Love Archives - Page 53 of 84

Author Profile: Kim Thúy [in Bloom]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Kim Thúy’s Ru: An Apple for the Reader Ah, well . . . better start with true confessions: my words appear on the back cover of the U.S. edition (at least the first printing) of Vietnamese Canadian author Kim Thúy’s debut novel, Ru. The blurb is...

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

12 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Middle Grade Readers

Let me know if you've heard this one before ...

The Magic Ball of Wool by Susanna Isern, illustrated by Nora Hilb, translated by Jon Brokenbrow

11 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, European, Fiction, Translation

In my crotchety old age, sleep is a major challenge, so I usually end up taking a pile of must-reads to bed. In spite of the lack of zzzzs, my stacks aren't exactly shrinking, but how grateful am I to never be without bookish company...

The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad

05 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, South Asian, South Asian American

For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry [in Library Journal]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost

The latest biography of "the world's most brilliant stand-up comedian" is the culmination of a project that took more than a decade (originally intended as a three-act screenplay) by screenwriter David Henry and his brother, musician Joe Henry. Born in 1940 in Peoria, IL, Richard...

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter and Ann Sherif [in Library Journal]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

A Japanese writer, also named Minae Mizumura, recalls her privileged expatriate New York childhood, then witnesses her family devolve in adulthood. A Tokyo-based editor takes a countryside vacation and meets an older woman who shares fantastical memories of some of the inhabitants. A village girl...

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

21 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Even before Naomi Benaron's debut novel hit shelves last year, it earned a substantial literary gold sticker as the winner of the biennial 2010 Bellwether Prize – the largest monetary award for unpublished fiction in North America, which was rebranded in 2011 as the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially...

Out of This Place by Emma Cameron

19 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Australian, Fiction, Young Adult Readers

Oooh, am I sucker for novels in verse, even though I'm embarrassingly inept with poetry. Who knows why ...

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Library Journal]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri's (The Interpreter of Maladies) unparalleled ability to transform the smallest moments into whole lives pinnacles in this extraordinary story of two brothers – so close that one is "the other side" of the other – coming of age in the political...

An Infidel in Paradise by S.J. Laidlaw

13 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Pakistani, Young Adult Readers

Emma is hardly the typical Canadian teenager. At 16, she's lived all over the world, thanks to her career diplomat mother, who Emma currently blames for all the latest terrible events in her life: she's in yet another new country – this time Pakistan with some...

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Magic happens when narrator George Guidall says "and yet ...

All That Is by James Salter

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

What began as gorgeous elegiac memory about misplaced courage and final hope as World War II comes to an end in the Pacific, devolves into a middle-aged man's tedious reflections about his search for meaningful connections, especially with women, as he recalls his privileged life...

Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

05 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

When I recently caught up with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, she was in one of her rare lull periods at home in Houston, Texas, having finished almost three solid months of book touring for her latest novel, Oleander Girl. Like her latest protagonist, Korobi Roy, a...

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Irish, Nonethnic-specific

Alas, this was the last Maggie O'Farrell I had left. Ever since discovering The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (my first and still favorite, I admit), I've moved her books to the top of the top of the To-Be-Read piles with regularity. Now that I've...

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Irish, Nonethnic-specific

On a summer afternoon in mid-1950s rural England on the border between Devon and Cornwall, journalist Innes Kent, already 34, happens upon angry Alexandra Sinclair, not yet 22. During their brief exchange in her parents' yard after he hits car trouble, he manages to inadvertently...

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

01 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction

Best known for her penultimate novel – the bestselling 2006 Booker longlisted The Emperor's Children – Claire Messud takes on about-to-be-middle-aged regret with a raw vengeance in this, her fifth and latest title. That her protagonist Nora Eldridge shares the same first name as the discontented heroine in Henrik Ibsen's A...

My Education by Susan Choi

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Southeast Asian American

So I've been mulling over this book for a month-plus, and still remain rather conflicted. The one solid conclusion I can offer is this – if I were to rank Susan Choi's titles, my list would read thusly: American Woman, based loosely on the Patty Hearst...

The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves

29 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Spanish, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The offer of a new job in a small resort town on the coast of Normandy allows the recently widowed Simone Sauvelle the chance for her and her two children to escape a poverty-stricken life in Paris. As the assistant to brilliant toymaker Lazarus Jann,...

The Servant by Fatima Sharafeddine, translated by Fatima Sharafeddine

24 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Fiction, Lebanese, Middle Grade Readers, Translation, Young Adult Readers

At 15, Faten is uprooted from her village life to become a live-in servant to a wealthy family in Beirut, where violence from the ongoing Lebanese Civil War seems neverending. Her father's decision to pull her out of school, to indenture her away from all...

On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Central Asian, Chinese, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction

Just in case you're pressed for time, let me offer this short-cut alternative up front: if you're looking for a fabulous foodie book that takes you to unexpected corners of the world, bypass Noodle Road and try Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles instead. If...

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