"To start with, look at all the books." Thus opens Jeffrey Eugenides third and latest novel with another memorable first-line zinger – most definitely three for three. Alas, what follows that fabulous start isn't nearly quite as zingy. So far, Eugenides is averaging a new title about...
A shape-shifting teapot which releases a mischievous tanuki when heated. A fatherless hapa Japanese American boy headed to Japan to stay with his mother's father whom he barely knows. Two stories, two cultures, two vastly different worlds, all intertwine to create a fantastical adventure in Ryan Inzana's surprising,...
How silly of me for waiting so long to read this, the venerable Anita Desai's latest, when I've had the galley for almost a year (it pubbed last December). Instead, I've slogged through too many disappointing, tedious, nightmare-inducing titles when I could have been celebrating...
In spite of its heft (500+ pages, or 20.5 hours if you let the perfectly-paced John Lee read to you), not much really happens in The Museum of Innocence. I'm adding here the requisite spoiler alert, but I'm fairly certain that most readers will guess the outcome...
April is National Poetry Month. Every once in a long while, even a poetry-dullard like me has a poetic WOW!-moment. Certainly I'm not alone ...
Here's a rather unique literary coincidence: Julia Alvarez's Finding Miracles ends with an uncle missing the grandmother's wedding because of hemorrhoid surgery. Return to Sender begins with the mention of another uncle (in a totally unrelated story) suffering through a hemorrhoid operation. Try and find two...
First things first: Let's try to clear up some of the oxymoronic labels. Although this title is classified as a novel written by Dave Eggers (he of bad boy-genius fame for his debut, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and, of course, the mini-empire that is McSweeney's),...
Escape from Camp 14 is the most devastating book I have ever read. Perhaps the resilience of youth got me through the aftermath of learning about slavery, the Holocaust, even Iris Chang’s now-classic The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust, the title I previously held...
Sandwiched between sister Kate and brother Nate, Milly Kaufman is the only adopted child of their Jewish father and Mormon mother. She began life with the name Milagros (as in 'miracles'), until she was claimed as an infant by parents working with the Peace Corps...
I've been working through numerous 'should-have-read-earlier'-titles lately, and Salman Rushdie's books always loom large as objects of fascination. After four attempts to read his The Enchantress of Florence (twice on the page, twice stuck in the ears narrated by Firdous Bamji whose recordings can make me choose a book...
After two books on the horrors of North Korea, two memoirs about the Palestinian occupation, another about a Lost Boy of Sudan, still another highlighting Hindu/Muslim massacres in Kashmir – all one after the other (what was I thinking??!!) – I picked up Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief,...
Lila, her family, their animals are all too hot. Their Kenyan village has not had rain for far too long. The well has dried up, and the crops are failing. "'Without water there can be no life,'" Lila overhears her mother's worry. Then her grandfather...
Culling together every spare moment I had over a single day (amazing how much more enlightening mindless chores, endless driving, and running can be with a book stuck in your ears!), I managed to listen to all 9.5 hours of Lorraine Toussaint's honeyed narration of...
This is a book I bought twice: first to stick in my ears on long runs (chillingly read by a Korean American triumvirate of Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, and James Kyson Lee), and when I couldn't soak in the story quickly enough, I ordered...
For most of us in the west, our filtered news of the Middle East is, more often than not, rife with contention, violence, and tragedy. Laughter would certainly be a rare reaction to the decades-long Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and yet Palestinian author Suad Amiry manages to...
The latest from Studio Ghibli, powered by the creative genius of legendary Hayao Miyazaki, introduces brave Arrietty, her auburn tresses pulled up by a tiny orange clothespin, ready to explore and conquer the "bean" world. Released by Disney in the U.S. last month, the animated...
Flesh, a turn-of-the-20th-century debut novel set mostly in Hanoi, begins and ends with gruesome beheadings. Bearing witness to both executions is Tài, a poor teenage village boy quickly forced into manhood. In an effort to reclaim his father’s severed head and finance an auspicious burial, Tài...
Although both of these colorful books are fine standalone titles, pairing them makes for a much richer introductory experience to the boundless diversity of India: first read I is for India (part of Frances Lincoln Children's Books' peripatetic "World Alphabet" series) for a country overview, then...
The body count quickly mounts in this engrossing sequel to the thrilling faux Victorian confessional novel, The Meaning of Night. Another well-deserved WOW is in order, even more so because careful readers will undoubtedly solve several (many, even?) of the whodunit-who's-really-who clues early on, but that...
From the fabulous team who created the ever-so-delightful Spork, comes another whimsical wonder, so clever that parents just might appreciate the duo's achievement even more than their wide-eyed bundles. "One day my sister Virginia woke up feeling wolfish. She made wolf sounds and did strange things,"...
