Historical Archives - Page 16 of 50

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, read by Fenella Woolgar [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Canadian, European, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese, Korean American, Lists, Repost

Transcription by Kate Atkinson and read by Fenella Woolgar Actress Fenella Woolgar and author Kate Atkinson have shared many creatively fruitful unions. Seasoned fans will recognize Woolgar from the 2011 BBC screen adaptation of Atkinson’s Case Histories, in which she played the sister of protagonist Jackson Brodie’s lover....

Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, adapted by Ilan Stavans, illustrated by Roberto Weil [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

Ilan Stavans and Roberto Weil, whose last collaboration, Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008), loosely contemporized Frank Capra’s similarly named, iconic film, use a comparable time-bending, pop-culturizing, humor-inducing graphic technique to adapt Cervantes’ 17th-century tome. Stavans compresses the original 125 chapters into just 30, remaining generally faithful to...

This Is Cuba: An American Journalist under Castro’s Shadow by David Ariosto [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For a self-described “young American photojournalist who then boasted only pidgin Spanish,” David Ariosto’s arrival in Havana in 2009 on assignment for CNN was “the chance of a lifetime.” Determined to be “somehow different from those pink-faced tourists,” he’s quickly reduced to an epithet, yuma – street...

Transcription by Kate Atkinson [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW So transforming was Fenella Woolgar’s performance of Kate Atkinson’s stupendous Life after Life (2013), the immediate reaction here is joyful relief at hearing Woolgar take aural control of another Atkinson novel. From an inexperienced, untested teenager embarking on her first job, in 1940, to...

Five More to Go: Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto [in The Booklist Reader]

19 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol With shrewd insight, inventive plotting, and stinging history lessons, Gina Apostol, who received the PEN Open Book Award for Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012), puts the “unremembered” Philippine-American War on literary display. Adjectives such as humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored...

The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance translated by Sookja Cho [in Christian Science Monitor]

16 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Tale of Cho Ung introduces Korean classic tale to English speakers Despite being “the best-selling fictional narrative during the late Chosŏn period” (1392-1910) of pre-modern Korea, little is known about the provenance of The Tale of Cho Ung. The author remains unknown and its initial composition...

Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington’s Mount Vernon by Carla Killough McClafferty [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

When he was just 11 years old, George Washington inherited ownership of 10 human beings. By the time he died in 1799, Washington's estate on the Potomac River, Mount Vernon, was home to 317 enslaved African American men, women, and children: 123 people owned by...

Mostly White by Alison Hart [in Booklist]

13 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

Blood ties spanning almost a century connect Emma, an Indian Residential School runaway, to her great-granddaughter, Ella, a struggling actor. In 1890 Maine, Emma – born to a Passamaquoddy Native father and an African American mother, is violently uprooted and trapped in a tortuous school...

The April 3rd Incident: Stories by Yu Hua, translated by Allan H. Barr [in Library Journal]

12 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Clearly the internationally lauded Yu Hua's translator of choice, Pomona professor Allan H. Barr anglophones seven early stories Yu (Brothers) wrote between 1987 and 1991. In his edifying introduction, Barr explains that during China's "post-Mao liberalization" (from the late 1970s into early 1980s), "writers devoted...

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough [in Library Journal]

08 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW At 12, Artemisia Gentileschi loses her mother, but not before "Prudentia Montone spent/ the last of her strength/ to burn into [Artemisia's] mind/ the tales of women/ no one else would/ think to tell" – including biblical heroines Susannah and Judith, who thwarted male...

Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa by David Peace [in Library Journal]

31 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Biography, British, Fiction, Japanese, Repost

In one of the most inexcusable examples of careless casting or lazy producing or both, David Peace (Red or Dead) gets utterly short-changed by Ric Jerrom's exasperating performance, from grievous mispronunciations of the majority of the Japanese names and words – including even Peace's protagonist...

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston [in Library Journal]

30 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Biography, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Versatile, seasoned narrator Robin Miles is as comfortable narrating literary historic context as she is effortlessly adopting the vernacular patois of an octogenarian former slave. Published almost 90 years after its completion, Zora Neale Hurston’s (Their Eyes Were Watching God) presentation of Oluale Kossula,...

The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani [in School Library Journal]

22 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW On her 12th birthday, Nisha receives her first diary from Kazi, the family’s cook, presented with prescient words: “he said it was time to start writing things down … someone needs to make a record of the things that will happen because the grown-ups...

Mandela and the General by John Carlin, illustrated by Oriol Malet [in Booklist]

19 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, British, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonfiction, Repost, South African, Young Adult Readers

As South Africa correspondent for London’s The Independent (1989–95), John Carlin draws on his personal trove of interviews and reportage to highlight the pivotal moment of world-affecting history when Nelson Mandela and General Constand Viljoen saved their newly apartheid-free country from bloody collapse. Mandela’s 1990 release...

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol [in Booklist]

18 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Adjectives like humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored by “the worst massacre of [U.S.] Army soldiers in the decades after Custer’s defeat.” The little-known 1901 Balangiga massacre in Samar, Philippines, during the Philippine-American War resulted in the deaths...

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

15 Oct, by SIBookDragon 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...

Che: A Revolutionary Life | A Graphic Biography by Jon Lee Anderson, illustrated by José Hernández [in Booklist]

12 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Repost, South American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Jon Lee Anderson’s Che: A Revolutionary Life (1997) is superbly realized in graphic form by Mexican artist José Hernández, who distills Anderson’s lauded, 812-page original into just more than 400 pages of spectacularly illustrated narrative. Since his 1967 death at 39, Che “has become the most...

Tales from la Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology edited by Frederick Luis Aldama [in Booklist]

30 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

The latest title in Mad Creek’s impressive Latinographix series showcases 80-plus contributions from the flourishing Latinx graphic community. Creators were prompted “to reflect upon the most significant moments of their lives,” rendering seven sections that explore language, coming-of-age, mythology, identity, heritage, self-image, and pop culture. The...

The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek [in Library Journal]

26 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Arab, Arab American, Audio, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Syrian American

American by birth, Syrian by parentage, journalist and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek (A Country Called Amreeka) has the cultural and linguistic fluency to be both insider and outsider in either country. Through four generations of extended family stories – from her wealthy businessman great-grandfather...

Small Country by Gaël Faye, translated by Sarah Ardizzone [in Library Journal]

24 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, European, Fiction, French, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French singer/rapper Gaël Faye transforms his own background into an impressive, searing coming-of-age first novel about a Burundian family's implosion during the 1990s. What seemed like an idyllic, privileged childhood for 10-year-old Gabriel – made memorable by mischievous adventures with close friends – begins...

BookDragon Historical Tag