Booklist Archives - Page 22 of 39

Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda, translated by Maruxa Relaño [in Booklist]

27 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Set in 1920s Catalonia, the permeability of social classes – upstairs/downstairs style – gets played out in a Spanish seaside villa. The gardener, who has outlasted multiple “masters” over decades, narrates “six summers and one terrible winter” from when Barcelona almost-newlyweds take possession until the...

Frankly in Love by David Yoon [in Booklist]

25 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Frank Li witnessed his older sister be perfect: she got into Harvard, then Harvard Law, then graduated into an enviably lucrative career. For their Korean immigrant parents, Hanna could do no wrong – until she did: She fell in love with a non-Korean ...

Reproduction by Ian Williams [in Booklist]

21 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Everything here sounds off-kilter – on purpose. Discomfort pervades the reading, whether conversations are awkwardly not-quite-synched between speakers, or sentences spoken in an (unnamed) Caribbean island patois are made purposefully wooden and German words and phrases become virtually unintelligible. That jagged performance, however, seems integral...

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby [in Booklist]

20 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Laura Ruby’s (Bone Gap, 2015) narrator – her name eventually revealed as Pearl – is dead. Pearl’s primary object of attention is not: Frankie, who’s 14 in 1941, is a “half orphan” relegated to a Chicago orphanage with her siblings by their living Italian immigrant father,...

The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai [in Booklist]

18 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Vietnamese

A granddaughter and her grandmother take turns narrating: “If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.” What emerges is the ominous history of 20th-century Việt Nam told through four generations of a single family. As...

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang [in Booklist]

17 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Already an international bestseller, television scriptwriter Cho Nam-Joo’s debut novel has been credited with helping to “launch Korea’s new feminist movement.” The fact that gender inequity is insidiously pervasive throughout the world will guarantee that this tale has immediate resonance, and its smoothly accessible,...

The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah [in Booklist]

13 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Palestinian American, Repost

Afaf Rahman, the principal of suburban Chicago’s Nurrideen School for Girls, takes a few minutes alone for prayers, until gunshots shatter her peace. Palestinian American Sahar Mustafah’s first novel opens with the terror of a school shooter and concludes with Afaf’s eventual return to her...

Five More to Go: Kim Sagwa’s b, Book, and Me [in The Booklist Reader]

12 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Japanese, Korean, Lists, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer...

Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Young-Ha Kim [in Booklist]

11 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Short Stories, Translation

Author Young-Ha Kim, translator Krys Lee (herself an award-winning writer; Drifting House), and actor David Shih repeat the triumvirate success of Kim’s I Hear Your Voice to deliver his latest collection of four chilling, engrossing stories. The eponymous, novella-length “Diary of a Murderer” – the best of an...

Dreams from Many Rivers: A Hispanic History of the United States Told in Poems by Margarita Engle [in Booklist]

07 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Biography, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Young Adult Readers

These United States are not quite a quarter-millennium old, but “Hispanic history in regions that are now called the United States spans more than five centuries,” Margarita Engle reminds in her essential opening historical note. With the island’s 15th-century colonization, “the history of the modern...

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer [in Booklist]

05 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Peter Berkrot is not a Japanese speaker – and somehow, he went into the recording studio without pronunciation guidance, an aural detail that unfortunately mars an otherwise stellar presentation of Christian Kiefer’s (Infinite Tides) stunning, slim third novel. With his folksy, inviting delivery, Berkrot magnetically lures...

A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian [in Booklist]

03 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

What began as a family affair – Jeed Saddy made her aural debut with her sister-in-law’s memoir, First Comes Marriage – has turned into a promising bookish career: in just a few months, Saddy’s already onto her third narrating credit. Her versatile characterizations highlight the intertwined...

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky [in Booklist]

02 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Pakistani, Repost

Satire? Irony? A nine-hour extended joke? Certainly Marcy Dermansky’s latest is rife with almost every stereotype/cliché – the only one she thankfully avoids is the brown man as terrorist. That said, for those who survive the first eight hours and 40 minutes, the final poolside scene...

For Black Girls Like Me by Mariama Lockington [in Booklist]

01 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Navigating ages, gender, backgrounds, and race, Imani Parks encompasses the peripatetic Kirkland family of four who relocate from Baltimore to Albuquerque. As bonded as the quartet – two musician parents, teen daughter Eve, and tween daughter Keda – might seem to the outside world, one...

Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, translated by Hanna Strömberg [in Booklist]

31 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Memoir, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom opens with definitions of two seemingly unrelated, yet brilliantly paired, words: palimpsest, “a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing,” and adoption, “the act of legally taking a child to be taken...

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong [in Booklist]

30 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Korean American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Title aside, nothing is minor about Cathy Park Hong’s taut, sharp collection. The award-winning poet’s prose debut will elicit comparisons to contemporary race-conscious luminaries – think Claudine Rankine, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Roxane Gay – but Hong’s singular voice expresses both reclamation and declaration: “For...

Five More to Go: Paul Yoon’s Run Me to Earth [in The Booklist Reader]

29 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Audio, British, Cambodian, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, European, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Sri Lankan American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Paul Yoon’s (The Mountain, 2017) second novel unfolds decades of unrelenting loss and meaningless brutality, balanced – somehow – by exquisite kindness and unbreakable bonds. In war-torn Laos, a country brutalized by...

The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-jung, translated with an introduction and notes by Heinz Insu Fenkl [in Booklist]

28 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

The warning comes early: “New readers are advised that this introduction makes certain details of the plot explicit.” For audiences adamant about discovering narratives autonomously, skipping the first track is recommended – but only with the intention of returning to the beginning upon book’s end. Professor/translator/writer...

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok [in Booklist]

27 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Repost

Just before Grandma died in Amsterdam, Sylvie temporarily rejoined the Tan family to say goodbye. Grandma had been living with the Tans: Ma’s cousin Helena, husband Willem, their son Lukas – for decades. For her first nine years, Sylvie, too, had been the Tans’ responsibility,...

Where We Come From by Oscar Cásares [in Booklist]

26 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

With Spanish names, phrases, and whole sentences appearing every few pages, bilingual narrator Yaeli Arizmendi (the voice of Laura Esquivel’s Spanish editions) instinctively settles into Oscar Cásares’s (Amigoland) latest, in which he returns to his Tex-Mex border hometown of Brownsville. Almost-septuagenarian Nina’s life is not her...

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