Oh, oh, oh. You know something special is coming when I start with those three simple syllables. Because big words like 'remarkable,' 'marvelous,' 'resonating' just don't carry the same admiring adoration as plain old 'oh, oh, oh.' I'm also hoping that sort of speechless reaction...
London-based Xiaolu Guo’s third novel in English (she published six prior in China) opens with a desperate love letter-in-transit "from a place I cannot tell you about yet…when I am safe I will be able to let you know where I am." Over almost 400...
Leslie T. Chang’s bio notes her gratitude to her immigrant parents for "forc[ing] her to attend Saturday-morning Chinese school" while growing up outside New York City. That multilingual skill clearly gave her privileged access during the decade she spent as a China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, while that lofty journalist...
Here's a book you just have to hold and feel and breathe in. Although the snapshot of the cover offers a hint of its unique size, not until you're gently flipping through the pages can you appreciate that you're clasping Toronto-based music/performance/literature/film artist Vivek Shraya’s precious little gem. Poignantly...
Although Fridays are predominantly reserved for manga, I thought July Fourth trumped the usual today. Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky, a 2007 Newbery Honor title, examines American patriotism from a perspective I can't remember encountering before in fiction. While the target audience is younger readers, surely adults...
Two genres set my reading heart aflutter: novels in verse (highly ironic as I am an utter poetry dullard) and interlinked short storied novels. Hapa Hawaiian native Letitia Moffit’s Sidewalk Dancing falls in the latter category ...
Not quite a teenager, Poni loses her 12-year-old best friend in violent increments: to too-early forced marriage, three failed suicide attempts, and finally to childbirth long before her natural time. Poni – and her fiercely supportive mother – are determined that Poni will somehow stay in school...
Some time in the recent past, a video link came through that began with birthday wishes for Anne Frank, as if she had miraculously survived the Holocaust and lived many fulfilling decades. [I can't seem to find the link again, so if anyone recognizes the description...
I read the eponymous first chapter almost a year ago and then stopped. I listened to the same story – the absolute highlight in the disappointingly uneven collection Haiti Noir – so smoothly, lullingly read by Robin Miles, and again stopped. The book stayed on my desk...
Okay, I confess the cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); I recently compromised by choosing to go aural and was surprisingly delighted to spend almost eight hours with narrators Laural Merlington and Emily Durante (who take turns reading as mother and...
Amin Ahmad not only writes mysteries – The Caretaker and The Last Taxi Ride make up two-thirds of his Ranjit Singh thriller trilogy – I confess he remains quite a personal mystery.] While he’ll answer almost any question from a distance, he’s been quite agile avoiding our carefully...
So much happens in the first few pages, you might need to re-read them a few times before moving on. Blanche is covered in blood, while Jenny lies dead. "Not quite a month ago," Blanche was again screaming because of Jenny, this time having just been thrown to the...
While Ranjit Singh’s trimming days as The Caretaker might have been left behind on Martha's Vineyard, he can't escape for long from the corruption and intrigue in the murderous lives of the power-elite. In the second installment of A.X. Ahmad's label-defying trilogy, Ranjit reinvents himself as a seasoned New York City cabbie, now divorced...
Laila, 15, is newly arrived from an unnamed Middle East country. She's living in a modest apartment in the suburbs of Washington, DC, with her mother and younger brother. She's at a new school with new friends, and she's doing her best to adjust to her...
Regardless of how many more books I might read this year, Bich Minh Nguyen's second novel (and third title) will undoubtedly remain one of my top three for 2014. So engrossing is this Girl, that even Bernadette Dunne's occasionally faltering narration (oh, those fake Asian accents!) couldn't put me...
Sometimes my timing is so serendipitous, I wonder if I have a book angel whispering to me in my sleep. Somehow, I hit 'play' on this irreverent, potty-mouthed, guffaw-inducing, jaw-dropping memoir last week, only to see it pop up this week in my virtual world...
You might consider duct-taping your jaw shut because Manhattan-based Singaporean author Kevin Kwan insists on the veracity of the excesses in his outrageous, hilarious, train-wreck tragic debut novel: "So many aspects of and stories in the book I actually had to tone down!" he told...
Imagine a long scroll, that unfolds like a fan or an accordion. Each panel, when finally open, reveals a single, elongated picture, with sparse text to illuminate the densely populated illustration filled with mountains, animals, plants, people, that give way to trains, police cars, fences, highways, and...
At 15, Farrin is the privileged only child in a tense, unhappy, albeit very wealthy family. Her father runs a construction company that takes advantage of illegal, desperate Afghan workers to make big profits. As successful as he might be, Farrin's mother continuously laments that she has...
Check out this toothsome battle-cry: "The kimchi revolution: How Korean-American chefs are changing food culture" by Paula Young Lee for Salon.com. The article's first paragraph introduces a bi-coastal feast: Momofuku's NYC bad-boy David Chang (his signature cookbook is posted here) and L.A.-based Roy Choi. [The...
