Adult Readers Archives - Page 79 of 154

Author Interview: Kim Thúy [in Bloom]

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Kim Thúy is one tough writer to get to, although she declares in our first email exchange when I finally track her down, “I am not at all the kind who plays hard to get :-) .” Attempts to contact her included pleas to both her...

Author Profile: Kim Thúy [in Bloom]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Kim Thúy’s Ru: An Apple for the Reader Ah, well . . . better start with true confessions: my words appear on the back cover of the U.S. edition (at least the first printing) of Vietnamese Canadian author Kim Thúy’s debut novel, Ru. The blurb is...

Tropic of the Sea by Satoshi Kon, translated by Maya Rosewood

13 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The brilliant Satoshi Kon clearly left us too early – he passed away at age 46 of pancreatic cancer in 2010. Surely, his fertile imagination had many, many more stories left to tell. Thankfully, he did leave quite a visual legacy, including such intriguing anime films...

The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction

Two sisters, born three months apart on the same Alabama plantation, could not have more different lives. As the daughter of a slave, Sarah is Master Allen's property; as the legitimate Mrs. Allen's youngest child, Clarissa is a pampered young lady of means. Playmates as...

Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly by Kyoko Okazaki, translated by Vertical, Inc.

06 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation

Meet Liliko, a supermodel of such perfect proportions as can only be ...

The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad

05 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, South Asian, South Asian American

For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry [in Library Journal]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost

The latest biography of "the world's most brilliant stand-up comedian" is the culmination of a project that took more than a decade (originally intended as a three-act screenplay) by screenwriter David Henry and his brother, musician Joe Henry. Born in 1940 in Peoria, IL, Richard...

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter and Ann Sherif [in Library Journal]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

A Japanese writer, also named Minae Mizumura, recalls her privileged expatriate New York childhood, then witnesses her family devolve in adulthood. A Tokyo-based editor takes a countryside vacation and meets an older woman who shares fantastical memories of some of the inhabitants. A village girl...

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

28 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction

"We are on our way to Budapest," 10-year-old Darling announces as NoViolet Bulawayo’s 2013 Booker longlisted debut novel opens. 'We' includes "Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina," banded together with plans to steal guavas as they sneak out of Paradise, the ironically named...

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

21 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Even before Naomi Benaron's debut novel hit shelves last year, it earned a substantial literary gold sticker as the winner of the biennial 2010 Bellwether Prize – the largest monetary award for unpublished fiction in North America, which was rebranded in 2011 as the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially...

Wolfsmund (vol. 1) by Mitsuhisa Kuji, translated by Ko Ransom

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The top of this debut volume proclaims, auf Deutsch, "Poesie des Widerstandes," or 'Poetry of the Resistors.' Poetry is certainly visible in the alpine landscapes and the swirling energy of the constant movement; most pronounced, however, is the tragedy of what happens across the panels...

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Library Journal]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri's (The Interpreter of Maladies) unparalleled ability to transform the smallest moments into whole lives pinnacles in this extraordinary story of two brothers – so close that one is "the other side" of the other – coming of age in the political...

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Magic happens when narrator George Guidall says "and yet ...

All That Is by James Salter

07 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

What began as gorgeous elegiac memory about misplaced courage and final hope as World War II comes to an end in the Pacific, devolves into a middle-aged man's tedious reflections about his search for meaningful connections, especially with women, as he recalls his privileged life...

Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

05 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

When I recently caught up with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, she was in one of her rare lull periods at home in Houston, Texas, having finished almost three solid months of book touring for her latest novel, Oleander Girl. Like her latest protagonist, Korobi Roy, a...

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Irish, Nonethnic-specific

Alas, this was the last Maggie O'Farrell I had left. Ever since discovering The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (my first and still favorite, I admit), I've moved her books to the top of the top of the To-Be-Read piles with regularity. Now that I've...

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Irish, Nonethnic-specific

On a summer afternoon in mid-1950s rural England on the border between Devon and Cornwall, journalist Innes Kent, already 34, happens upon angry Alexandra Sinclair, not yet 22. During their brief exchange in her parents' yard after he hits car trouble, he manages to inadvertently...

The Twin Knights by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Maya Rosewood

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

In order to fully enjoy this manga, you first need to read its prequel, Princess Knight (in two volumes in English translation). Come back when you're finished ...

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

01 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction

Best known for her penultimate novel – the bestselling 2006 Booker longlisted The Emperor's Children – Claire Messud takes on about-to-be-middle-aged regret with a raw vengeance in this, her fifth and latest title. That her protagonist Nora Eldridge shares the same first name as the discontented heroine in Henrik Ibsen's A...

My Education by Susan Choi

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Southeast Asian American

So I've been mulling over this book for a month-plus, and still remain rather conflicted. The one solid conclusion I can offer is this – if I were to rank Susan Choi's titles, my list would read thusly: American Woman, based loosely on the Patty Hearst...

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