4. The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan

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I’ve read one of Amy Tan’s other books, Saving Fish from Drowning, and I had much the same reaction to it and to The Hundred Secret Senses: entertained, delighted with her excellent prose and grasp of character, and a little stranded by the sense that the story hadn’t quite gone anywhere.

I don’t mean that it didn’t have a theme – The Hundred Secret Senses certainly does, that you shouldn’t be afraid of death or ruin your life by being stuck in the past – but that the plot is very thin. It meanders here and there, and all the meanders are interesting, but when I finish the book I realize that the distance between the beginning and end is so small that it doesn’t seem to justify four hundred pages.

While this kept me from loving The Hundred Secret Senses, I still liked it very much. The characters seem very real, very well-observed; it feels like these people could step off the page and live and breathe. Their hopes, their fears, their insecurities (oh, God, their insecurities; the main character, Olivia, is deeply insecure, and not that adorable movie heroine insecurity, either) – these are the engines that drive the book.

And if it doesn’t drive them as far or as fast as I would like – that’s my problem, not a problem inherent in the book; and its other strengths make up for it.

12. Shipwrecked! Vol. 1 by Hye Na Jung

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So, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to read 20+ books by Aug. 12, my personal deadline, and thus I decided go the less painful route and include manhwa for this challenge. ^^;

Shipwrecked! Summary:

It’s the 17th century, and William’s mother is started to get fed up with her son, who has no job, lies around at home all day, and collects trinkets and objects imported from the East. Spurred on by his mother’s attempts to marry him off, William decides to take his future into his own hands and, with the help of Yan, travel to the Far East, to Nagasaki Japan. However, during sea travel, a storm breaks out and William is washed ashore to a strange land, where a girl finds him and hides him away to try and keep him safe. For he has washed up on the land of Chosun, and no foreigner who stepped on this land has ever been able to return home…

And so begins the adventures of William, and Buh-Jin, the girl who took upon herself to hide this foreigner away. Throw in language barriers, an exiled prince about to get the cultural shock of his lifetime, an omnipresent old man who gets easily distracted by food and the shiny, and a clan of Haenyo, female divers of the Jeju island, and you get Shipwrecked!

I mostly loved this manhwa for the comedy and the cast. Review here

#13-20 book writeups

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13. The Fold by An Na - YA novel on a Korean girl’s decision to get the double eyelid surgery. It was a really breezy read, and I finished the whole novel in one-shot, but… I kept on wishing that An Na did a bit more with the whole perception on beauty and ( spoilers ahoy )

. But beyond that, I did enjoy it. I actually liked how much of a teenager Joyce was, how every little thing was blown up out of proportion and how like, getting her crush to sign her yearbook was such a big deal.

14. Fire From the Rock by Sharon M. Draper - YA Novel set in the late 50s in US, when the transition from segregated schools to schools allowing black kids in was happening. I wished I liked this story more than I did, but I think… I just, don’t like this author’s style? She writes the first half of every chapter in a 3rd person’s POV and then switches to diary format to enforce in our heads how our leading girl Sylvia felt about every little thing. I actually skipped out on almost all the diary parts half way through the book because I just don’t want to hear about Sylvia’s moment of mulling indecision. I prefer my stories to like, show me what happens, and then fill me in on how our protagonist is thinking through dialogue or whatever. Not like this. =/

15. Dragon Road by Laurence Yep - homg, u gaiz, I like, grew up on Laurence Yep’s Golden Mountain Chronicles. So, be forewarned: there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be impartial towards this story. *deep breath* I LOVE THIS BOOK. I’ve been waiting for this to come out for AGES. Child of the Owl was my favourite book in this series and when I found out Yep was going to write this prequel I could have died from pure joy. And it lived up to everything I ever wanted, and more! So many cameo appearances of everyone! <33 Barney and Jean, homg! And usually I don’t do sports novels, but for this story? I was rooting for our lead guy’s basketball team ALL THE WAY. I loved how it portrayed the racism against Asians and other groups in this novel, and how Calvin and Barney used these stereotypes to beat them at their own game. And I looove Calvin, our leading guy, sympathized with all his frustration and there were these moments where he struggled for words to try and convey how much he missed his girl on a postcard and I just melted inside. READ IT. Actually, everyone should just read the entire Golden Mountain Chronicles series, starting with Child of the Owl. I, just - *flails*

(And in conclusion, I suck at summaries.)

16. Shug by Jenny Han - Love, looove this book. Best tween novel EVAR. Girl falls in love with childhood friend and it’s the start of middle school, gooood times. <3 It’s seriously adorable, and I was basically squeeing and cooing at the book the whole way through. Cute and adorable and why aren’t y’all reading this yet?!

17. It’s A Curl Thing by Jacquelin Thomas - When I first picked up this book, I was really just looking for something light and easy to read. I mean, the back cover was all like, homg our main girl got a bad hair job from her sister and its prom night next day WHATEVER SHALL SHE DO!? But then I read it and it surprised me with like, having more depth than I expected, and I was definitely surprised in a good way. She ends up working in a hair salon and interacts with customers and we learn about her ambitions to excel in school and go places and the Holocaust was mentioned, how her life is like living in the lower class and there was death, and it was just a really good read overall. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

18. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa - I never watched the anime when I first picked up this light novel, so I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me. I’m kind of glad I didn’t, upon retrospect, because, seriously? This novel is so crazy, the crack kind of crazy that gets you addicted and begging for MOAR STORY once you’re done. It starts off with the first day in high school and everyone in homeroom goes through the mandatory introduction speech about herself and after our main guy gives his spew, the girl behind him stands up and starts up all normal, saying her name and what middle school she came from. Then, afterwards she’s like, I’m not interested in normal humans, if you are an alien, time traveller or esper TALK TO ME, and yeah, it just goes beyond crazy from there. I love, looove it, and the translation conveyed our main character’s sardonic voice, and I want my sequel NOW.

19. Half World by Hiromi Goto - Very run in the mill children’s fantasy story. Girl grows up thinking she’s normal, then finds out she’s from another world. Her mom gets kidnapped and Girl goes off on a quest to save her and, along the way, save the world. Also gathers friends and collects magical objects, and there be villainous foes, etc. Only thing different is that our leads are Japanese. I thought it was an okay read, but there was this one thing that really, really bugged me. ( spoilers )

Anyhow, I think those who are into children’s fantasy may pick it up, but there isn’t a whole lot in this novel that made itself stand out from all the other books of this genre. =/

20. Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson - I actually liked this novel a lot, even through I read it slow and kept on taking breaks while reading this. Probably because I only really got into the story part way through? ^^; Anyhow, the worldbuilding was excellent, and my favourite part of this novel was how the legends and stories of Tan-Tan grew as she wandered the towns as the Robber Queen. Highly recommended. =D

The Color of Water by James McBride -- 6/50

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The Color of Water: A black man's tribute to his white mother.
James McBride.

James McBride's mother, a white Jewish girl who grew up in the Segregated South, went over to the black side, as she put it.  She had a romance with a young black man at a time and in a place where that could mean death and ultimately moved to Harlem, married a black man in 1942, embraced his faith, married another after the first died and raised twelve black children.  A strong personality who described herself as light skinned, she was a woman of faith and practicality and driving belief in education who raised her children to see themselves as black Christians in a largely hostile white world and pushed them to succeed in that world. 

McBride places his own memories of growing up next to his mother's monologue about her own life.  This is very effective.  Both stories are interesting and engaging and illuminate each other, encouraging thoughtful reflection on race, class, religion, identity, family, and the effects of abuse.  I loved the depiction of both McBride's father and stepfather.  The nuances in McBride's picture of his mother's family that he gained by his research was also quite interesting.  The book is full of powerful personalities that I wanted to know more about, especially his older brothers and sisters and their activities for the civil rights movement.

There's a lot I could quote from the book, but I found one paragraph that shines a quick light on the way white and black relate in this country and on the life and personality of McBride's mother herself.  She had been hurt by the new minister of the church that she and her husband had founded forty years before.  He had "treated her like an outsider, a foreigner, a white person, greeting her after the service with the obsequious smile and false sincerity that blacks reserve for white folks when they don't know them well or don't trust them, or both.... Ma was so hurt she resolved never to go back there again, a promise she broke again and again, braving the two-hour subway and train commute from her home in Ewing,  New Jersey, to sit in church, the only white person in the room, a stranger in the very church that she started in her living room." 

 I thought this was a great read.

ETA: I found this quote on Wikipedia which amused me: "I thought it would be received well in the black community but it's sold much better in the white Jewish community," he said. "Most of my readers are middle-age, white, Jewish women...."

Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Skim; Malcolm Gladwell, Blink

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23. Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Skim

This is a graphic novel about Skim, a Japanese-Canadian teenage girl dealing with her parents' divorce, her rough relationship with her best friend, the suicide of another student, learning about Wicca, and oh, yeah, falling in love with her female teacher.

A lot of other people have reviewed this book, and I don't really have much to add. The art was gorgeous, plain black and white lines that went from sparse to lush. The story-telling is excellent, particularly in its use of silence, or understatement, to capture emotion. And personally, I really identified with Skim's interest in Wicca; I was totally that teenage girl.

Overall, a really lovely, quiet book, though one that didn't involve me too emotionally.




24. Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

I read this back in January and forgot to review it, so I will try to remember what I can. This is a nonfiction pop book about first impressions- why we get them, how they form, how they affect our thinking, if they're right, etc. It's an interesting topic. Gladwell's careful to look at both sides of the argument: when subconscious reactions are good, because there's not enough time to think a question through; and when they can be very, very bad- he examines the case of Amadou Diallo, a black unarmed man who was fatally shot by police officers.

Overall, this was a fun, informative book. I gulped it down in one sitting over an afternoon, so it's not a deep thought book, but one I enjoyed reading.

"Soul Song" by Marjorie M Lui (21)

[alias_sqbr]

She's a fiddle player with Voodoo magic, he's a sex slave Merman. They fight crime!

Overall I thought this was ok but underwhelming. I wrote a short review on my lj.

A question for people who've read more of her books (the only other I've read is "Red Heart of Jade"): do all her couples fall immediately in love the moment they meet? I didn't mind in "Red Heart.." since they were childhood sweethearts, but I didn't really believe it in this one, and I vaguely recall someone complaining about a similar problem with another of her books. Given that these are romance novels it's not much fun if I find the romance unengaging :/