What we have today is a selection of not very good reviews. Why? Because I'm moving into an apartment that's half the size of my current place. That means that some stuff has got to go. So I'd thought I'd do these reviews before I got rid of the books.

( Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe )

( Waiting for Rain by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay )

( All I Asking for is My Body by Milton Murayama )

( Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan )

puritybrown.livejournal.com

27: The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Thing Around Your Neck is a remarkable book. The stories here are exquisitely written, clear and lucid and so full of brilliant scenes and extraordinary sentences that I am not going to quote any of it because if I let myself start, I'd end up typing out the whole book. The characters are incredibly real, their lives vivid; and there's more. Every time I read a book, I get a glimpse of the author's mind, the frames and filters through which they look at the world; what you might call their "vision". Adichie's vision is startling and breathtaking and true, or in any case it feels true. I get the sense of a writer who does not sacrifice complexity, does not succumb (as one of her characters does) to "the need to smooth out wrinkles, to flatten out things you find too bumpy".

This is a particular concern because, of course, Adichie is Nigerian, African, and is therefore very much alive to the simplifications of her people's history and culture made by outsiders, even well-meaning ones; and by Nigerians, too, who want to shape their country in a particular way that doesn't leave room for certain kinds of people or certain ways of life. More than once her protagonists are faced by people who think they know about "the real Africa" and are unwilling to have their illusions dispelled by the actual knowledge and experience of actual Africans. I think the funniest story in the book, and the most explicitly trenchant, is "Jumping Monkey Hill", in which a Nigerian writer attends an "African Writers' Workshop" arranged by a white Englishman with as much regard for flesh-and-blood Africans as a puppetteer has for the feelings of his puppets.

In fact, it's just occurred to me that one of Adichie's recurring themes is the way in which people see only what they want to see; "Jumping Monkey Hill" is scathing about how this works when the person looking and wanting not to see is in a position of cultural privilege (so that their version of events will be listened to, and will make people doubt their own knowledge, even if they actually know better), but it comes up again and again in these stories; Ukamaka in "The Shivering", for instance, is so preoccupied with her own anger and bitterness over the ending of her relationship that she doesn't notice the much bigger problems that her new friend Chinedu has, until they become impossible to ignore. The other side of this is the way in which people carefully edit themselves for public consumption, not revealing the whole truth; this, too, crops up over and over, most startlingly in "Tomorrow Is Too Far".

The final story, "The Headstrong Historian", is a tribute to Chinua Achebe, and specifically to Things Fall Apart; it tells a similar story of an Igbo village before and during colonisation, although Adichie's angle on what happens is different, focusing on the reframing of Nigerian history rather than on the dismantling of traditional Igbo society. It works as a kind of sequel-in-spirit to Things Fall Apart, in that it lets its story go on after the point where Things Fall Apart ended, and gives the titular historian the chance to reclaim her people's history and decentre the account written by the colonisers. In its own way, fiction can do that kind of work just as history can, and The Thing Around Your Neck is a fine example.

roadrunnertwice

#3: Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (2/17)

From the Dep’t of Books Named After Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”

So I read this ten years ago with very little context and liked it tons, though I was more or less unable to convey its appeal to classmates who didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. I hadn’t thought much about it since. Then, several references (including big structural ones I didn’t even catch until clued in later, h/t where due) to Achebe came up in that collection of Adichie stories I’d just read, and I started to clue in that he was actually basically a literary giant and that it might be a good idea to reacquaint myself with him before delving much further into Nigerian fiction. Plus I’m a sucker for going back a decade in the book log and seeing if I still dig a thing.

I did! It’s fantastic. But everyone here already knew that.

Reams have been written on it, so I’ll try and keep this short; plus, what I like most about the book seems to shift every time I try to write this paragraph. But here’re some things:

The story appears simple, but it simplifies nothing. Contradictions are allowed to stand.
Likewise, the language is meticulously crafted and elegant, while still reading as quickly as one cares to read it.
It accomplishes that crucial feat of tragedy, commanding heartfelt sympathy for a hero who is, arguably, a bad person.
The texture of it is kind of amazing. I have no idea how he generates such a rich sense of place with such spare use of detail; it’s a hell of a thing. The way you can practically feel the rain or the cracked dirt under your feet was a big part of what had me so hypnotized ten years ago.
I love the title and epigraph. I like dragooning a whole work into a different project by quoting a fraction, I like high modernism, I like anticolonialism; there is nothing I don’t like about commandeering high modernism (a reaction to the first World War and the decoherence of European society it presaged) as a lens with which to eyeball colonialism and the decoherence it inflicted on society after society after society. This is all just squee, I don’t have anything actually cogent to say about it. (Bonus: No Longer At Ease does the same with a T.S. Eliot poem.)

This edition was actually a newly-published omnibus that included Arrow of God and No Longer At Ease (with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, hey serendipity), but I was lollygaggin’ and malingerin’ and ended up having to give it back to the library before I could read the other two books. I definitely intend to, though; the introduction made them sound pretty great, and I’m kind of itching for more.

Log Supplemental

Books are nice, but folk also put cool stuff on the internet, so I thought I might link stories and essays here once in a while.

Yoon Ha Lee – “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” (11/27, short story)

Wow! You wouldn’t expect a recycled John Cage gag to be quite so… exhilarating. But wouldja lookit that, thar she blows.

And what a curious way to sail.

Yoon Ha Lee – “Blue Ink” (2/5? short story; also available in podcast flavor)

I dig the Yoon. Her stories do all this intricate puzzlebox-world stuff, with big grinning slithering things just visible through the storm drains and sidewalk cracks.

N.K. Jemisin – various stories (short stories, 2/3 through 2/9, more or less)

Jemisin’s first novel was just about to come out (preview of Things I Read During March: It’s fuckin’ awesome), so I was going through her online short fiction in preparation.

“L’Alchimista” (podcast) — Urban fantasy with high fantasy food values! Why have I never seen THAT before. Also, basically just wonderful. If I had to pick one of these stories to tie you down and force you to read, this is it.
“Bittersweet” — I enjoyed the thinky parts of this (“paying in gen,” the problem space of motivations for shaking off the dust of a small town) more than the feely parts. (That’s not quite accurate: I really liked the stonetalker’s realization of how tired he’d gotten without even noticing. But by and large, this felt too distant.)
“Cloud Dragon Skies” (podcast) — I am extremely conflicted about the ending here. The first half set my brain on fire, though.
“The Brides of Heaven” — This is probably in dialogue with any number of horror stories I know nothing about (plus Planet of the Apes), so YMMV. I didn’t really dig it.
“The Narcomancer” — Some swords and sorcery with a classic sorta feel. Recommended.
“Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows” — This was good for reasons almost unrelated to why anything else in this set was good. I still don’t really know what I think about it, but it definitely struck a chord.
“The You Train” — This played with some ideas that I traditionally like, but it didn’t grab me.
“Red Riding Hood’s Child” (podcast) — SO good. This story was exactly what it should have been. (Warning: buttseks)
“The Efluent Engine” — Steampunk lesbian Haitian spy hero science adventure story of the month! (No really, it’s badass.)
“Non-Zero Probabilities” — An urban anthem, of sorts. *pumps fist*

bell hooks – “Killing Rage” (2/8, essay)

Confronting my rage, witnessing the way it moved me to grow and change, I understood intimately that it had the potential not only to destroy but also to construct. Then and now I understand rage to be a necessary aspect of resistance struggle. Rage can act as a catalyst inspiring courageous action.

Noted.

(Somehow I think I missed reading hooks in college, but since I doubt I’d have really appreciated her at the time, it might be just as well. Anyway, this was a good essay.)

Zadie Smith – “Dead Man Laughing” (2/9, memoir/essay)

A charming and odd and clear-eyed and funny family memoir.

roadrunnertwice

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Thing Around Your Neck - 1/12/2010 (#2)

Adichie first caught my attention with an excellent talk she gave at TED (via deepad). This is a collection of her short stories. (And here is a thing she did for McSweeney's, because why not.)

My favorites of these—possibly not the best, but definitely my favorites—were "On Monday of Last Week" and "Tomorrow Is Too Far;" the former for its unexpected familiarity, and the latter for its alien chill.

"The Headstrong Historian" was also pretty grand, and its prose and voice were wrought into this cool jump-to-hyperspace shape where time kept moving faster and faster, which was an awesome trick because structurally it's an origin story, right, which usually have the reverse shape, except that the character who originates in it is, in fact, dedicated to uncompressing the past (or one of the pasts) and giving it room to finally breathe, which, structural and narrative unison, yey!

And "Jumping Monkey Hill" was both depressing and very very funny, and I kind of want to believe it's a roman à clef about Adichie herself, since that would basically turn the story into an infinitely recursing spiral of META. (Incidentally, is it too late to invent Death Meta? Can I start a band where we get up there and sing about singing about mutilation, and between songs we'll talk about the ways in which various other bands downtune their guitars? Seeking bassist.)

There's a bunch more, it was all pretty good.

Sidebar: Given the recent religious/ethnic violence in Nigeria, it seems like I should have something to say about "A Private Experience," but I don't, really. I actually didn't like it much. I don't like most stories set in pogroms; they just make me heartsick and exhausted, feeling neither entertained nor enlightened. I don't know.

sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com

50books_poc year ends on January 31, and although I have still been reading, I've gotten slack with posting reviews. So here's an 8-book catchup post.

#40 - Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jill Tamaki ( Read more... )

#41 - Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan ( Read more... )

#42 - Papunya School Book of History and Country by the Papunya School community ( Read more... )

#43 - Kampung Boy, by Lat ( Read more... )

#44 - Not Meeting Mr Right, by Anita Heiss ( Read more... )

#45 - The Wheel of Surya, by Jamila Gavin ( Read more... )

#46 - Swallow the Air, by Tara June Winch ( Read more... )

#47 - Love poems and other revolutionary actions, by Roberta (Bobbi) Sykes ( Read more... )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

47. Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

A book of science fiction short stories, but in focusing on more actual science (math, physics, linguistics) and less space ships and laser guns. In a lot of Chiang's stories, a scientific principle or observation becomes a metaphor for something about life: the possibility (or impossibility) of dividing by zero is about a relationship; the angle at which light hits water is about free will and motherhood; lesions in the brain are about the concept of beauty. My favorite two stories are 'The Tower of Babylon' (BRONZE AGE SCIENCE FICTION OMG), which takes the concept of the tower of Babel and looks at what it would be like it people could actually build a tower to heaven, and 'Understand', which is a bit like 'Flowers for Algernon' with a twist: a regular guy becomes incredibly smart due to medical intervention. It's extremely rare to find well-written smart characters, but Chiang does it beautifully. There are several stories where Chiang takes seriously past scientific paradigms, like in 'The Tower of Babylon', which assumes that there actually are a celestial spheres, or another story about Victorian theories of evolution and reproduction.

I really enjoyed these stories. I'm not a big fan of science-fiction in general, but Chiang's style is just awesome.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Football on TV

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: War Dances
Author: Sherman Alexie
Number of Pages: 256 pages
My Rating: 2.5/5

This is a collection of short stories and poems linked mainly by the fact that they're about whiny guys. I don't know. I did like a couple of the stories (especially the last one, Salt, and the title story), but the ones that left a bad taste in my mouth really left a bad taste in my mouth and kind of overpower all the rest. The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless was just gross, and I get that he was supposed to be a gross asshat guy, but I don't really need to read a story about a guy who's just wallowing in his assholishness while going "wah, wah, poor me", you know? I could go anywhere on the internet and find a million of them.

Added to that the fact that I'm not a big fan of poetry and these poems didn't do anything to change my mind, and that the writing itself wasn't that great, this was just really not the book for me. I'm glad this wasn't the first thing of his I ever read, otherwise I'd probably write him off and never read anything of his again.

sanguinity

13. K. Tempest Bradford, "Until Forgiveness Comes."

As Tempest discusses here, this is inspired by, and commentary on, the anniversary ceremony conducted at Ground Zero. As a west-coaster, I am disinclined to make much comment, except to say that Tempest hits themes that matter to me very much.

14. June Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley."

Creative nonfic -- plus something like a sonnet! -- that serves as both a biography of and an ode to Phillis Wheatley, firmly positioning her as "the first" in the "not natural" enterprise of Black poetry in America: the first to negotiate the "difficult miracle" of persisting, regardless of being published, regardless of being loved.

I had never realized, until Jordan pointed it out, that Wheatley's surviving poems are juvenilia, written while she was enslaved and with the blessing and patronage of her owners; the poetry she wrote as a free adult, married to a law student who argued for universal emancipation, was never published. Jordan then draws the line forward to 1985 (the year of this essay's publication), to judging poetry prizes where all of the finalists are white:

But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.

But not otherwise. And yet we persist.

And it was not natural. And she was the first.

whereweather.livejournal.com

#30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia (Vol. 2 in the Luba trilogy; Vol. 21 in the Complete Love & Rockets)

2005 (material originally published 1998-2005), Fantagraphics Books

Warning: Long and obsessive plot details ahead! This is a crazy long book -- 240 pages -- and incredibly dense, for a graphic novel. Also, the storytelling modalities are highly refined and self-referential, full of interweaving, flashback and allusion; and also it's Part 2 of a three-part series-within-a-series. So I take these reviews as an opportunity to parse the plot, to assure myself that I've actually followed what the hell is going on.

So! This is the second part of Gilbert ("Beto") Hernandez's trilogy about the latest adventures of Luba, his protagonist, in America. (For basics about Luba, you can see my earlier post about the previous book in this series.)

At this point in time, Luba and her children are in the United States, but her husband Khamo is stuck in immigration limbo. Luba continues her quest to figure out what she must -- or can -- do in order to untangle his shady past, police record, and hazy criminal associations, so that she can bring him to join them. (Like most of Luba's accomplishments, this is not really hindered -- and is perhaps made more impressive -- by that fact that, like some of the other main characters living in the United States, she still can't speak a word of English.)

Much of this section's narrative mechanics is fueled by the announcement that Ofelia, Luba's long-suffering older cousin, has decided to finally try being the writer she has always wanted to be. This in-progress "book of Ofelia" gives, perhaps, the collection its title, although the phrasing also seems to imply (in its Biblical cadence) that she is instead the main subject of the book. (Except that she isn't, really; she's not present throughout. I keep thinking about the way that, in Spanish -- as I think I understand it, anyway -- this phrase, "el libro de Ofelia," does not make a distinction between the book *by* Ofelia and the book *about* her. So this book, perhaps, is both.)

(On that note: one other thing I like is how much of the book's dialogue and internal thought-monologues are in Spanish. The switches back and forth are frequent but consistent: the Latin American-born children tend to speak in fluent English to each other, but use Spanish with their parents, and to think in it when introspection is called for; the American-born children and adults think in English, although they frequently and fluently use Spanish with their relations. Hernandez indicates the switches with the widely used comics convention of putting the "second-language" dialogue within brackets (and, in this book, some double-bracketing for other languages, like French). When Hernandez' stories were set entirely in the Central American village from which many of the characters hail, he used to just put a note at the bottom of the first page that everything was in Spanish unless otherwise indicated -- a convention that Jaime has also sometimes used, e.g. in stories set among recent immigrants and jornalero workers -- but now that they've migrated to America, there's a lot more use of both tongues.)

So. What's happening in the Book of Ofelia?

( Obsessive plot details! Avoid if you fear spoilers! )

[Tags I'd like to add: a: hernandez gilbert, i: hernandez gilbert, california, children [*not* "children's"], magic realism, disability, meta-literature]

annwfyn.livejournal.com

Just a quick review - 'Arranged Marriage' is a series of short stories by Indian writer Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni. They are good, but I rather wish I'd spread out my reading of them a little more, as Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni's voice is a very distinctive one, and comes through very strongly in each story, which after a while makes the protagonists feel a little more samey than they really should.

However, they are really lovely stories, and did spark a really interesting discussion with my housemate this morning about different cultural expectations and the hurt that can be brought on by assuming that certain priorities/beliefs/expectations are universal. That isn't the only thing that these stories have to say, by any means, but it is something that came out of reading them.

Recommended, but I'd recommend dipping in and out of them a little more than I did.

Current Mood: busy

rootedinsong.livejournal.com

7. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

What everyone else said. I loved this book. There are lots of people I want to give a copy of it to.

8. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie

I found this harder to read than Absolutely True Diary; the writing style was much more opaque, full of long rambling sentences without a comma to be seen. It's also heavy in magic realism, which tends to make a work hard for me to get into.

Something I found interesting about it was the set of elements found in this book also found in Absolutely True Diary, such as having a character with hydrocephalus (I just read his Wikipedia page, and saw that he apparently based this on himself).

There were a few lines that I found striking and thought-provoking, such as this:

They all want to have their vision, to receive their true names, their adult names. That is the problem with Indians these days. They have the same names all their lives. Indians wear their names like a pair of bad shoes.

were-duck.livejournal.com

Wow. This collection is amazing. Adichie makes good use of the form of the short story, with well-wrought characters and just the right balance of detail and compact plotting. The stories all have Nigerian women as protagonists (except for "Ghosts", which featured a Nigerian man), some of whom live in America, many in disappointing marriages or otherwise difficult circumstances. While that could easily become repetitive, the author makes it work well--each woman's voice and situation is distinct, and while many of the stories deal with similar issues, they all approach them in different ways. It's a difficult thing to pull off with a collection of stories, but Adichie succeeds admirably.

There's a sustained note of simmering, tightly restrained outrage held through these stories. The women are often caught by their families, husbands, governments. Their lives are sometimes comfortable, sometimes horrific, and always claustrophobic. The women living in Nigeria witness the horrors of Abacha's regime, of corruption, of the loss of their culture and oppression. The women living in America are silenced, the comforts and memories of home, the details of their culture commodified, twisted, sold back to them by white folks. Each woman reacts to her situation differently, and none of these stories offer right and wrong, or fixes for them. In most cases, we don't even see how it ends up--the time of each piece is restricted to a few days or months, in which the character's dissatisfaction and horror come to a head, she (or he) is finally confronted by it, and then...?

( Cut for rest of review containing a few spoilers for some stories )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

16. Octavia Butler, Bloodchild

This is a book of short stories and essays. I'd never read anything by Butler before, though I know she's very popular, and a book of short stories seemed a good place to start (well, and also the book was sitting right there on the shelf looking at me when I was checking out at the library). The stories are science-fiction, though they range from very similar to the real world (a drug for cancer causes a disease in the children of the people who took it) to very, very different (humans live in a few encampments on a world controlled by giant centipede-like aliens). Unexpectedly, I discovered that I'd actually read two of the stories before, though I have no idea where I would have come across them, since I don't read short stories often. Regardless, they were both excellent, and I was glad to rediscover them. The essays are mostly advice for writers, with one about Butler's own experiences as a science-fiction fan and trying to become a published author.

I really enjoyed this book, and will definitely be reading more of Butler in the future. A lot of people have described her as depressing, but I didn't find these stories to be. Dark, yes, involving people in very bad places, yes, but there always seemed to be a certain... belief in humanity? Or at least in its potential? Not quite sure how to describe what I mean, but these stories didn't come off as depressing to me.

Current Mood: lazy

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: Wish I Was Here
Author: Jackie Kay
Number of Pages: 198 pages
My Rating: 5/5

I didn't enjoy this quite as much as I did Why Don't You Stop Talking, but it's still a really awesome book. I just love the way she writes, her use of language, everything.

As with her previous short story collection, most of these are about queer people (mostly lesbians, though the last story is about gay men), though this time they seem to be mostly not about people of color (only two (IIRC) are specified as being PoC and many are specified as being white, with a few that don't indicate one way or the other).

I think my favorite stories were Wish I Was Here, My Daughter the Fox, and The Mirrored Twins.

Mooch from BookMooch

lehni.livejournal.com

1. Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower
2. Octavia Butler - Parable of the Talents
3. Octavia Butler - Bloodchild and other stories

I'm really grateful to this community for introducing me to Octavia's work. My main delight in discovering her are the strong, complex and not always sympathetic female protagonists in her stories, but I also enjoy the realism she brings in her portrayal of dystopia. Parable of the Talents may come off strongly as anti-Christianity which might bother some readers.

I tried reading the first few hundred pages of The Broken Crown by Michelle Sagara but I found it really cliched and frustratingly difficult to follow. I think that the first ten pages will tell you if it's your kind of book or not.

4. Richard Kiyosaki and Lechter, Sharon - Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Personal finance book with an entrepreneurial slant - I had only heard of the blog before reading this. I don't really agree with most of the advice. Kiyossaki also comes off as anti-'wage slave' which isn't very endearing. This book also had some very negative reviews online. The main personal finance book that I would recommend to most of my friends is still Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin (the 2008 edition has a third author as well).

5. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - Mixed feelings: the complex lives of mixed race Britons

The first third of this book is a brief history of mixed race relationships more globally; almost all of it was new to me and I found it really interesting. The personal anecdotes throughout the book really help to illustrate the diversity of interracial relationships and families, (although granted the majority of interviewees are white/poc and particularly white/black - not necessarily problematic given the methodology of collection; Alibhai-Brown does discuss the need for further research into the mixed race population and notes issues with self-reporting on government ethnic monitoring forms.) I found it a very worthwhile read and the personal stories prevent the content from seeming too dry. Alibhai-Brown does comment occasionally on her own personal situation (she has a white husband and a mixed-race daughter) but it doesn't detract from her research.

6. Tananarive Due - The Good House

Modern horror and a cautionary tale against dabbling in magic. The book centres around Angela and her relationships with her separated husband, her son and an old boyfriend. I found her relationships a bit boring and found it difficult to sympathise with Angela most of the time, but the book was interesting enough to finish.

Before joining this community I read Growing Up Asian in Australia (ed. Alice Pung), which is an anthology of 'growing up' stories written by Asian-Australians. The collection is pretty diverse and includes mixed race, queer and famous contributors (off the top of my head this includes celebrity chef Kylie Kwong and illustrator/writer Shaun Tan). I really recommend it, particularly for fellow Asians who have grown up in western countries.

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

I've spent the last few days at the Hay book festival, and this is one of the books I got there (and went to the connected panel). 'Free?' is a collection of poems and short stories by children's writers, each one inspired one of the articles from the Declaration of Human Rights. The ones by POC authors are below.

( After the Hurricane by Rita Williams-Garcia, inspired by article 13. )

( Uncle Meena by Ibtisam Baraket, inspired by article 18. )

( Searching for a Two-Way Street by Malorie Blackman, inspired by article 19. )

( Jojo Leans to Dance by Meja Mwanji, inspired by article 21. )

( Wherever I Lay Down My Head by Jamila Gavin, inspired by article 22. )

Overall, I loved this and would recommend it to anyone, child or adult. Aside from the authors above it has stories from Michael Morpurgo, Eoin Colfer, David Almond, Patrica McCormick, Roddy Doyle, Theresa Breslin, Ursula Dubosarky, Sarah Mussi, and Margaret Mahy. Almost all feature CoC. Also, it's published by Amnesty International, so by buying it you'll benefit them.

papertigers.livejournal.com

( I really should write my reviews more often )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Dionne Farris - Hopeless

clodia-risa.livejournal.com

Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Pages: 198
Rating: 3 stars

I feel truly ashamed to give a book that won the Pulitzer three stars, but while I recognize that the writing was excellent, the subject matter good, the stories , the balance well kept between the short stories....I didn't really enjoy it. I liked a couple of the short stories, but most of the others I read left me a little cold. Nor did I actively dislike it. I was simply not moved.

The book, I can objectively say, is good. It's a series of short stories about people whose ancestors were from India, living their lives, trying to find satisfaction with whatever they have. Each story is unique, and I daresay interesting. If you were interested in this book, I would tell you to read it. It just wasn't quite for me.

sumofparts.livejournal.com

Product Description (from publisher)
Acclaimed author Thomas King is in fabulous, fantastical form in this bestselling short story collection. From the surreal migrations of the title story to the misadventures of Coyote in the modern world and the chaos of a baby’s unexpected arrival by airmail, King’s tales are deft, hilarious and provocative. A National Post and Quill & Quire bestseller, and an Amazon.ca Top Pick for 2005, A Short History of Indians in Canada is a comic tour de force.

( Cut for potential spoilers )

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Page Summary

veleda-k.livejournal.com - #8-11: Shadow Family, Waiting for Rain, All I Asking for is My Body, Say You're One of Them
puritybrown.livejournal.com - 27: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
roadrunnertwice - #3 and supplemental
roadrunnertwice - The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com - #40 - #47: Tamaki, Tan, Papunya School, Lat, Heiss, Gavin, Winch, Sykes
veleda-k.livejournal.com - Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi and The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters
wordsofastory.livejournal.com - 47. Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com - War Dances by Sherman Alexie
sanguinity - Until Forgiveness Comes; Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley
whereweather.livejournal.com - #30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia, by Gilbert Hernandez
annwfyn.livejournal.com - 'Arranged Marriage' by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni
rootedinsong.livejournal.com - Alexie
were-duck.livejournal.com - The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
wordsofastory.livejournal.com - Octavia Butler, Bloodchild
kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com - Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay
lehni.livejournal.com - Sci-fi, horror, non-fiction 1-6
anitabuchan.livejournal.com - Free? by Rita Williams-Garcia, Ibtisam Barakat, Malorie Blackman, Meja Mwanji, Jamila Gavin
papertigers.livejournal.com - 4-8: Alexie, Giovanni, Bulter, Delany, Rowland
clodia-risa.livejournal.com - Interpreter of Maladies
sumofparts.livejournal.com - 12. A Short History of Indians in Canada

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with short stories

#8-11: Shadow Family, Waiting for Rain, All I Asking for is My Body, Say You're One of Them

27: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#3 and supplemental

#3: Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (2/17)

Log Supplemental

Yoon Ha Lee – “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” (11/27, short story)

Yoon Ha Lee – “Blue Ink” (2/5? short story; also available in podcast flavor)

N.K. Jemisin – various stories (short stories, 2/3 through 2/9, more or less)

bell hooks – “Killing Rage” (2/8, essay)

Zadie Smith – “Dead Man Laughing” (2/9, memoir/essay)

The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Thing Around Your Neck - 1/12/2010 (#2)

#40 - #47: Tamaki, Tan, Papunya School, Lat, Heiss, Gavin, Winch, Sykes

Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi and The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters

47. Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

War Dances by Sherman Alexie

Until Forgiveness Comes; Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley

#30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia, by Gilbert Hernandez

'Arranged Marriage' by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni

Alexie

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Octavia Butler, Bloodchild

Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay

Sci-fi, horror, non-fiction 1-6

Free? by Rita Williams-Garcia, Ibtisam Barakat, Malorie Blackman, Meja Mwanji, Jamila Gavin

4-8: Alexie, Giovanni, Bulter, Delany, Rowland

Interpreter of Maladies

12. A Short History of Indians in Canada