Edward P. Jones takes up little space on library shelves. Over the last 20+ years, he's published three books: two story collections and a single novel. Proving the adage 'quality over quantity,' Jones' awards are considerably more extensive, from the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first...
Rome, 128 AD. Even back then architects had a hard time finding work. Poor, poor Lucius – in spite of his fancy Athens training, his designs are considered "half-baked," and he finds himself "blacklisted out of the industry." Instead of sulking, an old friend convinces him...
I realize it's only March, but I'm pretty convinced Mohsin Hamid's latest will be one of my top three favorites for 2013. True, such a pronouncement might seem rash in a year that will see new titles from Nadeem Aslam (The Blind Man's Garden next month), Khaled Hosseini...
If you look at the bottom of this post at "Filed under," you'll see this title is listed as both "Fiction" and "Nonfiction." That's not a mistake – and the explanation is found in the book's "Postscript": "This is a book of fiction based on...
The day I stuck Hunger Games into my ears, Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress Oscar, albeit for her role in a different film, Silver Livings Playbook. I took that as a sign that I should finish the almost 35 hours (every bit admirably read by...
First things first: you need to start with Volume 1 – that's where the fear begins. Volumes 2 and 3 won't offer much reprieve, but readers just might find a few life lessons within. Here's the set-up: Five survivors – all girls – of a tragic school bus accident...
This recent novel-in-translation by the 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, originally published in China in 2004, embodies a labyrinthine web of changing alliances and terrifying vengeance. Set during the Boxer Rebellion, the turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese uprising against Western imperialism, it features pivotal figure Sun Meiniang, who...
How come no one is out there cooking their way through all the recipes of an Asian cookbook and blogging about it, then making a movie with ...
Here's how this mesmerizing book begins ...
If the name Lauren Groff sounds familiar, that might be because her latest title, Arcadia, appears on oh-so-many Best-of-2012 lists. I admit I haven't yet read Arcadia (it's high in my 'must-read' pile), but if I have the option among an author's titles, short stories are usually my first choice. Just...
No other word than epic describes this almost 700-page tome. It's epic in content: six decades of one ordinary man's extraordinary life, told through detailed, rich depictions in swirling black-and-white pen and ink that never seem to still. It's epic in context: 60 years of...
I'm compelled to start backwards with a number: 84. As children's writer (more than 25 times over) Maryann Macdonald explains in her ending "Author's Note," 84% of French children survived the horrors of World War II; in fact, "more children survived in France than in any other...
1958, Little Rock, Arkansas: A year has passed since nine courageous African American students – history's "Little Rock Nine" – integrated Central High School. Just days before the new school year is scheduled to begin that September 15, then-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus closed the city's three high...
How's this for a fabulous first line? "The Chinese know, perhaps better than anyone else, how to eat." Think about any little small town in the U.S. alone ...
First things first: choose the page, not the headset. Carrington MacDuffie's voice is just too old to narrate the inner lives of two teenage sisters – no lilting resonance, no youthful lightness. Might I suggest that the better options for aurally appreciating the extraordinary Francisco X. Stork would be Marcelo...
How I chose this: It actually had nothing to with that shiny 2005 Michael L. Printz Award sticker on the cover. The narrator, Kim Mai Guest, made me do it! Guest, who is apparently 43 (so says her Wiki bio), has one of those eternal voices, always...
Before you read further, you'll need to click here to catch up on the first three volumes of this creepy, obsessive, love-triangle-of sorts. While the three protagonists are tweenaged middle-schoolers, this is definitely not your kiddie manga: abusive language aside, the deviant psychological manipulations are shocking,...
Absolute details surrounding the life of Dave the Potter are limited and uncertain. What remains of his life story almost two centuries later, is scattered with uncertain words, including 'sometime,' 'about,' 'believed to be,' 'might,' 'possibly,' and other such noncommittal qualifiers. The few surviving documents...
A couple of days after filing my feature on Pauline A. Chen, I got on the phone to ask her all the questions I couldn’t find answers to out there in the virtual world of google-ing. True confession moment: I admit I was a wee bit...
"All children, regardless of where they live, should have the opportunity to grow up healthy and lead a productive life," writes Melinda Gates in her foreword to this, the latest "A Global Fund for Children Book." As she shares the wrenching statistic that over seven million...
