Maybe it's the craziness of the season, but I've really been appreciating short story collections. This latest title from Emma Donoghue – the author of the phenomenal Room – is an intriguingly composed compilation: Donoghue presents a story introduced with a specific city and year, then gives the 'ripped-from-the-headlines'...
Awww ...
At 18, Andy Go "had life all figured out," but then so much for best-laid plans: "None of it came true, of course. Not a single damn thing." One morning he wakes fully clothed on his bed, in his room, in his (parents') house ...
For someone who eschews horror films, I sure am addicted to (certain) scary manga. Devoted groupie that I am for the Kurosagi team, I just hope the series isn't ending anytime soon! For anyone new to the series, rather than starting at (unlucky) #13, might...
“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have spent all my time studying and done all the things I really wanted to do,” thinks Yukari Hayasaka, dramatically believing she’s about to die. As a diligent 18-year-old preparing for high school final exams, her academic goals have thus...
Only when Louise Erdrich won this year's National Book Award for The Round House, did I learn that House is the middle of a planned trilogy that begins with The Plague of Doves which, most serendipitously, was already loaded on my iPod. A bit of...
Last seen on bookshelves sharing cover credit with National Book Award-finalist Gene Luen Yang on Yang's latest, Level Up, Thien Pham makes his solo debut with this slim heartbreaking-to-heart-recovering tale across continents and cultures. "What am I doing here," Scott wonders as he wakes to another...
Runners/walkers/movers: in case you ever wondered – yes, a gluttonous John Green-binge stuck in the ears really makes the miles fly by (public displays of sudden, extreme emotion notwithstanding). I began backwards with the latest of the JG-oeuvre, the incomparable, luminous The Fault in Our...
Here's my 'why-I-read-this-book-scenario': a 21st-century equivalent to the mail-order bride from Bangladesh, her middle-class white American engineer sponsor hubby, the suburban New York life they attempt to share ...
In the genre of memoirs (which includes based-on-a-true-story, autobiographical novels), I've noticed two distinct categories: the titles you read for the importance of the story, and the memoirs that also turn out to be fabulous examples of great literature. Psychologist Rahimeh Andalibian's writing debut represents the former;...
Although Vincent Lam's first novel hit shelves months ago, I waited (and waited) to read it because I was afraid – seems to be my modus operandi for follow-up titles to books I've cherished, unable to move on for fear of grave disappointment. Lam's interconnected story...
If you feel a vague sense of déjà vu reading this novel, that may be because, like me, you're strongly reminded of another dual-timed story featuring a bold Englishwoman trekking through faraway lands whose expectations-be-damned!-uncommon-life-back-then is pieced together through left-behind words and pictures by a descendant living...
Perhaps you might label me odd (true) or contrary (no way!) or even disrespectful (dohhh!) to post about cancer and death today of all days, but let me just assure you that this really does make sense. Books like this are the best reminders to...
Gilead and Home are parallel stories – that is, one is not a sequel or prequel of the other, but what happens in one, happens contemporaneously in the other. As satisfying as each novel can be alone, to read both one after the other will be...
Of the debut novels by non-Asian men writing about Asia and Asian characters that I've read thus far this year, three stand out: Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master’s Son, Brandon Jones' All Woman and Springtime, and most recently this title by Virginia attorney Corban Addison. The one...
Déjà vu: If the title seems at all familiar to you even though the book's U.S. pub date happened this fall, don't be surprised because you've probably, already seen various iterations of the story on other multiple platforms. While this is the original 1967 bestselling...
How wrenchingly ironic that this was the book I happened to be reading when I learned of a sudden death in our family. On the flight, in the car, during the rare moments of aloneness over the last four days, Kazuo Ishiguro's stories that spoke...
While I can hardly estimate the many, many books I’ve read about the Japanese American experience during World War II, I know few details about what happened to Japanese Canadians. The lone fact that looms is that like their Japanese American counterparts on the West...
For one reason or another, I've taken many years to finally finish a Gail Tsukiyama novel. I've started a few, gotten distracted and put each aside, but this time, after noticing that she was one of the few APA authors at this year's National Book...
Just like last year's The Devotion of Suspect X, mega-award winning Keigo Higashino will expertly manipulate you, making you constantly rethink your suspicions. While the final exposition might not be as drop-jaw shocking as Devotion, Salvation is still unquestionably an addictive page-turner, enticingly paced to keep you reading...
