BookDragon Archives - Page 65 of 230

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies [in Library Journal]

26 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Six Four, the first available-in-English-translation novel from Japanese phenomenon Hideo Yokoyama, requires serious commitments of time and memory space. It runs over 24 audible hours, with so many pertinent players that the print version includes a densely-populated “Cast of Characters.” Dead and missing daughters populate this exquisitely...

13 Terrifying Tales of Diverse Hauntings [in The Booklist Reader]

25 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, British, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian, Indian American, Japanese, Japanese American, Lists, Malaysian, Repost, Short Stories, Singaporean, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

It’s the time of the year to be scared witless – and by choice, egads! Gluttons for fear, unite. And brace yourselves for the following 13 diverse hauntings. The Black Isle by Sandi Tan The protagonist begins her life as Ling, the first-born twin in a well-to-do Shanghai clan. Half...

The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman [in Library Journal]

24 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Collin, the titular “chalk artist,” waits tables since twice dropping out of college. Nina’s a high school English teacher with a degree from Harvard; she’s also the only child of the legendary founder of the phenomenal video game company Arkadia. Opposites attract; romance happens. Thinking she’s...

Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym [in Library Journal]

23 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British Asian, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Kym’s first violin was a paper cutout copied from an encyclopedia; her first actual instrument was a “harsh, factory-made thing” on which she immediately taught herself “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” By her first or second lesson, Kym knew playing the violin "was not simply for...

Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia [in Library Journal]

22 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In sleepy Pine Valley, MN, 18-year-old Hattie Hoffman – beloved daughter, excellent student, best friend, adored girlfriend, talented actress – lies dead. Solving her gruesome murder is up to local sheriff Del Goodman, a family friend who watched Hattie grow up. Her English teacher Peter Lund...

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins [in Library Journal]

20 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

The mega-success of The Girl on the Train guaranteed Paula Hawkins’s sophomore title would be an instant bestseller. And, again, Hawkins provides another head-spinning mystery from which she slyly (mis)leads readers toward startling revelations. Nel Abbot is dead. Weeks earlier, Nel’s daughter Lena’s best friend Katie...

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova [in Library Journal]

19 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost

English instructor Alexandra Boyd arrives exhausted in Sofia, Bulgaria, mistakenly takes someone else's bag during a taxi shuffle, and spends the rest of the book trying to return the bag to its owner. With 18-plus hours to go, of course, the needle-in-the-haystack pursuit proves epic...

Beartown by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Library Journal]

18 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Swedish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s novels tackle serious subjects – isolated aging in A Man Called Ove, death and responsibility in My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, abandonment in Britt-Marie Was Here, dementia in And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer...

Miguel’s Brave Knight: Young Cervantes and His Dream of Don Quixote by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Raul Colón [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Cuban American, European, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction, Poetry, Puerto Rican, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Miguel de Cervantes survived his onerous childhood – his gambler father's imprisonments, his family's constant fleeing from debtors – by losing himself in stories. Inspired by his mother's tales, "dazzling plays," and "storytellers on street corners," Miguel imagines he will someday conjure his own...

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal [in Library Journal]

16 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy) brings together two couldn't-be-more-different Indian Americans for friendship, fun, and more (no, not like that). Harit, a department store salesman, has recently lost his sister; his mother, catatonic with grief, only reacts when Harit dons a sari and channels his dead...

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan [in Library Journal]

13 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lydia and Raj were childhood best friends. Then Carol – who, at 10, was already an established troublemaker – makes Raj a third wheel, at least until she's brutally murdered with her parents. Lydia, in Carol's house that night for a sleepover, survives by hiding...

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig [in Library Journal]

12 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Fifteen years after her debut, The Good Men, Charmaine Craig returns with an epic based on the lives of her Burmese mother and maternal grandparents. A former actor, Craig is the ideal narrator to voice her family's narrative as she guides readers through the...

Three Floors Up by Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston [in Booklist]

11 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Uncategorized

Three residents of a three-floor Tel Aviv apartment building reveal what really goes on behind closed doors. First-floor-domiciled Arnon tells an old army buddy that his young daughter was abused by their neighbor, his marriage is suffering, and the neighbor’s teenage Parisian granddaughter is about...

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts [in Library Journal]

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

Making and selling dorayaki – a pancake-like pastry filled with the eponymous "sweet bean paste" – was not supposed to define Sentaro's life. His someday-dreams of becoming a writer got waylaid by bad decisions that resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Since getting out, he's...

Celebrate Latinx Heritage Month with Cuban and Cuban American Literature [in The Booklist Reader]

09 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Once upon a time, Cuba was an enigmatic, faraway place that conjured up images of I Love Lucy, history lessons about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recurring headlines about Guantánamo. As far as books go, two loomed large: Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, a multi-generational...

Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China by Xiaolu Guo [in Christian Science Monitor]

06 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British Asian, Chinese, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

'Nine Continents' is Chinese author Xiaolu Guo’s resonant memoir about leaving her past Audiences familiar with Chinese-born, British-transplanted Xiaolu Guo’s prolific output know she’s alchemized elements of her own life to produce her fiction and films. Her remote village upbringing and Beijing education inspired Twenty Fragments...

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs [in Library Journal]

05 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Nina Riggs died February 26, 2017. Cassandra Campbell gently narrates most of the work, until Kirby Heyborne takes over to read the afterword by Riggs’s husband, John, and shatters your heart. For a book about fatal diseases – Riggs was diagnosed at 37 with breast cancer;...

No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts [in Library Journal]

04 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

As Sarah Jessica Parker’s inaugural selection for the American Library Association’s Book Club Central, Stephanie Powell Watts’s (We Are Only Taking What We Need) first novel is getting well-earned attention. Initially inspired by The Great Gatsby, Watts wanted to give voice to the mostly silent...

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout [in Library Journal]

03 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr, who gracefully, achingly gave voice to the eponymous protagonist in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, returns here as Lucy but adds to her repertoire Lucy’s family, neighbors, and long-ago acquaintances who call Amgash, IL, home. When Lucy’s mother unexpectedly arrived...

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen [in Library Journal]

02 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The morning after Election Day 2016, Buzzfeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen produced her essay, “This Is How Much America Hates Women.” Women who questioned, challenged, feuded with Trump – especially “nasty woman” Clinton– were degraded and dismissed. This unruly behavior – outside the “boundaries...

BookDragon BookDragon Tag