Love Archives - Page 8 of 84

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In her fifth self-narration, acclaimed Indigenous author Louise Erdrich’s latest is delightfully enhanced with personal meta-references, insightfully balancing the narrative’s heavier events. Louise, the owner of Minneapolis’ Birchbark Books (as is the author herself), goes on a just-before-pandemic-shutdown book tour – clearly a nod...

Reprieve by James Han Mattson [in Booklist]

13 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A multi-generational family home of horrors looms throughout James Han Mattson’s (The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves) spellbinding latest. Ever-versatile narrator JD Jackson chills and thrills, underscoring the slyly literary, intensifying the social commentary, enhancing the utterly gory. John Forrester began his house of frights...

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu [in Booklist]

03 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Cambodian American, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Casting an Asian American narrator for Asian American characters created by an Asian American author initially seems to be a promising decision, but Taiwanese American Natalie Naudus, though pleasant overall for Julie Tieu’s debut, isn’t consistently convincing with the multiple Asian languages in play. One...

I Know You Love Me, Too by Amy Neswald [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW The fraught relationship between two half-sisters links the 14 stories of Amy Neswald's exceptional debut collection, I Know You Love Me, Too. Ingrid and Kate, eight years apart, share a father who died when Ingrid was 20 and Kate 12. "Relationships between half-sisters should be half...

The Bennet Women by Eden Appiah-Kubi [in Booklist]

28 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

Among countless Pride and Prejudice adaptations, Eden Appiah-Kubi’s debut might be the only with a transgender co-lead; it certainly has one of the most non-traditional Jane Austen-inspired casts ever. Welcome to Bennet House, Longbourn College’s first and only female residence. Appiah-Kubi’s Bennet sisters here are Black engineering...

Incense and Sensibility [The Rajes series, Book 3] by Sonali Dev [in Booklist]

27 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Sonali Dev continues to channel Jane Austen via the Raje family with her third in the series, familiarly, gratefully voiced by Indian American favorite Soneela Nankani. Dev opens with a literal bang: California gubernatorial candidate Yash Raje is shot during a rally. His physical recovery...

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning, bestselling Julie Otsuka is averaging one book per decade, making each exquisite title exponentially more precious. Here she creates a stupendous collage of small moments that results in an extraordinary examination of the fragility of quotidian human relationships. Initially set in an underground pool, it voices...

Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Philippe Girard, translated by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Philippe Girard (Obituary Man) admirably condenses seven decades into a concise 120 pages in Leonard Cohen: On a Wire. It's a valuable introduction to the tumultuous life of the iconic singer/songwriter/poet perhaps best remembered for his classic "Hallelujah," eventually covered by some...

Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan [in Booklist]

13 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, Translation

Perumal Murugan and Aniruddhan Vasudevan reunite after the infamous “success” of Murugan’s translated-into-English debut, One Part Woman, longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Murugan declared himself dead on Facebook after the cult novel was viciously condemned in India, his homeland, and...

Admit This to No One: Collected Stories by Leslie Pietrzyk [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Fourteen exquisite, interlinked stories, set mostly in Washington, D.C., comprise Leslie Pietrzyk's shrewd Admit This to No One. Pietrzyk (Silver Girl) humanizes Beltway insiders (and wannabe outsiders), even as she skewers their hypocrisies, weaknesses, and dreams. In a city where "so, what do you...

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training by Adam Stern [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Adam Stern began his Harvard career feeling like an impostor when he was matched into a Harvard Medical School psychiatry residency impeded, he worried, by his upstate-New York medical degree: “I found myself soaring into one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country,...

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura, translated by Stephen Blanford [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...

Tales from the Café [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 2] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

22 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories by Gwen E. Kirby [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

An 1892 "emancipated duel" between two women is about to take place as the overseeing (female) doctor drolly remarks, "we will never be emancipated from the stupidity of men." That too-true theme lingers throughout Gwen E. Kirby's remarkable 21-story debut, Shit Cassandra Saw, as women love,...

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

An unexpected airport encounter – with an inevitable flight delay – reunites two university classmates in Antoine Wilson's disturbing yet intriguing Mouth to Mouth. Reminiscent of the cult classic film My Dinner with Andre, Wilson's tête-à-tête exchange takes place in the plush chairs of a...

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim [in Booklist]

15 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Covering most of the 20th century across the Korean peninsula, Juhea Kim’s debut novel wondrously reveals broken families and surprising alliances created by uncontrollable circumstances. Kim links multiple narrative prongs, effortlessly navigating overlaps and disconnects. Korea remains under Japan’s ruthless occupation in 1917, which lasts...

Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl [in Booklist]

27 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Best known as a mega award-winning playwright, Sarah Ruhl (44 Poems for You, 2020) is also a MacArthur “Genius,” Yale professor, poet, and author. Her memoir is an utter gift – no superlatives are enough; no review can communicate its resonating efficacy. Just after Ruhl...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

26 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé transforms “the words that were entrusted“ to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with...

Home Reading Service by Fabio Morábito, translated by Curtis Bauer [in Booklist]

25 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

Poet, essayist, and fiction writer Fabio Morábito’s latest novel arrives stateside with the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, Mexico’s highest literary honor. Egypt-born, Italy-raised, Mexico-domiciled since 15, Morábito is polyphonic; American poet and professor Curtis Bauer adroitly enables English access here. Literacy, fluency, and interactive engagement with words...

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