Friendship Archives - Page 10 of 113

Night Fisher by R. Kikuo Johnson [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hawaiian, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Lauded illustrator R. Kikuo Johnson's potent, career-making debut, Night Fisher – which won the prestigious Russ Manning Newcomer Award at the 2006 Eisner Awards – returns in a handsome hardcover edition. Originally published in 2005, Night Fisher was Johnson's antidote to Hollywood's Hawaii, "the backdrop for...

It’s OK, Slow Lizard by Yeorim Yoon, illustrated by Jian Kim, translated by Chi-Young Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Author Yeorim Yoon invites readers into a welcoming haven in the Korean import It's OK, Slow Lizard, gorgeously illustrated by Jian Kim. In an idyllic forest live five wonderful friends: Little Bird, Elephant, Rabbit, Monkey, and Slow Lizard. Basking in gentle sunlight, Slow Lizard enjoys...

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy [in Booklist]

08 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Charlotte McConaghy returns for another spectacular woman-and-nature thriller, finding a pitch-perfect accomplice in prolific Saskia Maarleveld. After chasing birds from the water in Migrations, McConaghy plants in the Scottish Highlands where the reintroduction of wolves – utterly disappeared by hunters since the late 1800s –...

The Strange Scent of Saffron by Miléna Babin, translated by Oana Avasilichioaei [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW At a mere 160 pages, Miléna Babin's The Strange Scent of Saffron might seem spare, but its sizable cast and numerous crisscrossing narratives produce a dense, intricate, utterly satisfying read. In the town of Le Bic, Quebec, two strangers meet over an exquisite meal at the...

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett [in Shelf Awareness]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Casey Plett's second collection, after A Safe Girl to Love and the novel Little Fish – both Lambda Award winners – once again features a spectrum of experiences lived by transgender women, from exhilarating to soul-crushing and all the quotidian moments in between. Among the exceptional dozen...

A Girl Called Rumi by Ari Honarvar [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Journalist/artist/activist Ari Honarvar's promising debut, A Girl Called Rumi, memorializes the lifesaving power of storytelling through the darkest terrors. In 1981, the Iran-Iraq War was still new and a semblance of normalcy seemed possible for 9-year-old Kimia, who claims "Rumi" as part-time moniker. She's missing...

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation, Uruguayan

In the chilling, spare-but-oh-so-dense novel The Rooftop, Uruguyan writer Fernanda Trías introduces Clara – her name a sharp contrast to her uncertainty, her unknowing – as she recounts the life that she announces on the opening page "came to an end today." Once upon a time,...

The Autumnal: The Complete Series by Daniel Kraus, illustrated by Chris Shehan, color by Jason Wordie, lettering by Jim Campbell [in Booklist]

28 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Kat Somerville will never win any mother-of-the-year awards. She shows up at the principal’s office black-eyed after her 7-year-old daughter, Sybil, bloodied another kid’s nose; rather than any admonishments, Kat brings Sybil a Stephen King novel. The rebellious pair abandon not only the school but...

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Booklist]

27 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Translation

Pulitzer Prize-winning polyglot Jhumpa Lahiri’s second title in Italian arrives in her own translation, narrated by Italian American Susan Vinciotti Bonito. Despite Bonito’s fluency in their shared language, her noticeably youthful timbre isn’t initially convincing as Lahiri’s unnamed, 40-something protagonist. And yet Lahiri’s unadorned, sharply...

Himawari House by Harmony Becker [in Booklist]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Harmony Becker, who brilliantly created the artwork for George Takei’s Eisner-winning They Called Us Enemy (2019), makes her stupendous solo debut in what will prove to one of the best graphic titles of the year. The narrative might initially seem simple: a mixed-race U.S. teen...

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi [in Booklist]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nigerian, Nigerian American, Nonfiction, Repost

Just as only Akwaeke Emezi could have narrated their Freshwater debut, no other voice could have manifested their first nonfiction title. Presented as an epistolary mosaic addressed to family, friends, lovers, betrayers, and heroes, Emezi’s raw voice lays bare their unadorned writing. Although the vulnerability, arrogance, and...

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

In the “big city” of Seoul, love isn’t easy to find – even tougher to secure is love that lasts. Young and Jaehee are best friends from university, bonded in their “boundless energy of [being] poor, promiscuous twenty-year-olds.” Young is a gay man, Jaehee a straight...

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [in Booklist]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Thanks to veteran narrator JD Jackson and newbie Ronald Peet, Mott’s fourth novel is also a “hell of an audiobook.” An unnamed writer (impeccably embodied by Jackson) embarks on his inaugural book tour because he’s written Hell of a Book. He’s been coached, trained,...

Author Interview: Kei Miller [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Caribbean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Kei Miller: Many Different Writers Kei Miller commands genres – poetry, fiction, essays – as adroitly as he navigates identities as a Jamaican native son, a British academic, a global award-winning writer, and, most recently, a Miami professor. As poet, he's been shortlisted for the Costa...

Gordo by Jaime Cortez [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Short Stories

As a visual artist and performer, Jaime Cortez has always been telling stories. He gets literal in his debut, Gordo, an impressive collection featuring the titular Gordo, a preteen middle child of Mexican American farm workers in California's 1970s Central Coast. Gordo is one of...

The Guncle by Steven Rowley [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Titles about lonely survivors with just the right balance of lightening humor and lasting gravitas make for an undeniably popular genre. Think international sensation A Man Called Ove, whose global mega-success probably fueled the popularity of acerbic-but-redeemable-left-behinds-who-get-happy-endings sort of books. Steven Rowley’s latest is a prime example, superbly improved...

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur [in Booklist]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Korean Canadian June Hur’s enthralling debut, The Silence of Bones, vividly captured 19th-century fatal court intrigue during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty. Her follow-up is another tautly plotted thriller, set in 15th-century Joseon, and helmed by relative audiobook newbie Sue Jean Kim, who adroitly controls a sprawling...

Lemon by Yeo-sun Kwon, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

30 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The Western publishing world has taken a quarter-century to deliver one of Korea’s most lauded writers to English-reading audiences. Publishing and prize-winning since 1996, Yeo-sun Kwon is deftly translated by award-winning Korean Canadian Janet Hong. At 18, high-school senior Kim Hae-on “was perfection, bliss...

Captivated, by You by Yama Wayama, translated by Leighann Harvey [in Booklist]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Adolescent challenges are a ubiquitous rite of passage from which no child seems immune. And yet relatively recent manga sensation Wayama – her three titles published in her native Japan have each won major lauds – manages to charmingly defuse some of the most potentially...

Between Perfect & Real by Ray Stoeve [in Booklist]

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

Debut novelist Ray Stoeve’s first chapter has three short sentences: “I think I might be trans. I mean, I know I am. I think.” Seattle high-school senior Dean already came out as lesbian, is lovingly partnered with Zoe, and has supportive friends (quality over quantity)....

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