2010-01-06

All books I'd picked up because of recs on this community.

Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses. I picked this up because of

puritybrown’s enthusiastic review –- and am very glad I did. About a woman, Aasmaani, in Pakistan, whose mother was a radical activist, and is now missing; her mother's lover, the Poet, murdered; and how Aasmaani deals and fails to deal with these stories, especially when new information comes to light that challenges her beliefs about the past… It's well written, it's complex and different, and every character feels so clearly a part of their world and their community. I definitely want to read more books by her, although I also feel I should read more explicit Pakistani history first.

( Spoilers for ending. )

Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix. Ai Ling sets out to look for her father and ends up on a quest through a medieval/mythic China that involves multiple encounters with bizarre and fantastic creatures, various gods, and two brothers on a quest of their own that intersects with hers. ( Discussion of ending. )

American-born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang. Overall, I liked this, and the art, but I found the Jin Wang American high school angst storyline the least appealing of the lot. Partly, this is because I feel like I’ve seen it too many times before, and it’s always a straight male teenage angst US high school thing within which all the women become weirdly two dimensional (arggh. Apart from being a comic) and shiny quest objects. Partly, though, it just felt less real – and less interesting – than the monkey king and Chin-Kee storylines – as if the author were relying on a cliché rather than transforming it.

I do like Wei-Chen's line about Jin's hair looking like a broccoli, though.

2010-01-06

So far -- one novel, two short stories.

14-16/50, Shamsie, Pon, Yang