With very good reason, Jennifer Egan's fifth title, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, announced earlier this month. As with most major award winners, I try to take a look or a listen (forget the cat; curiosity...
Shizuo Oguro's definitely getting older, although not quite yet better. Having quit the corporate life at age 40 determined to become a manga artist in volume 1, Oguro is now 42 and facing creative rejection, trying to convince himself that "Great talents bloom late." His friend – the angry...
Everything about this multilayered title shouts fraud ...
As I've upped my running mileage (doggedly training for Leadville 100 in 2012!), my book consumption via iPod has increased dramatically. One of my favorite audible treats is to listen to the author read to me ...
In another century, travelers wrote a few postcards. Today's modern wanderer might send group emails or abbreviated texts; the more techno-savvy might start a blog and instantly upload the pictures from those tiny devices. The really ambitious write essays and even books. Guy Delisle (thank goodness!)...
Daytripper is a gift of unexpected brilliance. That's all you really need to know. And just as I soooooo appreciated knowing almost nothing about this title before I opened its enticing pages, I will try not to spoil a moment for you. If you're not ready to...
May-lee Chai’s second novel is one of those titles to consider reading from the end, in this case with the "Acknowledgements," where the Chinese Caucasian hapa Chai recounts her long personal involvement with the Cambodian American community. At 15, writing for her Midwest hometown newspaper in the...
Perhaps because Beth Hoffman's debut is read so charmingly by Jenna Lamia, who also narrated Kathryn Stockett's bestseller The Help, I couldn't help making endless comparisons ...
For someone who has experienced hell, Loung Ung is a bright, welcoming voice filled with inviting laughter. She’s warm: “I just had dinner with my writing group last night. They’re my PenGals. I just love them! I don’t know what I would do without them.” She’s practical:...
People, even complete strangers, feel compelled to tell Xinran their personal stories, from the simple happiness of sweet everyday lives to the most horrific memories of shocking abuse. Something in her soothing voice, the wordless encouragement to keep talking, exudes a sense of undeniable comfort...
A toothsome distraction from the recent Tiger Mother hunt, journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan offers A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, which takes readers from Carnegie Hall into fragrant kitchens, trading threatened stuffed animals for pineapple tarts, Prokofiev for pandan. Tan's strong-willed...
Here's a 21st-century spin on the 90-pound weakling who wakes up one day admirably transformed, complete with bulging muscles and confident attitude. That said, check out these covers: this version is not without some menacing twists. "There's something called a 'food chain' in this world....
High school student Hikari Hamura was supposed to die young. But thanks to the fervent intervention with the gods by his best friend Chiaki, who actually did die that day, Chiaki was able "to save [Hamura] and [his] incredible talent." Hamura's nickname, by the way,...
For those of you searching for an antidote to the Tiger Mom brouhaha, this is it! I kid you not. Picture this ...
With the latest ongoing violence in *fill in the blank here, alas*, Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi's tight, sharp novella is a timely reminder of how the highest price of war is paid by innocent bystanders who by some luck escape death, but are mired in...
Having finished one Chris Cleave novel, I had to immediately start another without even missing a step (literally, as both books were loaded one after the other on the iPod – with Little Bee narrated with careful control by Anne Flosnik – and I was out running...
For awhile, before it became an international bestseller, Chris Cleave's debut novel was known not so much for the actual details of its content, but for the fact that the book was generally about a London bombing and that the surreal timing of its publication...
According to her official website bio, Lorraine Adams left her Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper career in 2000 "to recount the lost stories of Algerians she knew without the strictures of journalism, and the conventional sentiment of the moment." Even before 9/11, Adams well understood about "ambiguity" and...
This third and final installment of Luis Alberto Urrea's Border Trilogy is unmistakably his most personal. His "good Republican" mother from Staten Island never accepted his Mexican identity. His "devil on the dance floor"-father was once on Mexico's presidential staff, becoming a bowling alley janitor...
Shockingly enough, Valentine's Day wasn't actually created by Hallmark! In fact, the heartfelt holiday has two versions as to its origins. The Christians say the date commemorates three martyrs all named 'Valentine'; St. Valentine's Day was established at the end of the 5th century, only...
