Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
Here’s my latest library loot:
The Grub Hunter – Amir Tag Elsir
To fulfil a reading challenge task of a book set in Sudan.
Hallucinations – Oliver Sacks
I’ve been going through my TBR tags on Libby and picking books from there to read. I’ve read a couple of other Sacks’ books, Musicophilia and The Mind’s Eye. So am looking forward to this one.
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
From the synopsis: In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century’s most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten – until now.
Kindling – Traci Chee
Ah, so the kindling are these elite, magic-wielding teen soldiers. It’s set in a war-torn where the use of these kindlings is banned
“How could anyone describe the chaos that had descended on the Chao household as soon as James left home for college?”
In the small town of Haven, Wisconsin, oldest of three brothers, Dagou works at the family restaurant, and wants their father, Leo, to make him a partner in the business. Never going to happen. Dagou (which means big dog – his name is William but no one calls him that) tried to make it in New York. It didn’t work out so his past six years have him working at the family restaurant.
“The first son is raised to be the savior of the family: the bringer of justice, the righteous achiever who will justify each year of labor and sacrifice”, but their father thinks Dagou worthless, good for nothing. Leo Chao himself seems rather vile. He tells crude jokes, puts down his own children far too easily. He is cruel and mean. Their mother has given herself to religion.
Second son Ming is doing well for himself, in terms of making money away from his family, but he struggles with his Chinese identity. Youngest son James is a medical student, a sweet and kind young man, who often finds himself playing peacemaker.
“There are only certain times in life when emergence is possible. The life strategy for children of immigrants, starting with nothing, is to use that time to build social, educational, and financial capital on which to ride out the rest of their lives.”
I didn’t know about the connection to The Brothers Karamazov until about halfway into the book and an article title “The Curious Case of ‘The Brothers Karamahjong.’” pops up. I only know vaguely of the Dostoevsky classic, so I had to look it up. Would I have appreciated this more if I had read the classic? It was a struggle to read, as the characters were rather unappealing. But I appreciated this look into Chinese family life in a small town, murdered patriarch otherwise. The trial in particular brings to light the prejudices that immigrant families face in small town America.
The Family Chao is a layered, complicated book. It is a considered look into personal identity vs filial piety and Chinese family expectations. The thought that the Chaos are chaos tickled me though.
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
Here’s my latest library loot:
The Accidental Alchemist – Gigi Pandian
I was intrigued by the starting line of the synopsis, in which a stowaway is a living, breathing, three-and-half-foot gargoyle!
Love Marriage – V V Ganeshananthan
A book that’s been on my Libby tbr list for a long time!
Poet Warrior – Joy Harjo
Harjo was the first Native American to become US poet laureate and this is her story
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
I saw this on the New Arrivals shelves, and wasn’t sure if I had read anything by Sahota before, but had heard of his name. Turns out Sahota wrote The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker some years ago, but I haven’t read that either.
Hao: Stories – Ye Chun
A collection of short stories that revolves around Chinese women. I read the first one already and loved it, it’s about a woman who has a stroke and loses her ability to speak. The only word she can say is “hao” or good in Chinese. I love how the relationship with her young daughter changes, her daughter now is the one who reads to her mother before sleep, helping encourage her to speak again. If the rest of the stories are of the same calibre, I definitely think this may be one of the best books of the first half of my 2024 reading!
The Right Notes – Dominic Lim
Found this book on a display featuring books by Asian American writers for AAPI Heritage Month! This one is an LGBTQ+ romance that features a genius pianist and a Hollywood heartthrob.
Ghost Town – Kevin Chen
Written by a Taiwanese author, this book features the longed for son (with seven sisters), who runs away from his village in Taiwan to Berlin, where he tries to find acceptance as a gay man.
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
Here’s my latest library loot:
The Obsession – Jesse Q Sutanto
I was looking for a book to fit “academic thriller” prompt for a reading challenge, and this is set in a private school, so hopefully that works!
Extremely Online – Taylor Lorenz
Another reading challenge prompt to fulfil, this time on social media or technology. I’m a bit turned off by the cover, but I’ll push through 😛
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
A Chinese American family grapples with the dark undercurrents in a small town after the patriarch is found dead.
Kween – Vichet Chum
A YA story by a Cambodian-American author. As it’s AAPI heritage month in the US, I wanted to try to read more books by Southeast Asian-American authors, who tend to be overlooked.
The Art of Prophecy – Wesley Chu
First of all, I was attracted to that great cover. Then I realised it had to do with wuxia and a wrong prophecy, and was even more excited to borrow it.
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Happy Wednesday! What did you get from your library this week?
Here’s my latest library loot:
The Cemetery of Untold Stories – Julia Alvarez
A woman inherits land in the Dominican Republic, and turns it into a graveyard for her manuscript drafts and the characters who still haunt her.
Confrontations – Simone Atangana Bekono, translated from the Dutch by Suzanne Heukensfeldt Jansen
I hadn’t heard of this book or author before, so I was glad to have chanced upon it on the New Arrivals shelves. I started reading this one already, and it’s a well-told story about a young woman in juvenile detention. She is in for six months for a violent crime.
Stars in Your Eyes – Kacen Callender
I enjoyed Callender’s Felix Ever After and was happy to find this on the fiction shelves. It’s a fake-dating story with two actors, one who is Hollywood’s bad boy and the other is an up-and-coming newbie.
I also borrowed some books for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month:
The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee – Ellen Oh
A Korean American teenage artist gets sucked into the world of her own web comic. Sounds cute!
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop – Hwang Bo-reum, translated from the Korean by Shanna Tan
It’s one of those heartwarming stories set in a bookstore, so it’s definitely going to be popular with booklovers! I was interested in this also because the translator is Singaporean.
This book just was so hard to get through, despite its short chapters (more like vignettes that skip back and forth throughout the timeline) and 224 pages. It’s a story about suicide, the loss of a twin, coming to terms with death and grief. It’s not a book that anyone can say that they enjoy, since it is such a heavy topic, but it was simply told, and there was beauty in simplicity. It’s a hard read though, and won’t be for everyone.
What I’d Rather Not Talk About is shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
Real Life Reading 