BookDragon Love Tag

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (vol. 4) by Motoro Mase, translated by John Werry, English adaptation by Kristina Blachere

09 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

This latest volume of Ikigami will be forever associated with the great snowpocalypse of 2010! I pre-ordered it last October, knew it would take awhile (official pub date is actually today), and finally got an email from Amazon last week saying it was being shipped. 'Lo...

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples

By the time I got to college, the Michael Dorris/Louise Erdrich union was already legendary. Dorris was the founder of Dartmouth's Native American Studies department – might I add, how ironic that took 200+ years after the school was created in 1769 "for the education and...

not simple by Natsume Ono, translated by Joe Yamazaki, English adaptation by Anne Ishii

10 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

First reaction: WOWOWOWOWOW! What a fabulous first manga for the new year. Indeed, nothing is simple about this all-in-one-volume story ...

Arzee the Dwarf by Chandrahas Choudhury

03 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, South Asian

The eponymous Arzee is a diminutive young man in his late 20s living with his mother and younger brother in crowded Bombay, swaggeringly looking forward to the near future. In spite of the difficulties he's faced (much of which he blames on his size), he's convinced his life...

In the Convent of Little Flowers: Stories by Indu Sundaresan

02 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American

First things first: Indu Sundaresan’s only (thus far) short story collection (she’s best known for her lengthy historical novels, The Twentieth Wife and Feast of Roses) is definitely an effective read. Many of the stories make you think beyond your immediate world as they temporarily...

The Disappeared by Kim Echlin

31 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Canadian, Fiction, Southeast Asian

One Halloween night when Anne Greves is 16, she goes with older friends to a jazz club and falls in love for the first time in her young life. Serey is an older man, already in his 20s, a musician, who has already lived too...

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno, translated by Naoko Amemiya and Andy Nakatani, edited by Patrick Macias and Colin Turner

16 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Slim and gorgeous, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, couldn't be more different from the 10-volume, powerfully resonating Barefoot Gen series in scope and style. But don't let its whimsical beauty fool you for a moment ...

Publisher Profile: Madras Press [in Bookslut]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

A Quartet of Unsalable Gems: Madras Press Debuts Series One A modern eco-fable about an almost-royal swan and just-a-common-bluebird couple whose lives intersect with a miner and a logger who turn away from their destructive careers… a contemporary fairy tale about a witch with one heck...

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (vol. 2) by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Akemi Wegmüller

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation

Although the second volume of Ōoku, a recently introduced (in translation) gender-bender series, this latest could definitely read as a stand-alone love story. And quite a unique and memorable one at that! The series' premise is that in an alternative history of premodern Edo Japan, the mysterious...

Leaving Yesler by Peter Bacho + Author Interview

20 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow

18 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction

If you haven't heard of Randy Pausch and experienced his delightful, heartbreaking, inspiring Last Lecture, surely you must: Click here for a comprehensive summary page created by Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor before he passed away on July 25, 2008 of pancreatic...

Kartography by Kamila Shamsie

11 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Pakistani, South Asian

Oh, how sad to think this is the very last book by Kamila Shamsie I had left to read ...

T4: A Novel by Ann Clare LeZotte

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Jewish, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

In just over a hundred pages of sparse, haunting verse, LeZotte illuminates a part of the Holocaust tragedy that takes up little shelf space in libraries today: the organized mass murder of mentally ill and physically challenged people, as well as the massacre of European...

The New Sun by Taro Yashima

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

What an amazing, unique, and LUCKY find! First published in 1943 by one of the oldest U.S. publishers, Henry Holt and Company, and in spite of excellent reviews plus a multi-year marketing campaign by both publisher and an early publicist who worked to get the...

Monster (vols. 15-18) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe and Hiroki Shirota (vol. 15), Satch Watanabe (vol. 16), Reina Maruyama (vol. 17), Satoki Yamada (vol. 18)

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Another warning: The body count is staggering by series' end. While most are bad guys, or anonymous innocent bystanders (who are disturbing enough to see splattered across so many pages), the ONE that breaks your heart ...

Monster (vols. 11-14) by Naoki Urasawa, English adaptation by Agnes Yoshida, translated by Satch Watanabe (vol. 11), Hiroki Shirota (vol. 12), Hirotaka Takiya (vol. 13), Nobu Yamada and Masaru Noma (vol. 14)

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Just in case you need a refresher, every volume from 11 until the final 18 now opens with a summary and who's who ...

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (vol. 2) by Motoro Mase, translated by John Werry, English adaptation by Kristina Blachere

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

I have volumes 3 and 4 of Ikigami already pre-ordered (although not coming soon enough, I might add) so that ought to tell you I'm clearly hooked on this series. I also wish they were longer, too, but that's a groupie talking ...

Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie

23 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Pakistani, South Asian

First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie's second novel: 'bugaboo.' "It's a word that demands to be said out loud," writes Shamsie, "particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to 'baghal...

Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship by Denise Chong [in Christian Science Monitor]

21 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Nonfiction, Repost

Denise Chong has built an award-winning career capturing ordinary people living extraordinary lives. The Concubine’s Children (1994) told of her own family’s fractured journey from China to Canada and The Girl in the Picture (2000) detailed the harrowing story of the young girl whose screaming,...

Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Fiction, Indian, South Asian

Forty-three (yes, 43!) hours is a major commitment to a single book. And in spite of the most eye-rolling, not-so-nicely-talking back to a continuously babbling (for 43 hours, 3 minutes to be exact!) iPod that I have ever done, I will actually admit that Shantaram is...