Adult Readers Archives - Page 34 of 154

The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Fiction, Indonesian, Repost, Southeast Asian

Since comparisons to Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians seem unavoidable, here's what might be familiar: yes, crazy, rich, Asian characters populate Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties. Differences, however, immediately overshadow superficial similarities, most obviously from the very first sentence: "When your sister murders three hundred people,...

Booklist Backlist: Fictional Worlds, Real Meals [in Booklist]

16 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Arab American, Black/African American, Canadian, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Iranian, Iranian American, Japanese, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Lists, Nonethnic-specific, Persian, Persian American, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Yeah, sure: Proust and his madeleine-dipped-in-tea set the barometer for toothsome leitmotifs. I admit to the possibility that my academic indoctrination in his long, long musings made me quite the hungry reader. Or maybe I’m just always greedy for nourishment, with preferences in the belly...

Track Changes by Sayed Kashua, translated by Mitch Ginsburg [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Israeli, Palestinian, Repost, Translation

In the "track changes" function of a word processing program, the "all markup" option preserves all deletions, additions, rewrites for the life of the document – although the last editor ultimately chooses what to accept and reject in the final version. Palestinian Israeli Sayed Kashua,...

Amnesty by Aravind Adiga [in Booklist]

10 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

In his latest novel, following Selection Day (2017), Booker Prize-winner Aravind Adiga confronts a universal conundrum: at what price are we willing to do the right thing? Over not quite 11 working hours, Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – who’s been living in Sydney for the past four years...

How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee [in Booklist]

09 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Singaporean

*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean born, Oxford-educated, Amsterdam-domiciled Jing-Jing Lee opens her expansive, extraordinary debut novel with a reclamatory dedication: “For all the grandmas (halmonies, lolas and amas) who told their stories, so that I could tell this one.” Lee’s rescue of stories belonging to older women is...

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel [in Booklist]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Iranian, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW No doubt that Sylvain Neuvel’s (Themis Files series) standalone novella is a thought-provoking, heartbeat-raising experience. As convincing as the narrative is on the page, Neil Shah alchemizes Neuvel’s words into a revelatory performance, infusing contagious energy and creating impressive resonance. Sometime in the not-so-distant future,...

Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook Kim with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Hyung-Ju Ko [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Busan-based wife-and-husband team Hyun Sook Kim and Ryan Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of recent Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous with South Korea. In 1983, Hyun Sook is a...

Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon [in Booklist]

05 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Laotian, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The story begins and ends with Alisak, one of three inseparable Laotian orphans in 1969, who, in the final pages, will have become an almost-content Spanish shopowner on his way to a birthday celebration in 2018. Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Paul...

The Teacher by Michal Ben-Naftali, translated by Daniella Zamir [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, European, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Repost, Translation

“Elsa Weiss left no testimony behind” when she jumped to her death some 30 years ago. She remains a recorded name, one of the 1,684 Jews on the infamous Kastner train that left Budapest, Hungary, in June 1944; she was among the 1,670 passengers to...

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar [in Booklist]

03 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Australian Asian, Fiction, Iranian, Persian, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Although the page facing the title of Azar’s first novel to be translated into English clearly states, “Translated from the Farsi,” the linguistic enabler remains anonymous; the publisher’s official line is, “the translator of this book has asked not to be named out of...

Best World Literature 2019 [in Library Journal]

02 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Chinese, European, Fiction, French, Japanese, Korean, Lists, Repost, South American, Syrian, Translation

For the second year, I got to read along with two fabulously erudite co-horts – my Library Journal editor Barbara Hoffert and fellow LJ reviewer Lawrence Olszewski – to compile this 10-title list of remarkable, unforgettable, best-of translated world literature. We all read voraciously throughout the year,...

How Not to Die Alone by Richard Roper [in Booklist]

01 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

At 42, Andrew knows too much about death – personally and professionally. He’s lost his father, mother, sister; his bully brother-in-law is hardly family. He works in London’s Death Administration department, where he deals with what’s left of those who died alone, inspecting their homes,...

Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW A half-dozen Latinx readers voice Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s superb 11-story debut collection, which features mostly Colorado-domiciled Latinx/Indigenous characters hoping, demanding to be seen and acknowledged by a society in which women are routinely dismissed, threatened, and destroyed. Aural aficionados will especially thrill at the “read...

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys [in Booklist]

29 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

L.A.-born, Madrid-raised Maite Jáuregui makes her audiobook debut with one of the year’s most anticipated/lauded/likely to be awarded titles. Jáuregui dominates a sizable cast (Joshua Kane, Robert Petkoff, Oliver Wyman, Richard Ferrone, Neil Hellegers, Liza Kaplan), while her co-stars take turns momentarily interrupting chapters with...

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu [in Booklist]

28 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Although the cover claims Yu’s (Sorry Please Thank You, 2012) latest is “A Novel” – the description insistently written out in both Chinese and English lettering – his fiction, as always, defies easy labels. This hybrid conflates history, sociology, and ethnography with the timeless...

Black Forest by Valérie Mréjen, translated by Katie Shireen Assef [in Library Journal]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Translation

This English-language debut from French writer/filmmaker Valérie Mréjen opens with a nameless suicide: a man “decides he’s old enough” and replaces the disco ball with rope. The story, however, begins with a divorced father who determines that his children are lacking suitable New Year’s Eve...

Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Canadian, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

The town of Africville exists, designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The small coastal community on the edge of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was home to black residents since the early 1800s, the majority with southern U.S. and Caribbean origins. Narrative magazine assistant editor Jeffrey...

The Sweet Indifference of the World by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

Enigma? Wormhole? Mere coincidence? Once upon a time, writer Christophe and actor Magdalena shared a life together. Their relationship falls prey to art – “I had believed I had to decide between her and my writing” – and then Christophe pens a successful novel inspired...

Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman [in Booklist]

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

Perhaps because her single mother was an adamantly independent, relentlessly peripatetic news photographer, Nina Hill prefers to stay still. Mostly raised in L.A. by a wonderful nanny, by high school she was better read than all of her teachers. She finished a UCLA Art History...

The Story of a Goat by Perumal Murugan, translated by N Kalyan Raman [in Booklist]

20 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Success nearly killed Perumal Murugan. Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature, his cult novel, One Part Woman, was viciously condemned and publicly burnt in his native India for revealing the culture of his remote village to the outside world. Murugan declared...

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