Booklist Online Archives - Page 8 of 9

Marie Curie: A Life of Discovery by Alice Milani, translated by Kerstin Schwandt [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Milani’s graphic biography of the iconic Marie Curie, soon-to-be Nobel winner Ernest Rutherford explains the theory of transmutation in less than a dozen panels to Marie Curie’s “interested in science” daughter, Irène – so young, she calls it “tramputation.” That transparent accessibility repeats throughout,...

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams [in Booklist]

27 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Candice Carty-Williams and Shvorne Marks are quite the dynamic duo: a debut novelist gets paired with a first-time narrator for spectacular results. Hailed (rather lazily) as the black Bridget Jones, Queenie decidedly deserves center-stage without expedient comparisons. As a Jamaican British 25-year-old Londoner, Queenie’s...

Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova [in Booklist]

26 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Russian, Russian American

Debut novelist Maria Kuznetsova gets paired with a first-time narrator, and the collaboration is – well, ideal. Like Kuznetsova’s titular heroine Oksana, Anna Kyra Hooton is a Russian American immigrant, arriving in the U.S. at 10, three years older than 7-year-old Oksana who moves from...

Song of Arirang by Kim San and Nym Wales, edited by George O. Totten and Dongyoun Hwang [in Booklist]

09 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Korean, Nonfiction, Repost

He’s had almost two dozen names, yet his story was forgotten for 40 years. More recently, despite their violent 20th-century histories, four countries – China, Japan, and his native Korea, now cleaved into North and South – all claim him as a local hero. Perhaps best...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

The eerie chill factor proves unrelenting throughout Sophie Mackintosh’s 2018 debut, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and is further intensified by three formidable narrators who take turns revealing the dissolution of an isolated, splintered family. Grace, Lia, and Sky are three daughters – their...

Star by Yukio Mishima, translated by Sam Bett [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Revered writer of dozens of novels, plays, short stories, and essays, Yukio Mishima was an iconic master of the performative existence. A literary sensation by 24 for Confessions of a Mask (1949), a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman about a young homosexual’s hidden identity, fame would be Mishima’s...

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates [in Booklist]

05 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Prodigious Joyce Carol Oates’ latest novel reads rather like a mash-up of The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, even A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In 2039, in the Reconstituted North American States, 17-year-old Adriane Strohl is “the spiky-haired girl with the big glistening...

All That Is Left Is All That Matters by Mark Slouka [in Booklist]

22 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

James Anderson Foster narrates 13 of 15 stories in Slouka’s newest collection, his second in two decades after his 1998 short-fiction debut, Lost Lake. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, sons and mothers, men and animals figure prominently here. Foster effortlessly embodies these diverse characters,...

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]

21 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Yukiko Motoya – who’s won major literary awards in her native Japan – makes her English-language debut (Anglophone-enabled by Asa Yoneda) with a label-defying, eyebrow-raising, beguilingly entertaining collection. Six narrators – Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Paul Michael Garcia, Tanya Eby, and Kate Mulligan...

Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

18 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Because she was the seventh daughter, Princess Bari – whose name means “abandoned” – was discarded as a baby only to return in triumph to save the world. Like her mythic Korean namesake, Bari is the unwanted seventh girl in a house desperate for sons....

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing [The Carls, Book 1] by Hank Green [in Booklist]

20 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Neither Green brother is untouched by fame. The elder is that John Green. Hank, famous already as half of YouTube’s multimillion-subscribed “Vlogbrothers,” ascends the bestsellers’ platform with this novel debut, in which he inarguably writes what he knows: social-media-fueled fame. Audio seems an ideal format for Green’s media-savvy...

The Windfall [audio] by Diksha Basu [in Booklist]

09 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Mr. Jha, who not so long ago comfortably supported his family on a monthly salary equivalent to $200, sells his website for $20 million. That titular windfall transforms his life, along with those of his family and friends. Money – who has it, how it’s...

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

20 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

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

17 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar [in Booklist]

29 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Chameleonic narrator Sneha Mathan amplifies Thrity Umrigar’s already spectacular new novel, the long-awaited sequel to the best-selling The Space Between Us (2005). While Umrigar focused on the complicated relationship between employer Sera and servant Bhima in Space, Secrets Between Us shifts from Mumbai’s haves...

You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld [in Booklist]

26 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

That Curtis Sittenfeld bookends her first short story collection with references to Trump seems to signal that bad behavior – dishonesty, betrayal, resentment, even hatred – will be plentiful in between. The agitation she immediately incites with the opening story, “Gender Studies,” about a recently...

Printed in Beirut by Jabbour Douaihy, translated by Paula Haydar [in Booklist]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Lebanese, Middle Eastern, Repost, Translation

Farid Abu Shaar, a young man earnestly convinced of his own (unproven) literary genius, seeks a publisher for his red-notebook manuscript, The Book to Come. His publication attempts with Beirut’s publishing houses prove futile: “No one reads,” one publisher insists. Although his Karam Brothers Press...

Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba by Sarah Rainsford [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Two timely books titled Our Woman in Havana hit shelves this year: a memoir by U.S. diplomat Vicki Huddleston and this account by former BBC Cuba correspondent (2011-2014) Rainsford, who was “guided by the writing of another English visitor seduced by Havana,” novelist Graham Greene. A...

Japanese Folktales: Classic Stories from Japan’s Enchanted Past by Yei Theodora Ozaki, foreword by Lucy Fraser [in Booklist]

19 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

Nasty neighbors, otherworldly children, and malevolent monsters populate some of the 22 traditional Japanese folktales in Ozaki’s century-old collection, reissued with an introduction by Australian academic Lucy Fraser. In her 1903 preface, Ozaki – whose father was Japanese, mother, English – that her “stories are not...

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