Audience Archives - Page 49 of 233

Manuelito by Elisa Amado, illustrated by Abraham Urias [in Booklist]

08 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Canadian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Guatemalan-born Canadian author Elisa Amado (What Are You Doing? 2011) “has known many people whose lives have been disrupted, if not destroyed, by the conflicts that have occurred [in Guatemala] since the 1950s,” her author’s bio reveals. That violence continues in the Northern Triangle of Central America...

Ghost Cat by Kevan Atteberry [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

In his back-flap bio, Kevan Atteberry (Puddles; Tickle Monster) insists he "doesn't really like them" – cats, he's talking about. And yet, he's written and illustrated a heartfelt homage to enduring feline love. (And I'm not crying, you are!) "There is a ghost in my house,"...

13 Fall Faves, Speed-Dating Style [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Japanese, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Nonfiction, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation, Turkish, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Oh, good gracious! I can’t stand it: soooo many amazing books and my aging eyeballs just can’t keep up! Last week at ALA Annual, I got to “Read ‘n’ Rave,” but I had such an embarrassingly overflowing list, the buzzer went off (uh-oh!), and I couldn’t...

Marie Curie: A Life of Discovery by Alice Milani, translated by Kerstin Schwandt [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Biography, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Milani’s graphic biography of the iconic Marie Curie, soon-to-be Nobel winner Ernest Rutherford explains the theory of transmutation in less than a dozen panels to Marie Curie’s “interested in science” daughter, Irène – so young, she calls it “tramputation.” That transparent accessibility repeats throughout,...

Transgender Pride, Literally: 11 Titles by #OwnVoices Authors and More [in The Booklist Reader]

28 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, British, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, European, Fiction, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Happy final Friday of Pride Month. Wow . . . that went by quickly! I have 25 (no lie!) more books on, under, next to, and all around my desk that I will not be covering here, which is actually a good thing, because that’s proof that...

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams [in Booklist]

27 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Candice Carty-Williams and Shvorne Marks are quite the dynamic duo: a debut novelist gets paired with a first-time narrator for spectacular results. Hailed (rather lazily) as the black Bridget Jones, Queenie decidedly deserves center-stage without expedient comparisons. As a Jamaican British 25-year-old Londoner, Queenie’s...

Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova [in Booklist]

26 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Russian, Russian American

Debut novelist Maria Kuznetsova gets paired with a first-time narrator, and the collaboration is – well, ideal. Like Kuznetsova’s titular heroine Oksana, Anna Kyra Hooton is a Russian American immigrant, arriving in the U.S. at 10, three years older than 7-year-old Oksana who moves from...

Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis [in Booklist]

25 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW When the material is already so funny, adding another layer of guffaw-inducements hardly seems possible, until you’ve heard Helen Ellis narrate her own 23-essay collection. Alabama-born-and-raised, Manhattan-domiciled for decades, Ellis is not wrong when she insists, “Southern accents are disarming.” Here, as in the teaser-podcast that debuted...

Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage [in Booklist]

24 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “Although the characters in this novel are fictitious,” the final sentence of Hage’s (Carnival, 2013) spectacular novel acknowledges, “this is a book of mourning for the many who witnessed senseless wars, and for those who perished in those wars.” For the Lebanon-born, Canadian-domiciled, International...

German Calendar No December by Sylvia Ofili, illustrated by Birgit Weyhe [in Booklist]

21 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Young Adult Readers

As the oldest daughter of a German mother and Nigerian father in a small Nigerian town where everybody knows everybody, Olivia has valued books as windows to a life beyond. While anticipating boarding school in big-city Lagos, Olivia dreams of “all kinds of adventures,” Enid...

Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat [in Booklist]

19 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian, Haitian American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Following The Art of Death (2017), a reflection on her mother’s passing and writing, Edwidge Danticat focuses this haunting eight-story collection on, well, death. Looming death becomes a bargaining chip in “Dosas,” when an ex-husband begs his ex-wife to help save her kidnapped replacement, and in “In the Old...

A Song for China by Ange Zhang [in Booklist]

18 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Fifteen years ago, Toronto-based artist Ange Zhang debuted Red Land Yellow River (2004), a gorgeous, hauntingly rendered autobiography about coming-of-age during China’s Cultural Revolution, marked by incomprehensible, chaotic, threatening change. The beloved father he introduced then becomes the subject in this book, its title a...

At Dusk by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

17 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW In just over a year, three Sok-yong Hwang titles – Familiar Things (2018), Princess Bari (2019), and this novel – have arrived Stateside, each indelibly, adroitly anglophoned by Seoul-based Sora Kim-Russell. Lauded by Nobelist Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the...

Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Just about everything is new for Zenobia: she's moved to a new state (from Arizona to Maine) and is starting at a new middle school. She recently lost her widowed father, and is getting used to her new guardians, Aunt Lucy and her wife, Aunt...

Immigrant Heritage Month by the Book(s)! [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Arab American, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian, Indian American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Moroccan American, Nonfiction, Repost, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

June is #ImmigrantHeritageMonth, which began in 2014 and has been recognized and celebrated by the (Obama) White House as “a time to celebrate diversity and immigrants’ shared American heritage” since 2015. “Immigration,” the White House declares, “is part of the DNA of this great nation.” Perhaps now more than ever...

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder [in Booklist]

12 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest Anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality. Initially, small things disappeared – “Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp.” What didn’t just...

Penguin Classics Adds Four Books by Asian Americans to the Canon [in Christian Science Monitor]

06 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Japanese American, Korean American, Lists, Memoir, Repost, Young Adult Readers

With four books by Asian American authors, Penguin Classics finally recognizes a long-overlooked genre of American literary and cultural tradition. During the first week that the film adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club hit screens across the United States in 1993, I sat in...

The Parrot and the Merchant by Marjan Vafaeian, translated by Azita Rassi [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Persian, Repost, Translation

An avid collector, Persian merchant Mah Jahan's most precious possessions are her birds. Despite her devotion, "she kept them in cages or chains so that they couldn't fly away and leave her." Most beloved is "a beautiful bright parrot," favored because "the parrot had learned...

Electrifying Reads from the Other Side of the World: Seven Korean Thrillers in Translation [in The Booklist Reader]

30 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Translation

Despite my Korean heritage, I don’t read the language well enough to enjoy Korea’s latest, greatest titles. Thankfully, notable Korean-to-English translators, especially Sora Kim-Russell, Deborah Smith, and Chi-Young Kim, enable all Anglophone audiences to discover – and for many of us, become ardent fans of...

The Structure Is Rotten, Comrade by Viken Berberian, illustrated by Yann Kebbi [in Booklist]

23 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Professor Frunz isn’t much of a teacher – nor are his students particularly engaged. While he rushes through an architectural tour of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, one student repeatedly asks which details will be on the midterm while another plots how she’ll become the next, Pritzker...

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