Slightly Behind and to the Left: Four Stories & Three Drabbles by Claire Light
17 Mar, by in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Short Stories
I used to think of myself as a well-rounded reader ...
BookDragon Betrayal Tag
Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu [in Library Journal]
15 Mar, by in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Translation
Although the cover of Bi's novel displays a character for "triple happiness" – ostensibly representing the eponymous three sisters – readers shouldn't expect a happily-ever-after tale. After seven daughters, Party Secretary Wang sees his self-esteem redeemed with the birth of a son. Firstborn Yumi, the de facto...
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (vol. 10) by Eiji Otsuka, art by Housui Yamazaki, translated by Toshifumi Yoshida, edited by Carl Gustav Horn
07 Mar, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation
It's true, it's true once again ...
20th Century Boys (vol. 07) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller
06 Mar, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Even as he is pulling his body – mid-escape! – out of the tiny hole that will release him from the infamous Umihotaru Prison, manga artist Kakuta momentarily gets distracted: "Whenever I run into anything that would make good material for a manga, I get totally absorbed"...
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
27 Feb, by in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Young Adult Readers
Heartbreak and hope are two words that define this 1948 classic by one of South Africa's most important writers. I picked it up recently because it's on our daughter's middle school reading list and while I vaguely remembered some of the plot, I realized I...
Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (vol. 4) by Motoro Mase, translated by John Werry, English adaptation by Kristina Blachere
09 Feb, by in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
This latest volume of Ikigami will be forever associated with the great snowpocalypse of 2010! I pre-ordered it last October, knew it would take awhile (official pub date is actually today), and finally got an email from Amazon last week saying it was being shipped. 'Lo...
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
08 Feb, by in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples
By the time I got to college, the Michael Dorris/Louise Erdrich union was already legendary. Dorris was the founder of Dartmouth's Native American Studies department – might I add, how ironic that took 200+ years after the school was created in 1769 "for the education and...
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 007 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, with the cooperation of Tezuka Productions
07 Feb, by in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Six out of the seven greatest robots in the world are gone, destroyed by the evil force called Pluto. Professor Tenma watches over the body of Atom, who's now been programmed "with as many personalities as there are people on earth" – six billion, in...
The Quest for the Missing Girl by Jiro Taniguchi, translated by Shizuka Shimoyama and Elizabeth Tiernan
19 Jan, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation
Take notice: this is every parent's worst nightmare come true. Without warning, 15-year-old Megumi disappears, seemingly without a trace. Her mother has no idea why she might have left or where she might be ...
The Disappeared by Kim Echlin
31 Dec, by in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Canadian, Fiction, Southeast Asian
One Halloween night when Anne Greves is 16, she goes with older friends to a jazz club and falls in love for the first time in her young life. Serey is an older man, already in his 20s, a musician, who has already lived too...
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, translated by Polly McLean with an introduction by Khaled Hosseini
17 Dec, by in Adult Readers, Afghan, Fiction, Translation
Winner of Le Prix Goncourt 2008, considered France's highest literary honor, this disturbingly powerful slim volume gives voice to the too-many silenced women living "[s]omewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere." Written almost like a dramatic play script complete with what read like stage directions – not...
20th Century Boys (vol. 06) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller
11 Dec, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Strong, no-nonsense, independent Kanna takes center stage again in volume 06 (that's her in color on the cover), in a world shrouded by the choking control of the all-powerful Friends. When bumbling Detective Chono comes looking for drag queen Britney, Kanna know she's got to...
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (vol. 2) by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Akemi Wegmüller
07 Dec, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation
Although the second volume of Ōoku, a recently introduced (in translation) gender-bender series, this latest could definitely read as a stand-alone love story. And quite a unique and memorable one at that! The series' premise is that in an alternative history of premodern Edo Japan, the mysterious...
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 006 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, with the cooperation of Tezuka Productions
24 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Europol's greatest robot, Inspector Gesicht, arrives in Persia on a "hunch" – can robots have hunches? – that he's finally figured out who's behind all the gruesome murders of the world's greatest robots. The trail takes him to Amsterdam where he follows the mysterious Sahad,...
Leaving Yesler by Peter Bacho + Author Interview
20 Nov, by in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers
On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...
The New Sun by Taro Yashima
05 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers
What an amazing, unique, and LUCKY find! First published in 1943 by one of the oldest U.S. publishers, Henry Holt and Company, and in spite of excellent reviews plus a multi-year marketing campaign by both publisher and an early publicist who worked to get the...
A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts by Ying Chang Compestine
04 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers
Even though the back of the galley says Compestine's latest title is for "Ages 12 and up," I'd definitely recommend saving it for much older readers. These are some of the most realistically gruesome tales outside of Halloween, not to mention dealing with more adult...
Monster (vols. 15-18) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe and Hiroki Shirota (vol. 15), Satch Watanabe (vol. 16), Reina Maruyama (vol. 17), Satoki Yamada (vol. 18)
03 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Another warning: The body count is staggering by series' end. While most are bad guys, or anonymous innocent bystanders (who are disturbing enough to see splattered across so many pages), the ONE that breaks your heart ...
Monster (vols. 11-14) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe (vol. 11), Hiroki Shirota (vol. 12), Hirotaka Takiya (vol. 13), Nobu Yamada and Masaru Noma (vol. 14)
02 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Just in case you need a refresher, every volume from 11 until the final 18 now opens with a summary and who's who ...
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (vols. 5-9) by Eiji Otsuka, art by Housui Yamazaki, translated by Toshifumi Yoshida (Taylor Engel and Toshifumi Yoshida, vol. 7), edited by Carl Gustav Horn
28 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation
It's been almost two years since I first discovered this series (vols. 1-4) and they certainly haven't lost any of their chilling zing! I don't remember that they came with a "Parental Advisory | Explicit Content" warning sticker before, but they certainly do now, so...