BookDragon Archives - Page 53 of 230

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Thwaites

26 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Jewish, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Spanish novelist Arturo Iturbe transforms real-life Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus into 14-year-old Edita Adler, forcibly sent to Auschwitz with her parents. She’s assigned to Block 31, a wooden hut where the children of the ignominiously named “family camp” are sent to be “entertained” while parents...

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, read by Dion Graham [in The Booklist Reader]

21 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and read by Dion Graham George Washington Black – called "Wash" for short – is an enslaved 10- or 11-year-old (he "cannot say for certain") on Faith Plantation in 1830s Barbados. He is first owned by one brother, then stolen by another....

New Kids on the Audio Block | Book ’Em Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing’s Audacious Trio [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Book ’Em Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing’s Audacious Trio Imagine choosing three first-time narrators to voice the next novel from a National Book Award winner. Takes faith! Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones won the 2011 NBA for fiction; six years later, she won her second NBA for...

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The deeply empathetic, decisively chameleonic Dion Graham proves himself to be an ideal aural collaborator for Esi Edugyan’s (Half-Blood Blues, 2012) stupendous novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and Man Booker Prize. George Washington Black, called “Wash,” is a young slave on Faith Plantation...

Bad Friends by Ancco, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

17 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Only the back, front, and inside covers show color here, in muted pastels. Within are black-and-white panels so disturbing and brutal that any further vibrancy might prove overwhelming. And yet, despite the horrifying, can’t-turn-away abuse, Korean comics creator Ancco manages to infuse her extraordinary...

Cicada by Shaun Tan [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Australian, Australian Asian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In 2011, author/artist/filmmaker Shaun Tan won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and received an Oscar for the animated adaptation of his book The Lost Thing. What initially brought him to international acclaim was the publication of The Arrival in 2006 (2007 in the U.S.). A...

The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller

11 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers

In one of those “dorky old composition notebooks,” seventh-grader Natalie is “supposed to observe something that interests us and spend all year applying the scientific process to our capital-Q Question.” While she struggles to formulate that ideal Q, Natalie fills the pages with much more...

Not Our Kind by Kitty Zeldis [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Class, gender, and religious differences in post-WWII Manhattan drive this debut novel from the pseudonymous Zeldis in which two worlds literally collide in the opening chapter. Caught in a fender bender, Eleanor Moskowitz and Patricia Bellamy emerge from their respective taxis in a rare chance...

The Labyrinth of the Spirits [The Cemetery of Forgotten Books finale] by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves [in Booklist]

05 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Spanish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Casting a male narrator for a female-protagonist-driven novel might seem initially ill-fitting, but Daniel Weyman, who also narrated Zafón’s Marina (2015), makes sure Alicia Gris gets well heard in the stupendous, well-worth-the-long-wait finale of Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books tetralogy plus short story. Anglicized by...

Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa’s Deluge: Two Novellas of Japan’s 3/11 Disaster by Kimura Yūsuke, translated by Doug Slaymaker [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Kimura Yūsuke makes his Anglophoned debut with two haunting novellas that are slight in length yet dense with meaning, enhancing the growing genre of post-3/11 literature in response to the catastrophic March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Translator Doug Slaymaker augments...

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, read by Fenella Woolgar [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Canadian, European, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese, Korean American, Lists, Repost

Transcription by Kate Atkinson and read by Fenella Woolgar Actress Fenella Woolgar and author Kate Atkinson have shared many creatively fruitful unions. Seasoned fans will recognize Woolgar from the 2011 BBC screen adaptation of Atkinson’s Case Histories, in which she played the sister of protagonist Jackson Brodie’s lover....

Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, adapted by Ilan Stavans, illustrated by Roberto Weil [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

Ilan Stavans and Roberto Weil, whose last collaboration, Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008), loosely contemporized Frank Capra’s similarly named, iconic film, use a comparable time-bending, pop-culturizing, humor-inducing graphic technique to adapt Cervantes’ 17th-century tome. Stavans compresses the original 125 chapters into just 30, remaining generally faithful to...

We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices: Words and Images of Hope edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Poetry, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Inspired by their 7-year-old great-niece's distress over the 2016 elections, Just Us Books’ co-founders Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson created We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices as a contemporary antidote for fear. Recalling their dangerous experiences growing up in the 1950s and...

The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding [in Library Journal]

28 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Without glossing over more difficult subjects – fat shaming, homophobia, parental (non)acceptance, matters of consent – Amy Spalding's (The New Guy [and Other Senior Distractions]) latest is a charming contemporary love story, complete with blogs, social media, rating apps, and more. For the summer before senior...

This Is Cuba: An American Journalist under Castro’s Shadow by David Ariosto [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For a self-described “young American photojournalist who then boasted only pidgin Spanish,” David Ariosto’s arrival in Havana in 2009 on assignment for CNN was “the chance of a lifetime.” Determined to be “somehow different from those pink-faced tourists,” he’s quickly reduced to an epithet, yuma – street...

The Plotters by Un-su Kim, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Reseng, 32, has been a professional assassin for 15 years, minus a short factory-worker stint at 22, while playing house with the love of his life. That he’s survived this long – never mind his risky career, he’s also a two-pack-a-day smoker with a...

Transcription by Kate Atkinson [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW So transforming was Fenella Woolgar’s performance of Kate Atkinson’s stupendous Life after Life (2013), the immediate reaction here is joyful relief at hearing Woolgar take aural control of another Atkinson novel. From an inexperienced, untested teenager embarking on her first job, in 1940, to...

Under the Same Sky by Britta Teckentrup [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Britta Teckentrup presents a wide, expansive world in Under the Same Sky. All the many species – lions, penguins, wolves, domestic cats – are connected by "the same love," "the same games," and "the same songs." Even forest bears and tropic flamingos "face the same storms"...

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma [in Booklist]

21 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The story seems familiarly simple. A man and a woman fall in love, but their happy-ever-after is fraught with obstacles. Yet nothing is quite that straightforward in Chigozie Obioma’s (The Fishermen, 2015) latest, starting with his narrator, who happens to be a 700-year-old chi...

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum [in Booklist]

20 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

“No matter how many books you’ve read, no one has ever told you a story like this one.” The prologue’s emphathic statement is not exactly accurate. Tara Westover’s Educated (2018) and Anouk Markovits’ I Am Forbidden (2012) feature women trapped by religion and culture who...

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