in flight from Paris to Newark, with evening plans to watch Super Bowl 2022 at Max...

Asadora! (vol. 2) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

And so the intriguing layers – always characteristic of auteur Naoki Urasawa’s series – begin to multiply in volume 2 of his latest Stateside import, brought into English by frequent manga translator John Werry (who lent his talents to the first volume, and the continuity...

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