Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
25 Sep, by in Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers
What timing ...
BookDragon Personal transformation Tag
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
24 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction
Seth Godin has written a dozen worldwide bestsellers. I admit I'm late in discovering him; this is my first Godin title, which Godin himself read to me (it's loaded on my iPod so I can take it on my training runs – Leadville 100 in...
East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres by Andrew Lam
23 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American
Unlike the rest of Andrew Lam’s relatives who only want to bombard him with questions about meeting Hiroyuki Sakai of Iron Chef fame (I don't watch TV and I hate to cook), what I want to know is, 'how's the love life?' Some might say...
Playing in the Light by Zoë Wicomb
21 Sep, by in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, South African
"Playing – as others would call it – in the light left no space, no time for interiority, for reflecting on what they had done. Under the glaring spotlight of whiteness, they played diligently, assiduously; the past, and with it conscience, shrunk to a black...
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
18 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers
Marcelo marks quite a memorable moment in our family's dynamics: For the first time ever, our daughter actually shut us out with her headphones (I realize it's coming relatively late in modern teenage life), demanding that she be able to finish this book right now (it was...
The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault
14 Sep, by in Children/Picture Books, Latin American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction
María Luz's family is in trouble. Their land in the hills of Honduras, which provides them with the corn and beans they need to live, has "lost its goodness." In order for the family to survive, María Luz's father must leave home and find work....
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel
13 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Japanese, Memoir, Nonfiction, Translation
For decades now, Haruki Murakami has been one of my all-time favorite novelists ever; back when my grad-schooled brain was more nimble, I even read a few of his titles in their original Japanese. While this mind has considerably weakened since then, at least the muscles are...
The Typist by Michael Knight
07 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific
Francis Vancleave – mostly known as Van – has survived World War II behind a desk working as a typist for the military higher-ups. His skill – something his mother taught him as a teenager on nights his father was away working as a tugboat captain –...
Gush by Yo Hemmi, translated by Giles Murray [in Library Journal]
01 Sep, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation
If the eponymous story of this three-novella collection by prestigious Akutagawa Prize winner Hemmi seems familiar, that's because both Cannes and Toronto film festivals screened the celluloid version in 2001 with a more literal translation of the Japanese title, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge,...
Koko Be Good by Jen Wang
31 Aug, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Young Adult Readers
When I first read Jen Wang’s spirited debut graphic novel, I couldn't help but be reminded of how quirky, unique, and just plain delightful Melanie Griffith once was in Jonathan Demme's 1986 film, Something Wild. Not that the plots are overly similar, but that contagious wild-child spirit infuses...
Revenge by Taslima Nasrin, translated by Honor Moore, with Taslima Nasrin
27 Aug, by in Adult Readers, Bangladeshi, Bangladeshi American, Fiction, Translation
Author/physician/women's rights activist Taslima Nasrin's literary career is perhaps more famous for her detractors' reactions – bannings, book burnings, effigy burnings, fatwas, protests, personal assaults, exile from her home country of Bangladesh – than for the actual words on the page. One always wonders in all...
Author Interview: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni [in Bloomsbury Review]
10 Aug, by in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers
Sharing Humanity: A Talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about Her Latest Novel, One Amazing Thing Over the last decades, tragedies – both human-made and those wrought by an ever-angry Mother Nature – seem to be coming at humankind with fast and furious regularity. The latest oil...
Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows [in Christian Science Monitor]
04 Aug, by in Adult Readers, Chinese, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost
In the book of Exodus in the King James Version of the Bible, Moses first called himself a “stranger in a strange land.” From then on up through Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel of the same phrase, the “stranger in a strange land”-genre has been...
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax
30 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction
If you're a parent, go get this book and start reading NOW. Even if you don't have a son. While you're ordering, make sure to also include Leonard Sax's latest, Girls on the Edge, another life-changing read. If you're a parent, truly, you owe it...
Kobato (vol. 1) presented by CLAMP
29 Jul, by in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
I think this is my introduction to CLAMP, an all-woman collective of manga artists that began in the mid-1980s with varying members through the years, but consistently cranking out high-sales series that often get turned into anime. Go, girls, go! That said, I probably need to...
Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea by Jane Jeong Trenka
25 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction
Jane Jeong Trenka's follow-up to her phenomenal debut memoir, The Language of Blood, is a searing, disturbing account of why transracial adoption does not work. Newly divorced, having severed her relationship with her adoptive parents, escaping from a violent stalker now in jail, Trenka arrives in Korea having...
Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
13 Jul, by in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction
With the publication of her first memoir, Infidel (2007), Ayaan Hirsi Ali spent the better part of a year seeing her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Born in Somalia, at times neglected, abandoned, or abused by her parents, the strictly-raised Muslim child that...
Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls – Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins by Leonard Sax
01 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers
If you're a parent (or a parental figure) to a girl (even if that girl is still an infant!), you MUST read this book. Which means you can stop reading this post here. Go get the book already ...
DupliKate by Cherry Cheva
30 Jun, by in Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Thai American, Young Adult Readers
While I have to confess Cherry Cheva's sophomore novel is not quite the fabulous fun of her 2008 debut, She's So Money, I'll also insist that DupliKate (with the oh so perfect title!) is undoubtedly an entertaining read that will keep you quickly turning the pages. My teenage daughter chose...
How I Made It to Eighteen: a mostly true story by Tracy White
25 Jun, by in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers
Tracy White’s graphic sort-of-autobiography is “only mostly true because I skipped over things, moved events around, embellished, and occasionally just plain made things up,” she explains on the first page. “The technical term for this is dramatic license. I used it,” she adds in the...