BookDragon BookDragon Tag

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden [in Christian Science Monitor]

19 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Korean, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost

'The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot' presents a riveting slice of North Korean history Writing one of the most difficult-to-read books ever – Escape from Camp 14 (2012), about a young man’s harrowing odyssey from North Korea where he was bred as a labor camp slave...

Peace is an Offering by Annette LeBox, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin

18 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Poetry

"Peace is an offering. / A muffin or a peach" proffered from one sibling to another who sits in bed, casted and bandaged, missing the fun adventures happening just outside his window. Peace is a trip to the beach, enjoying ice cream under an oversized striped...

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Laura Ling and Lisa Ling

17 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean

Headlines in 2009 put Laura Ling and Euna Lee on screens and print around the world. 'American journalists held captive in North Korea' was certainly not a common occurrence. While filming footage for a documentary on North Korean defectors in March 2009, three colleagues from...

Cardfight!! Vanguard (vols. 3-4) by Akira Itou, translated by Vertical, Inc.

13 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Translation

Welcome back to the massive media franchise that is Cardfight!! Vanguard, which includes a multi-season anime series, official trading card game (each manga volume continues to be packaged with a limited edition playing card), and live-action film. In spite of a mostly-digital playing field these...

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim

12 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean

Over a decade has passed since a Suki Kim title landed on my shelves. That she's been repeatedly crossing the "immutable border" into North Korea since 2002 – just months after George W. Bush dubbed the closed country as one of the "axis of evil"...

Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson, illustrated by Sydney Smith

10 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Canadian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction

Spring is coming! Start sharing the joy of rebirth – and all the small surprises that the new warmth brings – with this wordless, magical book from our northern neighbors. Here, even weeds can be the most thoughtful, transformative of gifts.  Daddy and daughter – we'll call her Little Red...

Take This Man: A Memoir by Brando Skyhorse

09 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction

Well, of course, the year I'm mostly out of DC, Brando Skyhorse is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University. Not that I have any affiliation there now (only a leftover GWU ID from when I took a couple of classes 3.5 decades...

A Bride’s Story (vol. 6) by Kaoru Mori, translated by William Flanagan

06 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Central Asian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

This thus-far six-parter has to be the most visually exquisite series in a long, long time. Every panel is an exercise in meticulously rendered details – whether fabric textures, the subtlest of facial expressions, fur moving in the wind, a hair out of place, a cloud...

Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee – A Look Inside North Korea by Jang Jin-Sung, translated by Shirley Lee

05 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean, Translation

While the majority of the nonfiction books about North Korea have focused on the extreme deprivation and unbearable suffering of the common citizen – for example, labor camps and slave children born to prisoners in Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14, numerous "ordinary lives" in Barbara Demick's...

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro [in Christian Science Monitor]

03 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

The Buried Giant – the much anticipated seventh novel of Kazuo Ishiguro – does not disappoint The first question readers will most likely be asking about Kazuo Ishiguro’s seventh novel, The Buried Giant, will be, “Is it worth the decade-long wait?” The short answer is a...

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

01 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

These days, too many young folks know little of life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century – in the 1990s, that is – something called 'zines' gave voice to angry young voices ...

With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney

28 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers

On the morning of her 12th birthday, Dawnie Rae Johnson – named for the new day rising when she was born – wakes to find a surprise under her pillow: a diary made by her 8-year-old brother Goober. The year will turn out to be crucial, not...

My Neighbor Seki [Tonari no Seki-Kun] (vol. 1) by Takuma Morishige, translated by Yoshito Hinton

27 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Okay, so parents might not be so thrilled about dealing with classroom distractions, but when this much imagination is involved, sometimes tossing rules and regulations aside can be very conducive to learning – in less traditional ways. Not that I'm encouraging this sort of behavior, ahem! Meet Seki....

Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London by Mohsin Hamid [in Christian Science Monitor]

26 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Pakistani, Repost, South Asian

'Civilization and its Discontents' highlights the intertwined Pakistani, British, and American roots of Mohsin Hamid Thanks to Haruki Murakami, we won't have to wait as long for Mohsin Hamid’s future novels. Hamid's acclaimed first two, Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, took seven years each. His...

Author Interview: Thrity Umrigar [in Bloom]

25 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

I was bad. I couldn’t keep up with my chaotic new year and kept missing deadlines. Thrity Umrigar got so fed up, she basically said, “This happens now, or not at all.” So you better believe I got my act together long enough for one...

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

24 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction

How surprised was I to hear earlier this month that Oprah's latest Book Club 2.0 pick just happened to be on my iPod! I suppose the fact that I always have no fewer than a couple dozen books on my phone at all times makes...

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar + Author Profile [in Bloom]

23 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Author Interview/Profile, Black/African American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Thrity Umrigar: “It’s a good time to be a writer” Perhaps I shouldn’t admit so blatantly to literary-personality preferences, but I must confess here: Thrity Umrigar is my very favorite person to run into at (dreaded) literary conferences. I know from experience how irreverently entertaining she can...

I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina 1865 by Joyce Hansen

22 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers

For Patsy, literacy began "as a joke." On the Davis Plantation in South Carolina in the 1860s, Mistress Davis’ niece Annie told her aunt, "'We are only playing at school ...

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

21 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction

It's on top of all the bestseller lists on both sides of the Pond and far beyond, as well. You've seen it in every bookshop window. It's incessantly compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. Dreamworks already claimed it for the big screen last year even before it hit...

Prophecy (vols. 1-2) by Tetsuya Tsutsui, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

20 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

His user name is "paperboy_1878." He rents booths at various Pit Boy internet café branches. He wears a newspaper mask that covers his whole head and a t-shirt with a smart phone screen. He posts video warnings. And then he carries out his own vigilante...