"Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus made a mistake. The Indians are in India." Presented as humor during a community festival, the deep irony remains striking throughout Louise Erdrich's award-winning, bestselling books that explore...
Only when Louise Erdrich won this year's National Book Award for The Round House, did I learn that House is the middle of a planned trilogy that begins with The Plague of Doves which, most serendipitously, was already loaded on my iPod. A bit of...
OMG. Think gruesome wreck you can't turn away from and you probably won't even get close to the horrors of Gillian Flynn's debut novel, which pubbed six years before her mega-breakout Gone Girl, which is currently turning up on new major 'best-of' lists daily. So freaked out...
Runners/walkers/movers: in case you ever wondered – yes, a gluttonous John Green-binge stuck in the ears really makes the miles fly by (public displays of sudden, extreme emotion notwithstanding). I began backwards with the latest of the JG-oeuvre, the incomparable, luminous The Fault in Our...
Here's my 'why-I-read-this-book-scenario': a 21st-century equivalent to the mail-order bride from Bangladesh, her middle-class white American engineer sponsor hubby, the suburban New York life they attempt to share ...
Although Vincent Lam's first novel hit shelves months ago, I waited (and waited) to read it because I was afraid – seems to be my modus operandi for follow-up titles to books I've cherished, unable to move on for fear of grave disappointment. Lam's interconnected story...
If you feel a vague sense of déjà vu reading this novel, that may be because, like me, you're strongly reminded of another dual-timed story featuring a bold Englishwoman trekking through faraway lands whose expectations-be-damned!-uncommon-life-back-then is pieced together through left-behind words and pictures by a descendant living...
Perhaps you might label me odd (true) or contrary (no way!) or even disrespectful (dohhh!) to post about cancer and death today of all days, but let me just assure you that this really does make sense. Books like this are the best reminders to...
Neal Bascomb is a consummate storyteller: he can unravel a tale with an ending you already know, set it at a heart-thumping pace, and never let you rest until you hit that final page. Unless you've been in total seclusion your entire life, you probably know...
Gilead and Home are parallel stories – that is, one is not a sequel or prequel of the other, but what happens in one, happens contemporaneously in the other. As satisfying as each novel can be alone, to read both one after the other will be...
Of the debut novels by non-Asian men writing about Asia and Asian characters that I've read thus far this year, three stand out: Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master’s Son, Brandon Jones' All Woman and Springtime, and most recently this title by Virginia attorney Corban Addison. The one...
How wrenchingly ironic that this was the book I happened to be reading when I learned of a sudden death in our family. On the flight, in the car, during the rare moments of aloneness over the last four days, Kazuo Ishiguro's stories that spoke...
Not being much of a mystery aficionado, I admit my grumbling tummy is what initially drew me to this toothsome series. Earlier this year, one of my various listservs announced the July 2012 publication of this very title, and I diligently decided I had better read Vish...
While I can hardly estimate the many, many books I’ve read about the Japanese American experience during World War II, I know few details about what happened to Japanese Canadians. The lone fact that looms is that like their Japanese American counterparts on the West...
For one reason or another, I've taken many years to finally finish a Gail Tsukiyama novel. I've started a few, gotten distracted and put each aside, but this time, after noticing that she was one of the few APA authors at this year's National Book...
I think I must have been a Boricua in a former life. I can't seem to stay away too long from La Isla del Encanto (especially my favorite Isla Culebrita), and I get the fiercest cravings for Bebo's and mofongo (it's all about a full...
Okay, here we go again (see Kabul Beauty School below). We have a (fascinating, allegedly true) story, and then the (disturbing) story about the (now accuracy-challenged) story. Just after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, an award-winning Norwegian journalist emerges from six weeks of following...
In case you didn't recognize the dripping blood over the undead peeking through on the cover, I'll warn you immediately that this is a long novel (656 pages in hardcover; 26+ hours stuck in the ears, judiciously read by Justine Eyre and Paul Michael) about a...
Writing a memoir these days is dangerous business: you can be outed on Oprah as the worst liar, along with your publisher (James Frey, A Million Little Pieces), you can become infamous overnight for breaking the hearts of millions who not only trusted you but even gave...
As I look back on my post for Dreams of Joy's prequel, Shanghai Girls, I was clearly, quickly aware then that Janet Song was not the best choice for narrator. That I was somehow fooled into listening to Song again is surely a 'shame on...
