Love Archives - Page 19 of 84

No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories by Jayant Kaikini, translated by Tejaswini Niranjana [in Booklist]

24 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, Translation

Seemingly quotidian lives centered in Mumbai fill Jayant Kaikini’s second translated collection, the first book in translation to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. These 16 stories, written from 1986 to 2006, were selected and translated by the award-winning Tejaswini Niranjana, who in...

I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Helmed by director Nahnatchka Khan (Netflix's Always Be My Maybe), an HBO Max adaptation of Lyla Lee’s I'll Be the One was announced six months prior to the book's publication date. Before Hollywood hijacks your imagination, though, get to know Skye off-screen in this delectable...

Must I Go by Yiyun Li [in Booklist]

22 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Missing children loom in Yiyun Li’s latest novel, her second since her teenage son’s tragic 2017 suicide, which inspired Where Reasons End (2019). MacArthur “genius” Li is herself a suicide survivor, as revealed in Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (2017). In her...

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd [in Booklist]

21 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Egyptian, Fiction, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW To begin at the end seems most fitting: “If Jesus actually did have a wife ...

Deacon King Kong by James McBride [in Booklist]

19 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW On a cloudy September 1969 afternoon, septuagenarian widower Sportcoat – less respectfully dubbed Deacon King Kong for his addiction to the local moonshine – shot 19-year-old drug dealer Deems, then saved Deems’ life with an unseemly version of the Heimlich maneuver when Deems nearly...

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo [in Booklist]

18 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Producers/directors, take note: this is how to effectively record an audiobook with more than a single narrator. Here, Melania-Luisa Marte reads Camino’s chapters, while author Elizabeth Acevedo picks up Yahaira’s. For chapters featuring both girls, Marte and Acevedo take turns in dialogue. When their...

Skin Deep [Siobhan O’Brien Book 1] by Sung J. Woo [in Library Journal]

16 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite her Asian features, her father really is Irish, her mother Norwegian. Her name is Siobhan O’Brien, never mind everyone’s surprise when trying to gauge the incongruity between her face and that moniker. Short answer: Siobhan is a Korean-born, upstate New York–raised transracial adoptee. At...

The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem by Sandra Tsing Loh [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore [in Library Journal]

12 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW On the eve of her 19th birthday – which is also New Year's Eve – Oona is having the celebration of her life, madly in love, about to embark on a dream-come-true band tour. But when she awakes, she's jumped forward in time to...

Red Dress in Black and White by Elliot Ackerman [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Turkish

*STARRED REVIEW At the center of 2017 National Book Award finalist Elliot Ackerman’s formidable Red Dress in Black and White is William, "about seven years old," whose relationship to parents, place, and history is brilliantly revealed over a single day. William is the son of Catherine,...

The Swamp by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Yoshiharu Tsuge abandoned making manga in 1987, and yet his legacy has only expanded – deservedly so – during the decades since, far beyond his native Japan. Considered one of the originators of the graphic 'I-novel' (shishōsetsu), he eventually "abandoned what had been considered one...

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan [in Library Journal]

08 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indonesian, Japanese, Repost, Singaporean

Indonesian-born, Singaporean-domiciled Clarissa Goenawan (Rainbirds) takes her sophomore title back to a death in remote Japan. This time, death arrives via suicide, claiming the titular Miwako, an enigmatic university sophomore who disappears without notice, and is found only after death. Desperate to comprehend her fatal...

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora [in Booklist]

04 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

The eponymous conjure women here are two midwife/healers: enslaved mother May Belle and her eventually free daughter Rue. Their story gets revealed in three time-jumping segments – slaverytime, wartime, freedomtime – that readers will need to realign for full disclosure of brutal secrets, hidden pasts,...

Outside the Lines by Ameera Patel [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Repost, South African

"We know what you did," an ominous warning, proves pivotal in Ameera Patel's electrifying debut novel, Outside the Lines. In a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa, the threatening phrase inextricably links five disparate characters. "You took the money from the vase," the drug-addicted,...

Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintzi [in Booklist]

31 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

The novel’s narrator answers, under certain circumstances, to Alani, Al, Allie, Annie, Sofia, even Hedwig or Hedy, although the latter two are names belonging to the narrator’s mother. For the last 27 years, parent and child have been estranged, since a 17-year-old Alani ran away...

Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu [in Shelf Awareness]

28 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

What starts as seemingly light reading featuring New York family and friends headed to an Indian wedding morphs into a spectacularly entertaining examination of race, privilege, hybrid identity, family dysfunction, and maybe even a love story or five. Living in Mumbai and New York City,...

Umma’s Table by Yeon-sik Hong, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW For artist Madang Bae, life is divided into two opposing spheres, “The world I’ve worked so hard to leave behind ...

Five More to Go: Nathacha Appanah’s Tropic of Violence [in The Booklist Reader]

20 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Chinese, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Indian, Lists, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution...

The House of Deep Water by Jeni McFarland [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

For Jeni McFarland, who survived childhood sexual assault, talking about her trauma "was like a dam burst," she reveals in an interview with her publisher. "It was so cathartic writing about it that I couldn't stop." That horrific survival, further aggravated by being one of...

The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated by Frank Wynne [in Booklist]

18 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The family is Cuban. The son, 18, is fulfilling his military conscription, enduring mind-numbing sentry duty any way he can until his release. The mother, once a schoolteacher, is housebound with a violently debilitating illness. The father, who manages a four-star tourist hotel, is...

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