Repost Archives - Page 2 of 148

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid [in Booklist]

30 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Twice Booker-shortlisted author Mohsin Hamid’s opening sentence immediately recalls one of western literature’s most notable first lines: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Hamid’s transformer here is Anders, “a white...

Top 10 Audiobooks of 2022 [in School Library Journal]

29 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Iranian American, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Persian American, Repost, Thai American, Young Adult Readers

Culled from the 200-plus titles with November 2021 to October 2022 publication dates I’ve reviewed or judged, this is SLJ’s list of top 10 audiobooks. Two picture books, a family history in verse, remade fairy tales, an intertwined podcast, and a haven’t-ever-heard-that-before double recording are...

The Winners by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Booklist]

28 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Fredrik Backman writes with a signature rhythm: a little here, a bit more there, something of this person then that person, a tease about what will happen, warnings about what can’t. The result is a resonant symphony enhanced by the stupendous Marin Ireland, who...

Woven of the World by Katey Howes, illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Woven of the World is a splendid mosaic of a picture book, lyrically written by Katey Howes (Rissy No Kissies) and lushly illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova (Russian Tales). "I listen, as I'm weaving, / to the rhythm of the loom," Howes writes. "I imagine skeins of...

Big Man and the Little Men by Clifford Thompson [in Booklist]

23 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Award-winning memoirist, essayist, and visual artist Clifford Thompson gets full-color graphic in his hand-drawn debut that piercingly bares the behind-the-scenes manipulations of a contentious presidential campaign. April Wells is an Oprah-endorsed Black author recognized by autograph-seeking admirers, but as she sits weeping in her therapist’s...

The Liminal Zone by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

22 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Beyond the countless corpses, Japanese manga auteur Junji Ito’s latest import deftly – and, of course, ever so gruesomely – highlights the liminal spaces between life and death, good and evil, waking and sleep. An engaged couple’s innocent decision to “stop somewhere on a whim” during...

To Strip the Flesh by Oto Toda, translated by Emily Balistrieri [in Booklist]

21 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Oto Toda’s first manga collection translated into English presents four short stories and seven “two-page manga” that range from poignant to gruesome, whimsical to surreal. The titular “To Strip the Flesh” is the most developed, about a YouTube star who butchers freshly-shot game on camera....

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed, translated by Deena Mohamed [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Egyptian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Egyptian artist and writer Deena Mohamed deservedly won the Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at the 2017 Cairo Comix Festival for Shubeik Lubeik, the title explained as “a fairy tale rhyme that means ‘your wish is my command’ in Arabic.” Mohamed herself...

Ghost Music by An Yu [in Booklist]

19 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

A thought-to-be-missing piano prodigy recalls an old friend who “used to quote [Oscar Wilde] a lot. He said to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people only exist.” In An Yu’s follow-up to her lauded debut, Braised Pork (2020), also an atmospheric study in...

Black Paradox by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Four strangers – Taburo, Pii-tan, Baracchi, Maruso – gather for the first time and embark on their “journey to paradise”: “We met on the suicide site Black Paradox, and now we’re each other’s final companions.” The quartet’s reasons for seeking death suggest strange parallels: “So the...

Twelve Percent Dread by Emily McGovern [in Booklist]

17 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Irish, Repost

Irish cartoonist Emily McGovern’s sophomore graphic novel slyly examines screen-dependent twentysomethings stumbling through London life. At 25, Katie still lacks steady employment (and income). She rents a small room with gender-fluid, not-working artist Nas in has-been actor Jeremy’s townhouse. Katie and Nas are ex-best friends who...

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel by Edmund White, adapted by Brian Alessandro and Michael Carroll, illustrated by Igor Karash [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Edmund White, arguably the godfather of gay literature, has published dozens of lauded titles over the last half-century. His autobiographical trilogy of gay identity – A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997) – remains a classic. With this volume, the...

The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi, translated by Emily Balistrieri [in Booklist]

15 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Reminiscent of Groundhog Day-like repetition, each chapter duplicates the same opening paragraphs, ending with the same “gross love language” (but watch for that perspective shift). The intriguing premise is that an unnamed university junior in Kyoto reveals how he “accomplished absolutely nothing” in his first two years....

Why Didn’t You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong [in Booklist]

14 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

“‘Your life is like a telenovela!’” Carmen Rita Wong’s daughter tells her after another complication in Wong’s labyrinthine search for her biological father. Born to Dominican immigrant mother Lupe, Wong and older brother Alex called Lupe’s estranged Chinese immigrant husband, Peter Wong, “Papi.” Lupe was a...

The Universe in You: A Microscopic Journey by Jason Chin [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost

Size matters in 2022 Caldecott Medalist Jason Chin’s The Universe in You, a brilliant companion to his 2020 picture book, Your Place in the Universe. While the latter encouraged young readers to expand their perspectives outward, Chin turns inward here, drawing attention to the microscopic. Welcome to the...

Esther’s Notebooks by Riad Sattouf, translated by Sam Taylor [in Booklist]

11 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Riad Sattouf, renowned for his Arab of the Future autobiographical series, is just as famous in France for Esther’s Notebooks, which began as a weekly newspaper comic spotlighting the observations and experiences of a friend’s daughter. The comics’ popularity inspired best-selling books and an...

A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings by Will Betke-Brunswick [in Booklist]

09 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Will Betke-Brunswick alchemizes their beloved mother’s death into an affecting tribute to emotional resilience and everlasting love. For reasons not quite clear, Betke-Brunswick transforms their immediate quartet (two parents, two kids) into an adorable waddle of penguins, with extended family, friends, and acquaintances presented as...

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki [in Booklist]

08 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, he authorized the removal and imprisonment of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Three photographers – two white and free; one Japanese and imprisoned, relying on contraband...

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The cover boasts a recommendation from global phenom BTS’s leader RM. The PR materials tout its “runaway best-seller” status in its native South Korea, where mental illness remains stigmatized in a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates. As a twentysomething social media director...

She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Multiple shes and cats populate this gratifying, slim novel-in-stories, which arrives with a decades-long history that undoubtedly underscores its timeless appeal. Makoto Shinkai launched his career as one of Japan’s most lauded animation and manga artists with the five-minute film, She and Her Cat (1999), later expanded...

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