Love Archives - Page 25 of 84

Parade: A Folktale by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Allison Markin Powell [in Booklist]

14 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The presentation is exquisite: slightly smaller than a single hand, Hiromi Kawakami’s spare text is interrupted by Takako Yoshitomi’s delightful two-color illustrations of mostly geometric shapes with anthropomorphized additions. Subtitled “A Folktale,” these less-than-100 pages easily stand alone as a parable about memory, mythic...

There’s Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon [in Booklist]

11 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Vikas Adam has deservedly earned the title of Sandhya Menon’s male voice of choice, assuming hero status in all her titles thus far. He affably returns here as Ashish, the younger brother of Rishi from When Dimple Met Rishi (2017), and he’s about to get a Bollywood-worthy romance of...

The Matchmaker’s List by Sonya Lalli [in Booklist]

08 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

At 29, Raina’s known true love, but also debilitating heartbreak when happily-ever-after didn’t happen. Still single, she reluctantly agrees to meet the men of her grandmother’s choosing. Not that her family is particularly marriageable: Nani seemed more servant than partner to Raina’s late grandfather, her...

Love from A to Z by S. K. Ali [in Booklist]

07 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Audio, Canadian, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In an unusual narrative structure, S. K. Ali (Saints and Misfits, 2017) inserts herself directly into her latest #OwnVoices Muslim rom-com, making her aural debut. She opens by introducing two teens intrigued with “marvels” and “oddities” – whose alternating journal entries follow – then intervenes...

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors [The Rajes series, Book 1] by Sonali Dev [in Booklist]

03 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Lauded for sweeping Bollywood-esque multicultural family dramas, Sonali Dev debuts an Austen-inspired series starring the Indian royalty-descended, Northern California-established Raje family. Her first installment riffs on P&P with an added gender mix-and-match. Second Raje daughter Trisha is an extraordinary Stanford neurosurgeon, but her personal relationships have...

Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno [in Booklist]

29 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Despite calling the small coastal community of Port Coral ‘home,’ Rosa has always avoided the water. She – and maybe the rest of the town – believes she’s been cursed by tragedy, since both her grandfather and father drowned as young men. Raised mostly by...

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Despite the gruesome images depicting the workings of Chicago slaughterhouses and meatpacking factories in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, Kristina Gehrmann's graphic adaptation is a surprisingly gentler, kinder read than Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel. Credited with inciting the public outcry...

The Far Field by Vijay Madhuri [in Library Journal]

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

Sometimes, pushing "stop" before a book's end might be the best course of action. Seasoned reader Sneha Mathan provides her usual nuanced, affecting narration throughout the 14 hours here, yet even her resonating performance can't prevent the frustration of a stupendous story that veers fatally...

Three Flames by Alan Lightman [in Booklist]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Novelist and physicist Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) has traveled twice yearly since 2003 to Cambodia to work with his Harpswell Foundation which empowers women leaders in Cambodia and Southeast Asia. In his first novel in seven years, Lightman’s opening dedication directly spotlights Harpswell’s “strong and...

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen [in Booklist]

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

By 2142, “generations of interracial partnerships from the twenty-first century onward [have] rendered [names] meaningless” as markers of ethnicity. Time-traveling Agent Kin is named after quinoa; his fellow agent Markus Fernandez is a pale Brit/northern Californian. Author Mike Chen is Chinese American and channels Idris Elba...

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad [in Booklist]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Thai, Thai American

Slightly gravelly voiced Scottish actor Euan Morton takes immediate command here, crisply enunciating Bangkok-native, New-York based Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s ambitious debut. What initially reads like unrelated short stories reveals a broader overview of a city in constant flux, its past, present, and future represented by a...

Last of Her Name: A Novella & Stories by Mimi Lok [in Booklist]

12 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost, Short Stories

As co-founding (with Dave Eggers) executive director of the human rights and oral history organization, Voice of Witness, Mimi Lok channels her intimate observation of human relationships into an astute first story collection. The titular story features a dual narrative of extreme circumstances as experienced...

I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer by Ahmet Altan, translated by Yasemin Çongar [in Booklist]

11 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Turkish, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW For “speaking a few innocuous words on a television program in the aftermath of the failed 2016 “coup” against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ahmet Altan was sentenced to life imprisonment, recounts his friend and lawyer Philippe Sands in his foreword to this book....

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth [in Booklist]

10 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Jokha Altharthi makes literary history as the first female Omani author to be translated into English and as author of the first novel written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. She shares that extraordinary success with translator and Oxford professor Marilyn...

Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins by Kathleen Collins [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Drama/Theater, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2014, a quarter-century after the 1988 death of filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins at 46 of breast cancer, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 movie, Losing Ground, one of the first films written and directed by an African American woman, inspiring new interest in the...

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid [in Booklist]

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW When Anthony Shadid’s own nuclear family falls apart – his marriage ends, he’s separated from his only child – he returns to Marjayoun, Lebanon in August, 2007 with “foolish and rash ...

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman [in Booklist]

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

Best known for her canonic, autobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and her nonfiction declaration, Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman remains one of history’s greatest feminists. Written in 1915, Herland was initially serialized in Gilman’s own magazine, The Forerunner, but didn’t appear in book-form until 1979. That she...

Dying by Cory Taylor [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

“I am making dying bearable for myself,” Cory Taylor reveals in her final book, originally published in her native Australia just months after she passed away in 2016 from melanoma-related brain cancer at 61. A euthanasia drug she bought online allowed Taylor some semblance of...

In Celebration of Women in Translation Month: Asian Women Authors — Part II [in The Booklist Reader]

30 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Japanese, Korean, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Thai, Translation

This is the second of a two-part series. Click here for Part I. Last week, we shared a baker’s dozen of titles by Asian women writers, made accessible by dedicated, invaluable translators who continuously, miraculously enable anglophone readers in discovering, enjoying, and sharing books from around...

Exhalation by Ted Chiang [in Booklist]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Ted Chiang, whose 1998 novella “Story of Your Life” (included in Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) became the Oscar-nominated film Arrival, returns with another intriguing collection comprised of seven previously published stories plus two new ones. Edoardo Ballerini voices four, Dominic Hoffman...

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