29 Wednesday Jun 2022
Posted in anecdotes, Comedy, Non-fiction, United States
This author is a born worrier…about everything….and then she became a parent! From the bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink comes a book that will grab you in and never let you go. Her message: it she can do it, YOU can do it. Rife with humor and clear wisdom.
21 Tuesday Jun 2022
Velvet was the Night follows two main characters in 1970s Mexico: Maite, a secretary who is drawn into a mystery when her neighbor disappears, and Elvis, a young man working for a secret group trying to find that same neighbor. This noir novel is full of suspense, great characters, and an interesting setting.
“[Velvet Was the Night] is a noir with a heart of gold, and it’s a narrative in which the empathy we feel for its characters ultimately reveals an important truth: That Moreno-Garcia is not only a talented storyteller but also an incredibly versatile one.”—NPR
“It’s hard to describe how much fun this novel is. . . . A noir masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Immensely satisfying, refreshingly new and gloriously written . . . Moreno-Garcia mashes up Anglocentric genres with midcentury Mexican history, resulting in a brew flavored with love, heartbreak, violence, music and unsettling dread. . . . The gift of this book, and Moreno-Garcia’s storytelling, is how it imbues this well-worn genre with added strength, grace and even musicality.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A winner that brings together a romance-fiction obsessed secretary and a lovelorn enforcer during the brutally suppressed student riots in 1970s Mexico City.”—Booklist (starred review)
10 Friday Jun 2022
Posted in 20th century, Fiction, United States
You will remember the author’s award winning previous short, spare novels, The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine. In the same vein, her latest takes a spare environment as a metaphor for the fading of the mind of a mother and the daughter that visits too late.
“A quick and tender story of a group of swimmers who cope with the disruption of their routines in various ways . . . Otsuka cleverly uses various points of view: the swimmers’ first-person-plural narration effectively draws the reader into their world, while the second person keenly conveys the experiences of Alice’s daughter, who tries to recoup lost time with her mother after Alice loses hold of her memories and moves into a memory care facility. It’s a brilliant and disarming dive into the characters’ inner worlds.” –Publishers Weekly [starred review]
“Award-winning, best-selling 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 . . . Once more, Otsuka creates an elegiac, devastating masterpiece.” –Booklist [starred review]
“The Swimmers is a slim brilliant novel about the value and beauty of mundane routines that shape our days and identities; or, maybe it’s a novel about the cracks that, inevitably, will one day appear to undermine our own bodies and minds; and — who knows? — it could also be read as a grand parable about the crack in the world wrought by this pandemic . . . Otsuka’s signature spare style as a writer unexpectedly suits her capacious vision . . . The Swimmers has the verve and playfulness of spoken word poetry.” –Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air/NPR
01 Wednesday Jun 2022
Posted in 20th century, Biography, memoir
Tags
autobiography, biography, grief, Japanese Breakfast (Musical group), Korean Americans, Michelle Zauner, mothers and daughters, rock musicians, singers
“Michelle Zauner has written a book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music. She seamlessly blends stories of food and memory, sumptuousness and grief, to weave a complex narrative of loyalty and loss.” —Rachel Syme
“I read Crying in H Mart with my heart in my throat. In this beautifully written memoir, Michelle Zauner has created a gripping, sensuous portrait of an indelible mother-daughter bond that hits all the notes: love, friction, loyalty, grief. All mothers and daughters will recognize themselves—and each other—in these pages.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
“Crying in H Mart is a wonder: A beautiful, deeply moving coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, love and grief, food and identity. It blew me away, even as it broke my heart.” –Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
“Poignant . . . A tender, well-rendered, heart-wrenching account of the way food ties us to those who have passed. The author delivers mouthwatering descriptions of dishes like pajeon, jatjuk, and gimbap, and her storytelling is fluid, honest, and intimate. When a loved one dies, we search all of our senses for signs of their presence. Zauner’s ability to let us in through taste makes her book stand out—she makes us feel like we are in her mother’s kitchen, singing her praises.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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