Love Archives - Page 29 of 84

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, read by Dion Graham [in The Booklist Reader]

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and read by Dion Graham George Washington Black – called "Wash" for short – is an enslaved 10- or 11-year-old (he "cannot say for certain") on Faith Plantation in 1830s Barbados. He is first owned by one brother, then stolen by another....

New Kids on the Audio Block | Book ’Em Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing’s Audacious Trio [in Booklist]

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

Book ’Em Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing’s Audacious Trio Imagine choosing three first-time narrators to voice the next novel from a National Book Award winner. Takes faith! Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones won the 2011 NBA for fiction; six years later, she won her second NBA for...

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The deeply empathetic, decisively chameleonic Dion Graham proves himself to be an ideal aural collaborator for Esi Edugyan’s (Half-Blood Blues, 2012) stupendous novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and Man Booker Prize. George Washington Black, called “Wash,” is a young slave on Faith Plantation...

Not Our Kind by Kitty Zeldis [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Class, gender, and religious differences in post-WWII Manhattan drive this debut novel from the pseudonymous Zeldis in which two worlds literally collide in the opening chapter. Caught in a fender bender, Eleanor Moskowitz and Patricia Bellamy emerge from their respective taxis in a rare chance...

Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa’s Deluge: Two Novellas of Japan’s 3/11 Disaster by Kimura Yūsuke, translated by Doug Slaymaker [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Kimura Yūsuke makes his Anglophoned debut with two haunting novellas that are slight in length yet dense with meaning, enhancing the growing genre of post-3/11 literature in response to the catastrophic March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Translator Doug Slaymaker augments...

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

03 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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 Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding [in Library Journal]

28 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Without glossing over more difficult subjects – fat shaming, homophobia, parental (non)acceptance, matters of consent – Amy Spalding's (The New Guy [and Other Senior Distractions]) latest is a charming contemporary love story, complete with blogs, social media, rating apps, and more. For the summer before senior...

The Plotters by Un-su Kim, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Reseng, 32, has been a professional assassin for 15 years, minus a short factory-worker stint at 22, while playing house with the love of his life. That he’s survived this long – never mind his risky career, he’s also a two-pack-a-day smoker with a...

Transcription by Kate Atkinson [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma [in Booklist]

21 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The story seems familiarly simple. A man and a woman fall in love, but their happy-ever-after is fraught with obstacles. Yet nothing is quite that straightforward in Chigozie Obioma’s (The Fishermen, 2015) latest, starting with his narrator, who happens to be a 700-year-old chi...

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

16 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

Mostly White by Alison Hart [in Booklist]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center 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...

Florida by Lauren Groff [in Booklist]

07 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, 2015) lives in Florida and is married with two sons – not unlike five of the protagonists among the 11 stories here. Unlike with her previous titles, Groff narrates, adding a layer of intimacy to further enhance the first-person perspective...

One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasedevan [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian, Translation

In many ways, Kali and Ponna's lives couldn't be more fertile. Their fields and their cows keep them well nourished. Their playfulness and passion feed their souls. But after 12 years of marriage, they remain childless, leaving the couple helpless against the disdain disguised as...

Five More to Go: Alice Stephens’ Famous Adopted People [in The Booklist Reader]

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Famous Adopted People by Alice Stephens “Everyone, it seems, is telling our story but us,” observes Lisa Pearl, the Korean-born, Bethesda, Maryland-raised transracial adoptee protagonist in Alice Stephens’ recent October debut. The author, who describes herself as being “among the first generation of transnational, interracial adoptees,”...

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung [in Christian Science Monitor]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

'All You Can Ever Know' is a sensitive examination of transracial adoption Here’s a memoir by a transracial adoptee about being a transracial adoptee – and unless you're a transracial adoptee yourself, you're probably thinking, “eh, I'll pass.” And that would surely be a mistake. Because...

You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld [in Booklist]

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

That Curtis Sittenfeld bookends her first short story collection with references to Trump seems to signal that bad behavior – dishonesty, betrayal, resentment, even hatred – will be plentiful in between. The agitation she immediately incites with the opening story, “Gender Studies,” about a recently...

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi [in School Library Journal]

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Uncategorized, Young Adult Readers

Narrators Joy Osmanski and Jacques Roy prove to be convincing partners in propelling two awkward misfits toward each other. Osmanski’s Penny Lee is slightly detached. UT-Austin might be less than 80 miles away, but 18-year-old Penny imagines she’s headed for a whole new world –...

Less by Andrew Sean Greer [in Library Journal]

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

Arthur Less is, well … considerably less, now that he's middle-aged, alone, and pretty much broke. The pinnacle of his novel-writing career might have been his first New York Times review, which while "good," assigned him an epithet that would haunt (taunt?) him in the...

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