BookDragon

Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan [in Booklist]

13 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, Translation

Perumal Murugan and Aniruddhan Vasudevan reunite after the infamous “success” of Murugan’s translated-into-English debut, One Part Woman, longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Murugan declared himself dead on Facebook after the cult novel was viciously condemned in India, his homeland, and...

Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow [in Booklist]

10 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Making her dual print and audio debut, journalist Kat Chow relies on words to resurrect her late mother – and lost family, by extension – who died of cancer in 2004. Not yet 50, her mother seemed to fulfill the superstition that the women in...

Passport by Sophia Glock [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Few titles need official CIA permission to be published, but Sophia Glock's perceptive graphic novel memoir, Passport, had to go through the "daunting and complicated task" of obtaining the CIA's Publication Review Board approval. Glock's parents were "intelligence officers," an admission they disclosed when they...

Admit This to No One: Collected Stories by Leslie Pietrzyk [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Fourteen exquisite, interlinked stories, set mostly in Washington, D.C., comprise Leslie Pietrzyk's shrewd Admit This to No One. Pietrzyk (Silver Girl) humanizes Beltway insiders (and wannabe outsiders), even as she skewers their hypocrisies, weaknesses, and dreams. In a city where "so, what do you...

Discipline by Dash Shaw [in Booklist]

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

Graphic titles about Quakers aren't exactly a hot topic – or are they? This season brings two Quaker-related comics in quick succession: David Lester's Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and this, Dash Shaw's Discipline, a haunting fictionalization of a teenage Quaker Civil War soldier. Quakers...

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story created by Nikole Hannah-Jones [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In 2019, Pulitzer Prize–winning, MacArthur “Genius” Nikole Hannah-Jones “made a simple pitch” for a special issue of The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the August 1619 arrival of the White Lion, the ship which carried the first captive Africans...

Longing and Other Stories By Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, translated by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy [in Booklist]

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

Nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature before his 1965 death at 79, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (In Black and White, 2018) remains one of Japan’s most important modern writers. These three stories date back a century, yet their universal theme, familial relationships, remains relevantly...

Tunnels by Rutu Modan, translated by Ishai Mishory [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Israeli, Repost, Translation

No one knows what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, the legendary vessel holding Moses' engraved Ten Commandments, but "archeologists, mystics, and adventurers still seek for it in vain," explains Eisner-winning comics creator Rutu Modan in an introductory note to her intriguing graphic title...

No One Else by R. Kikuo Johnson [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hawaiian, Repost

In the 15 years since his 2006 graphic book debut with the award-winning Night Fisher, R. Kikuo Johnson's titles have been precious few even as his detailed art becomes increasingly recognizable on New Yorker covers. His third book, No One Else, might seem spare at...

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training by Adam Stern [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Adam Stern began his Harvard career feeling like an impostor when he was matched into a Harvard Medical School psychiatry residency impeded, he worried, by his upstate-New York medical degree: “I found myself soaring into one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country,...

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura, translated by Stephen Blanford [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...

Living with Viola by Rosena Fung [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

When new kid Livy enters middle school, she doesn’t yet have friends, but she’s not exactly alone. Viola, her identical blue shadow no one else can see, never leaves her, but she voices every poisonous thought, insisting Livy is a “total disaster” doomed to be...

Tales from the Café [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 2] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

22 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories by Gwen E. Kirby [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

An 1892 "emancipated duel" between two women is about to take place as the overseeing (female) doctor drolly remarks, "we will never be emancipated from the stupidity of men." That too-true theme lingers throughout Gwen E. Kirby's remarkable 21-story debut, Shit Cassandra Saw, as women love,...

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

An unexpected airport encounter – with an inevitable flight delay – reunites two university classmates in Antoine Wilson's disturbing yet intriguing Mouth to Mouth. Reminiscent of the cult classic film My Dinner with Andre, Wilson's tête-à-tête exchange takes place in the plush chairs of a...

Girlhood: Teens around the World in Their Own Voices by Masuma Ahuja [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

What began as a series by journalist Masuma Ahuja for The Lily (a product of the Washington Post) expands here into the enlightening Girlhood. Ahuja gathers "colorful and rich" accounts of 30 girls from 27 countries that reveal similar themes: longing for adventures, big dreams, growing pains, and figuring...

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim [in Booklist]

15 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Covering most of the 20th century across the Korean peninsula, Juhea Kim’s debut novel wondrously reveals broken families and surprising alliances created by uncontrollable circumstances. Kim links multiple narrative prongs, effortlessly navigating overlaps and disconnects. Korea remains under Japan’s ruthless occupation in 1917, which lasts...

Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes [in Booklist]

12 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

At 4, Adaugo lost both parents and a best friend to fire. Grandma Bibi left Nigeria to raise her. Eleven years later, Grandma sends Addy from their Bronx apartment to Wilderness Adventures, a California summer camp for disadvantaged city youth, insisting, “Daughter of an eagle”...

The Family Chao By Lan Samantha Chang [in Booklist]

11 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

In her first book in a dozen years, Lan Samantha Chang (All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, 2010) – the first woman and first Asian American director of the storied Iowa Writers’ Workshop – introduces the family Chao who, for 35 years, has been feeding...

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