BookDragon

Talking with: Edward Gauvin … in full [in The Booklist Reader]

31 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Taiwanese American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

A truncated version (edited for printing space) of this interview was published in the July 2019 issue of Booklist. The full interview appears below. With over 300 publishing credits, Edward Gauvin might be the hardest-working French-to-English translator ever. That tenacity has earned him major awards, including the John Dryden...

Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins [in Booklist]

29 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Soneela Nankani instills a just-under-the-surface rage in Kat, a biracial Oakland teen who barely escaped being raped by another student, and whose mother sends her to Boston to finish junior year home-schooled by a family friend’s great-aunt. For Robin Thornton, who’s struggling with his transracial...

The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada, translated by Chris Andrews [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW A broken-down car on a rural Argentinian road brings together two unlikely father-and-teen pairs. Reverend Pearson should have listened to daughter Leni's warnings about their overused jalopy, but its failure lands them in the garage of El Gringo Brauer and his assistant, Tapioca. Pearson...

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein [in Shelf Awareness]

24 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The unnamed narrator is 13, raised by two affectionate parents in a comfortable city home where she has her own room. School, swim and dance lessons, a nearby best friend, the sea a short walk away are the life she's known. And then, one August...

Five More to Go: Shing Yin Khor’s The American Dream? [in The Booklist Reader]

22 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Egyptian American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito by Shing Yin Khor Malaysia-born, LA-dwelling Shing Yin Khor introduces the “two Americas” that were their obsessions growing up: a Los Angeles “full of beautiful people and sunlight and...

Animal Farm: The Graphic Novel by George Orwell, adapted and illustrated by Odyr [in Booklist]

19 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Love ’em or disdain ’em, but classics turned into full-color graphic adaptations are a growing genre. For reluctant readers, the positives enabled by illustrative enhancement to the original text can often outweigh potential negatives. Brazilian graphic novelist Odyr’s “fully authorized” adaptation (in accordance with The Estate...

Five More to Go: Sok-yong Hwang’s At Dusk [in The Booklist Reader]

17 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

At Dusk by Sok-yong Hwang and translated by Sora Kim-Russell 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 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice...

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito by Shing Yin Khor [in Booklist]

15 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Malaysia-born, LA-dwelling Shing Yin Khor introduces the “two Americas” that were their obsessions growing up: a Los Angeles “full of beautiful people and sunlight and open roads” where 10 years of living has also added “lots and lots and lots of traffic,” and a...

Talking with Edward Gauvin [in Booklist]

11 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Children/Picture Books, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Taiwanese American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

With over 300 publishing credits, Edward Gauvin might be the hardest-working French-to-English translator ever. That tenacity has earned him major awards, including the John Dryden Translation Prize (twice), and lauded NEA, PEN America, and Fulbright fellowships. His nimble skills have provided substantial attention to French graphic...

Inhabitation by Teru Miyamoto, translated by Roger K. Thomas [in Booklist]

10 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

The original Japanese title, 春の夢 [Haru no yume], visible in blue on the cover, translates to “spring dream.” “Cherry blossom petals” opens Teru Miyamoto’s latest novel translated into English, which ends (penultimately) with “spring light.” In between, a year goes by that is part dream,...

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...

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