Genre Archives - Page 45 of 233

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali [in Booklist]

04 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Adroitly adapting her deep, mellifluous voice across continents, decades, ages, and genders, Mozhan Marnò flawlessly embodies Marjan Kamali’s (Together Tea, 2013) stupendous sophomore title about young lovers torn apart by class, politics, and history during the violent tumult of 1950s Iran. A Tehran stationery...

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung [in Booklist]

01 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Repost

“I suppose I should warn you that I tell a story like a woman: looping into myself, interrupting,” announces Catherine Chung’s protagonist Katherine. “Things have never seemed straightforward to me; the path has never been clear.” As the child of a WWII veteran father and...

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell [in Booklist]

31 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Not far from the Zambezi River’s Victoria Falls, a fin-de-siècle colonial settlement called the Old Drift was the site of a loosely described “hotel,” where a colliding incident in 1904 combines the fates of three families originally Italian, British, would-be-Zambian – for a century-plus...

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead [in Booklist]

30 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prized, National Book Awarded for The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead moves a century-plus forward to 1960s Florida, where having darker skin remains crime enough (the contemporary irony looms). J.D. Jackson proceeds deliberately, his narration measured and nuanced, avoiding over-performing through even the most...

Beijing Payback by Daniel Nieh [in Booklist]

29 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW With a mere handful of solo credits, Ewan Chung is a relative newbie to audiobooks, but his remarkable versatility proves the ideal fit to showcase Daniel Nieh’s outstanding thriller. The DC-born Chung is a talented polyglot, fluent in Mandarin (he translated the DVD audio...

More to the Story by Hena Khan [in Booklist]

28 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian American

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women gets a diverse contemporary makeover in Hena Khan’s (Amina’s Voice) latest middle-grade novel, relocated to Atlanta, featuring the Muslim Pakistani American Mirza family’s four daughters – Maryam, Jameela, Bisma, and Aleeza – with their father working in Abu Dhabi, and...

Count Me In by Varsha Bajaj [in Booklist]

27 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Indian African, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian American

Karina and Chris are next-door neighbors and attend the same school, but they “have [their] own paths”: Karina – ebulliently voiced by Priya Ayyar, who shares her character’s Indian American ancestry – is drawn to photography and books; Chris – earnestly narrated by Christopher Gebauer...

Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Few historical tragedies compare to the hell-on-earth endured by the Japanese military’s so-called “comfort women,” a grossly abused term for mostly young girls kidnapped during WWII into sexual slavery. For Lee Ok-sun, one of Korea’s few survivors, her “service” included 30–40 men daily in...

Knowing a Young Brown Person Might Listen and Feel Less Alone: The Narrative Life of Priya Ayyar [in The Booklist Reader]

24 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Although audiobooks are just part of Priya Ayyar’s acting career, demand for her narrative talents shows no signs of slowing down. Recent highlights from Ayyar’s audio career are the focus of the “Now Hear This” column in the November 1 issue of Booklist, but Ayyar...

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi [in Booklist]

23 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW “I used to be a racist most of the time,” insists Ibram X. Kendi, a surprising revelation from 2016’s winner for the National Book Award for Nonfiction (Stamped from the Beginning). “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist,’” he explains. “It is ‘antiracist’...

Queen of Bones by Teresa Dovalpage [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

The retired-detective-turned-Santería-priest Padrino gets a second chance to play savior in Teresa Dovalpage's continuing Havana Mystery series. She mines familiar territory from book one, Death Comes in Through the Kitchen (2018), using another bathroom murder to intertwine the lives of U.S. visitors with Cuban locals. Two decades...

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino, translated by Sam Bett [in Booklist]

21 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Best known for his brainy death-and-destruction mystery series featuring Detective Galileo and Detective Kaga, who have successfully arrived Stateside from Japan, Keigo Higashino reveals a softer side to his prolific imagination here. The Namiya General Store has been closed for decades, but three delinquent young men...

Kitchen Curse: Stories by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker, Tiffany Tsao, Maggie Tiojakin, and Benedict Anderson [in Library Journal]

18 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indonesian, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Eka Kurniawan, the first Man Booker International Prize-nominated Indonesian writer (he was long-listed in 2016 for Man Tiger), makes his collection-in-English debut, with the majority of the 16 stories translated by Annie Tucker, his PEN/Heim Translation Fund-awarded Beauty Is a Wound translator; three of the...

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian [in Booklist]

17 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Persian American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW It’s 1989 and AIDS is a death warrant, but first love knows no limits. Despite a teeny little blip when Lauren Ambrose mispronounces “Audre Lorde,” the cast of Abdi Nazemian’s latest presents in near-perfect pitch. Ambrose is fashion-forward creative genius Judy (named after Garland),...

Tiny Feet Between the Mountains by Hanna Cha [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

Being a child in the adult world presents all sorts of challenges, but size is perhaps the most obvious, immediate hurdle. For young Soe-In, the "once upon a time"-hero in Hanna Cha's delightful debut picture book, Tiny Feet Between the Mountains, her smallness even determined...

Silence of the Chagos by Shenaz Patel, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman [in Booklist]

15 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Indian African, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Forced expulsions have long been part of man’s history, motivated by politics, prejudice, geography, human-made disasters, and natural forces. Virtually unknown is the full-scale eviction of the Chagossians, a Creole-speaking native ethnic group with African and Asian ancestry, from Diego Garcia, the largest island in...

Parade: A Folktale by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Allison Markin Powell [in Booklist]

14 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The presentation is exquisite: slightly smaller than a single hand, Hiromi Kawakami’s spare text is interrupted by Takako Yoshitomi’s delightful two-color illustrations of mostly geometric shapes with anthropomorphized additions. Subtitled “A Folktale,” these less-than-100 pages easily stand alone as a parable about memory, mythic...

There’s Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon [in Booklist]

11 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Vikas Adam has deservedly earned the title of Sandhya Menon’s male voice of choice, assuming hero status in all her titles thus far. He affably returns here as Ashish, the younger brother of Rishi from When Dimple Met Rishi (2017), and he’s about to get a Bollywood-worthy romance of...

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi [in Booklist]

10 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

Both the title and characters Gretel and Hansel might lead readers to make assumptions about Oyeyemi’s latest. Fairy tales fueled her Boy, Snow, Bird and Mr. Fox, and familiarly fantastical places, creatures, and themes abound here, too, although readers will also notice the easy weaving...

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay [in Booklist]

09 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Until his cousin Jun was murdered, Jay thought little of his Filipino heritage. A Michigan senior headed to university in the fall, Jay’s been on auto-pilot for most of his 17 years. Similar in age, Jun and Jay stayed avid pen pals after childhood...

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