50books_poc | Some Recent Tweets from My Book-a-Day Twitter Project

(These are all quite short, because Twitter's limit is 140 characters.)

The Ex Chronicles by Carol Taylor
New York: Penguin USA
February 2010

STYLISH, SEXY women's fic with a mostly black cast is like a more sophisticated "Sex and the City". Great fun! B PLUS

(More thoughts: This is really well-written, extremely cosmopolitan brain candy. If you're looking for a beautifully crafted fun read and you like the "romantic misadventures of successful city women" subgenre, I recommend this book to you. There are some missteps: an odd depiction of an otherwise very interesting Japanese-from-Japan character's idiosyncratic English syntax seemed to me to border on caricature; also, there's some really bad French spoken by characters who are alleged to be fluent in the language.)

Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster
Winnetka, CA: Norilana Books
July 2009

THOUGHTFUL WRITING, strong female characters shine in Eugie Foster's twists on East Asian myths and legends. SOLID B

(More thoughts: The subtitle really put me off. However, Foster [who self-identifies as Chinese-American] seems to have done a lot of research into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology and drawn on it wisely in her retellings of myths and legends, which is a genre I adore.)

Corner Shop by Roopa Farooki
New York: St. Martin's Press
February 2009

CHARMING, IF SLIGHT, story of a very English boy coping with the woes of his French and Bangladeshi parents. SOLID B

(More thoughts: This book was at its best when talking about the central character, Lucky, and the ways in which his classmates react to his "foreigner" parents with casual racism and xenophobia, even though he is himself completely enamored with mainstream English culture--especially football a/k/a soccer. It main drawback was a less-than-fully realized and soap-opera-ish plot. But if you like Maeve Binchy et al. and want to read a book in that vein about characters of color, this might work for you. The writing and detail are quite sharp.)

Possible tags: Taylor, Carol; African-American; novels; Foster, Eugie; Chinese-American; Asian-American; fantasy; short stories; Farooki, Roopa; British-Pakistani; Pakistani