You might choose to read Ruth Ozeki's latest novel as another engrossing, original story – because it clearly is. And if you decide to stick the novel in your ears, you'll be thrilled and grateful to know that Ozeki herself reads to you – her...
To get to know our time-traveling bather, start with Volume I. When in Thermae Romae, you need to do as this Roman does and find out how he journeys back and forth between far-spanning centuries and cultures with one thing in common – an obsession with the...
Parents with young children: please take caution in sharing this book with your youngest readers. Although the narrator is "only a 10-year-old boy," what he witnesses, endures, and survives during the titular 'three years and eight months' of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during...
Allow me to start with the simple end: Ru Freeman's On Sal Mal Lane is stupendous. I'll even embellish that verdict and add that it is actually fan-huththa-tastic...
In the same delightful, sequential fun of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – if you do x, then y happens – Brazilian überauthor of more than a hundred books, Ana Maria Machado, puts on a party of epic proportions. "If a few days before your birthday your mother should...
To find out what prompts this eponymous ‘search,’ you’ll need to read the three-part Promise – which reveals how Aang and Zuko are actually family (surprise!), and why family matters so much. “Family is in essence a small nation, and the nation a large family … in...
Okay, since this is the third and last part of this specific Avatar series, let's go back and catch up here ...
For anyone with a child who will soon become an older sibling, this book is IT. And if that lucky elder happens to be a sister-in-waiting, this couldn't be more perfect. "You're in there and I'm out here, outside Mama's belly. I'm waiting for you!" the...
Award-winning Japanese crime fiction writer Natsuo Kirino (Out; Grotesque) contributes to the latest installment of the "The Myths" series, originally published by Britain's Canongate, in which contemporary writers retell myths. Previous volumes have included Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus and...
I refer to myself as a 'recovering Catholic,' and yet I can't stay out of churches for long. I enter as a tourist – admiration for architecture seems to be genetically coded into our extended family – but I linger to breathe deeply, clear the mind temporarily,...
Way back in the day, when I fancied myself at least a part-time potter, I used to think I put some tangible personality into my pieces, especially my dancing tea cups and goofy tea pots. So how delighted I was to discover adorable Pot-san – he...
Although I haven't read any actual reviews, I know from seeing this title included in so many Best-of-2012 lists that the lauded reactions have reflected both quantity and quality. Leave it to me to take a somewhat contrary position: while I went through the whole gamut of...
First word of advice: read the page. Don't bother sticking this novel in your ears: narrator Lyndam Gregory's uneven cadences and random slurring will guarantee you won't get through the 17.5 hours of listening, not to mention his grating attempt at Texas twang might cause...
Created by the illustrator of the mesmerizing, award-winning The Stamp Collector, Nini may be François Thisdale's most personal story – it's directly inspired by his experience about the adoption of his own daughter. "It was a wonderful challenge, having to say intimate things with words and images," he reveals...
Eleanor Brown's eponymous "weird sisters" – introduced with a quote from the good Bard's Macbeth: "I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters" – are perhaps the most erudite characters I've encountered in a long time. Trained by a professor father who speaks to them mostly in...
First things first: make sure to go backwards to catch up with the opening three volumes; this is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Parents, be warned: these kids are going to scare you to distraction. Younger readers, take heed: don't...
Hapa Jordanian American Diana Abu-Jaber established herself with her first three titles – novels Arabian Jazz and Crescent, and memoir The Language of Baklava – as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. She leaves her own origins off the page in this chilling psychological thriller – her first, but most likely not her last....
"On a busy street in the late afternoon, the rain begins ...
Clearly I waited too long to read this book, even though it sat ready on my shelves and on my iPod for years. Before I lament further, you should know that if you choose to go audible, Firdous Bamji doesn't disappoint; he remains one of the...
* STARRED REVIEW Think of Tash Aw's third novel as an ingenious game called "How To Be a Billionaire." A how-to guide is interspersed with 30 rules that also serve as chapters, e.g., "Move to Where the Money Is," "Always Rebound After Each Failure," "Strive To...
