Audience Archives - Page 18 of 233

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy [in Booklist]

08 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Charlotte McConaghy returns for another spectacular woman-and-nature thriller, finding a pitch-perfect accomplice in prolific Saskia Maarleveld. After chasing birds from the water in Migrations, McConaghy plants in the Scottish Highlands where the reintroduction of wolves – utterly disappeared by hunters since the late 1800s –...

The Strange Scent of Saffron by Miléna Babin, translated by Oana Avasilichioaei [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW At a mere 160 pages, Miléna Babin's The Strange Scent of Saffron might seem spare, but its sizable cast and numerous crisscrossing narratives produce a dense, intricate, utterly satisfying read. In the town of Le Bic, Quebec, two strangers meet over an exquisite meal at the...

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Casey Plett's second collection, after A Safe Girl to Love and the novel Little Fish – both Lambda Award winners – once again features a spectrum of experiences lived by transgender women, from exhilarating to soul-crushing and all the quotidian moments in between. Among the exceptional dozen...

A Girl Called Rumi by Ari Honarvar [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Journalist/artist/activist Ari Honarvar's promising debut, A Girl Called Rumi, memorializes the lifesaving power of storytelling through the darkest terrors. In 1981, the Iran-Iraq War was still new and a semblance of normalcy seemed possible for 9-year-old Kimia, who claims "Rumi" as part-time moniker. She's missing...

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout has the remarkable ability to engage audiences immediately with just a few opening sentences. Her marvelous eighth novel, Oh William!, is no different, made even more inviting by being the third in her Amgash series, which began with My Name...

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation, Uruguayan

In the chilling, spare-but-oh-so-dense novel The Rooftop, Uruguyan writer Fernanda Trías introduces Clara – her name a sharp contrast to her uncertainty, her unknowing – as she recounts the life that she announces on the opening page "came to an end today." Once upon a time,...

The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett [in Booklist]

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

Ava Simon’s life might seem, well ...

The Autumnal: The Complete Series by Daniel Kraus, illustrated by Chris Shehan, color by Jason Wordie, lettering by Jim Campbell [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Kat Somerville will never win any mother-of-the-year awards. She shows up at the principal’s office black-eyed after her 7-year-old daughter, Sybil, bloodied another kid’s nose; rather than any admonishments, Kat brings Sybil a Stephen King novel. The rebellious pair abandon not only the school but...

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Booklist]

27 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Translation

Pulitzer Prize-winning polyglot Jhumpa Lahiri’s second title in Italian arrives in her own translation, narrated by Italian American Susan Vinciotti Bonito. Despite Bonito’s fluency in their shared language, her noticeably youthful timbre isn’t initially convincing as Lahiri’s unnamed, 40-something protagonist. And yet Lahiri’s unadorned, sharply...

Secret Life by Theo Ellsworth and Jeff VanderMeer, illustrated by Theo Ellsworth [in Booklist]

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

From the cover alone, it’s clear Theo Ellsworth’s visuals are unique, striking, and surreal. A sense of witnessing something unrecognizable resonates throughout, with bizarrely stylized images of people, beasts, and scenes surrounded by intricate backgrounds that might induce trypophobia in some. And yet, self-taught artist...

Himawari House by Harmony Becker [in Booklist]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Harmony Becker, who brilliantly created the artwork for George Takei’s Eisner-winning They Called Us Enemy (2019), makes her stupendous solo debut in what will prove to one of the best graphic titles of the year. The narrative might initially seem simple: a mixed-race U.S. teen...

Blue-Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu [in Booklist]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

For always, Kalki – with his matching blue skin – has been told he’s a god, the tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu. His godliness supports the family’s Tamil Nadu ashram, where he lives with his controlling father, loving mother, uncle and his wife, and...

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi [in Booklist]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nigerian, Nigerian American, Nonfiction, Repost

Just as only Akwaeke Emezi could have narrated their Freshwater debut, no other voice could have manifested their first nonfiction title. Presented as an epistolary mosaic addressed to family, friends, lovers, betrayers, and heroes, Emezi’s raw voice lays bare their unadorned writing. Although the vulnerability, arrogance, and...

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

In the “big city” of Seoul, love isn’t easy to find – even tougher to secure is love that lasts. Young and Jaehee are best friends from university, bonded in their “boundless energy of [being] poor, promiscuous twenty-year-olds.” Young is a gay man, Jaehee a straight...

House of Sticks by Ly Tran [in Booklist]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

In 1993, 3-year-old Ly Tran arrived in Queens with her parents and three older brothers from South Vietnam. Their new apartment was not the nhà là – “a house made of sticks and dried leaves” – that had been their former home; stability, however, was...

Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy [in Booklist]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American

That Jo Koy has created a sold-out, standing-ovation-earning stand-up career making people laugh while mining intimate family stories means no one else could possibly narrate his memoir. His hard-earned superstardom translates seamlessly into an audiobook, giving him a double-debut credit as author and narrator, presenting...

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Thanks to veteran narrator JD Jackson and newbie Ronald Peet, Mott’s fourth novel is also a “hell of an audiobook.” An unnamed writer (impeccably embodied by Jackson) embarks on his inaugural book tour because he’s written Hell of a Book. He’s been coached, trained,...

Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko, translated by Roddy Flagg [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Translation

Once upon a time, Wu Shih-sheng had a happy home with his wife and daughter. But then his daughter ran away and he fell heavily into debt after an accident; lost their home; took to sporadically driving a taxi; forced his wife, Kuo Hsiang-ying, into...

The Cabinet by Un-su Kim, translated by Sean Lin Halbert [in Booklist]

13 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

Kong Deok-geun is an “average administrative worker,” a position for which he surpassed 137 applicants for “a job that has no work.” His boredom, so severe that he’s named it “I-would-rather-eat-dog-treats-than-suffer-this-boredom,” sends him to the fourth floor, where he discovers Cabinet 13, then spends an...

Author Interview: Mesha Maren [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Mesha Maren: 'Fear and Unease Can Be a Writer's Best Friend' Mesha Maren's 2019 debut, Sugar Run, took almost a decade to hit shelves. In the meantime, she published short stories in various prestigious journals (the Oxford American, the Southern Review) and won numerous prizes and fellowships (2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize,...

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