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click to enlarge This week I read Mingmei Yip’s beautiful novel, Petals from the Sky (Kensington Books, 2010). I felt drawn to her book before I even opened it. She’d taught at my graduate school alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong, and now lives in New York, my favorite city in the US. But to [...] Hong Kong by Jan Morris My 1990 Hong Kong retrospective wouldn’t be complete without a book review. While I didn’t read Jan Morris’s Hong Kong (Vintage, 1997) this week, I did read an earlier version back in 1990. For anyone who’s been to Hong Kong or who wants to learn more about it, Morris’s Hong Kong [...] The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai Earlier this month I came across a new author, Ruiyan Xu, on GoodReads.com. I’m always on the lookout for new Chinese authors, so I entered the raffle for her debut novel, The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai (St. Martin’s, 2010). Lucky me. I won an advance readers’ copy. So [...] The Man in the Wooden Hat Several years ago I read a highly anticipated novel called Old Filth (Europa Editions, 2006) by Jane Gardam. Filth, the acronym for Failed in London Try Hong Kong, is also the nickname of the novel’s protagonist. My memory is bit clouded, and I can’t remember all the details from Old [...] click to enlarge This week I read the much talked about debut thriller from Lisa Brackmann, Rock Paper Tiger (Soho Press, 2010). Soho Press has been great to authors who write about China. They’ve published the edgy mysteries by Xiaolong Qiu and Aisling Juan Juan Shen’s riveting memoir, A Tiger’s Heart. And now they have another [...] Rainbow's End by Lauren St John Ah, another memoir of growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. I just can’t get enough. This week I read my 5th in this genre, Lauren St John’s Rainbow’s End (Scribner, 2007). St John grows up on a farm in rural Rhodesia, before the war in the late 1970s that would end white rule [...] click to enlarge This week I ventured much closer to home. In fact, I read a book that takes place in Chicago and my hometown of Evanston. You can’t get much closer than that. I’d read rave reviews of Katherine Shonk’s debut novel, Happy Now? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and recognized her name from high [...] The Last Resort This week I read another memoir about Zimbabwe. It’s my fourth and I can’t get enough. In The Last Resort (Crown, 2009), travel writer Douglas Rogers chronicles his parents’ downward spiral as life in Zimbabwe falls apart. Like Peter Godwin’s memoir, When the Crocodile Eats the Sun (which I reviewed a few months ago), [...] Revolution is Not a Dinner Party Last week marked the 13th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. To honor that historic date (July 1st), I read Revolution is Not a Dinner Party (Henry Holt, 2007) by Ying Chang Compestine. Because without the Cultural Revolution–the setting of this young adult novel–would there really have been much [...] Something Red by Jennifer Gilmore With all the news about Russian spies this week, it seems so a propos that I just finished Something Red by Jennifer Gilmore (Scribner, 2010). I certainly love a good Cold War story. The colder, the better. Set during the end of the Carter administration, Gilmore’s story chronicles the personal crises of [...] |
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Copyright © 2010 Susan Blumberg-Kason - All Rights Reserved |
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