Convenience Store Woman

Fiction by Sayaka Murata
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Okay, number one: Is this the cutest book cover you've ever seen, or what?

This was an interesting short novel about a woman called Keiko who seems to have some form of undiagnosed autism, and who works at a convenience store, of course. Keiko loves working at the store and doesn't understand why everyone thinks it's not normal to keep doing the same part-time, "dead-end" job for eighteen years.

Keiko feels safe and at home in the store, where the expectations are clear, but she is less comfortable in the outside world, where people seem to have so many unwritten rules about who she "should" be. Even her family hope for her to be "cured" so she can be "normal," which apparently means: Get a real job and pursue a career, and/or get married and start a family.

I loved the character of Keiko! I just wanted to jump into the book, give her a hug, and tell her it's okay to just be who you are. But of course she has to figure that out for herself...

I recommend this quick-read novella! I did wish it were longer.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

 Fiction by Jesse Q. Sutanto

https://www.audible.com

Vera Wong is an old Chinese lady who runs a teashop and is smarter than almost everyone else. At least, according to her own opinion she is. So when she finds a dead man in her tea shop one morning, she already knows that she will be better at solving the murder case than the police.

This was a fun and lighthearted mystery. It was a little too slow for an audiobook.

I also read by this author: Dial A For Aunties

Lady Tan's Circle of Women

 Fiction by Lisa See

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the story of Tan Yunxian, a real Chinese lady in the fifteenth century who studied women's medicine and wrote a book about her treatments. It's amazing to think of someone (a female!) that long ago working successfully in medicine.

As is usual for this author, the ancient characters come to life for the reader as the story unfolds. It's a good book!

I also read recently by this author: This Island of Sea Women

The Mask Carver's Son

 Fiction by Alison Richman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I tried really hard to like this book; I actually read over half of it.

It just stayed boring.

Yellowface

 Fiction by R.F. Kuang

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

June and Athena are both writers and they’re sort-of friends. That is, they went to school together and have known each other for nearly ten years, going for drinks occasionally and hanging out. But they don’t appear to actually like each other.

The main problem is that Athena is successful and June is… not. Then one day June sees an opportunity to change that and she seizes it. What follows is a story that gave me a lot of secondhand embarrassment and Oh-No-I-Can’t-Look Syndrome.** 

Still, it was an interesting story and I did finish it. I can't really say I liked it...

** Oh-No-I-Can't-Look Syndrome

(See After Anna by Lisa Scottoline)

That's when you know a main character is making a major error in judgement that's going to have huge and terrible consequences.

This Time Will Be Different

 Fiction by Misa Sigiura

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Seventeen-year-old CJ Katsuyama has recently discovered a love of flowers while helping her Aunt Hannah in the family flower shop. But her mother has much bigger ambitions; she wants CJ to go to business or law school and Make Something of Herself. In the meantime, Aunt Hannah has also hired a very cute boy to help in the shop as well. Also, CJ 's mother has never told her who her father is...

All of these elements are part of a normal mix for a coming-of-age story; what makes this book different is the characters. I really liked CJ and wanted her to find herself. 

There's also the added element of  CJ's Japanese heritage; the family flower shop is so much more than just a store to the Katsuyamas. The business had been stolen from CJ's great-grandparents during the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two and finally bought back by the family thirty years later. But now it seems they may lose it again.

This was a good story and I liked it. It did seem to have some awfully mature elements for a YA novel, so it's definitely for older teens.

The Family Chao

 Fiction by Lan Samantha Chang

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In the small town of Haven, Wisconsin, there is a family-owned restaurant called Fine Chao, run by Leo and Winnie Chao and their three sons. Leo and Winnie came from China to make their fortune in America, and to give their children a better life. On the surface they succeeded: their three sons seem successful, or at least on the the road to success. Dagou, the oldest son, is a manager and cook at the restaurant; Ming, the second brother, has a high-paying career in the city; and the youngest boy James is studying to be a doctor.

But the problem is, Leo Chao is a jerk. He is such a jerk that his own wife has literally entered a Buddhist convent to get away from him. Mostly just his own family know about Leo’s unpleasantness, but the small Chinese community in the area are also aware that he is far from a model minority. 

The concept of “model minority” is important in this book. Although it’s not something I’ve thought about before, it’s true that we as Americans like to stereotype Asians as a “good” minority and other ethnicities as “bad” minorities. Asians are supposed to be hard working, high achieving, family oriented, and so on. But the whole idea is rather ridiculous when you look closely at it. Human beings are so much more complex than that! We are not socks to be sorted.

In this story, all three Chao sons feel the pressure to be “good” Asians, which is not necessarily the same as just being good people. But everything comes to a head at the Christmas party, and chaos ensues. 

(Incidentally it took me halfway through the book to realize that the name Chao when pluralized spells Chaos. I’ve got to hand it to the author on that bit of cleverness!)

This was a good story with great characters. The surprise in the middle is really unexpected, and there was a lot to think about. I recommend this book!

Dial A for Aunties

 Fiction by Jesse Suanto

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Medi is a twenty-something photographer who is alternately embracing and being smothered by her Indo-Chinese mother and three aunties. All five women are in a wedding business together, and when a huge weekend event comes up, the last thing they need is any complications. And things are right on track for a trouble-free time, just as soon as they get rid of an unexpected dead body...

This was a fun and light story, although I might have enjoyed it better in print rather that on audible.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

 Nonfiction by Anne Faidman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lia Lee was born in Merced, California, in 1982, the twelfth child of parents who were in a large group of Hmong refugees who had fled Laos and Vietnam. Lia was born with epilepsy, which in the Hmong language is literally translated as “the spirit catches you and you fall down,” and is in their culture often a sign of a shaman. 

Still, Lia’s seizures are severe and terrifying, and her parents are in and out of the Merced County Hospital ER many times. But there follows a huge culture clash between American medical care and the traditional Hmong ideas of treatment. Both Mr. and Mrs. Lee and the hospital care team subsequently blame each other bitterly for Lia’s failure to get better. 

This story is about why they are both wrong to blame the other, but at the same time it is about why neither side is at fault. It’s a really interesting book. 

The Travelling Cat Chronicles

 Fiction by Hiro Arikawa

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a different sort of story: it was written in Japanese and from the point of view of a cat. (Obviously I read the version that had been translated into English.)

The cat is called Nana. He was a stray but got adopted by a man called Satoru. After several years together, Nana and Satoru go on a journey around Japan together to visit old friends. Satoru says he is looking for a new home for the cat, but it appears to the reader that he may have another goal.

This was a sweet story and a quick read.

Free Food For Millionaires

Fiction by Min Jin Lee

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Casey Han is a Korean-American girl in New York City trying to remain true to herself, while being pulled in different directions by her traditional parents' and modern society's expectations.

This was a really good character story. I liked Casey and wanted things to work out well for her, and her sister and best friend too. It was a long book and held my attention well. I enjoyed it, although I was not completely happy with the ending.

I liked the other book I read by this author better (see below), maybe because it was historical.

I also read by this author: Pachincko

The Girl With Seven Names

Subtitled: A North Korean Defector's Story
Nonfiction by Hyeonseo Lee

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

My aunt recommended this book to me when we were talking about "True Harrowing Ordeal" stories. (I recommended The Sound of Gravel to her.)

In this book, the author herself is "the girl with seven names," because she had to change her name several times while escaping North Korea, which is indeed a terrible place. It was very interesting to read about, although difficult and sad of course. Ms. Lee now works to support human rights, and seems like an amazing person.

This was a very good story.

If You Leave Me

Fiction by Crystal Hana Kim

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story begins in 1951 with a sixteen-year-old girl called Haemi living with her mother and sickly younger brother as refugees in Busan, Korea. She tries to forget the woes of her war-torn country by sneaking around with a boy from her home village, but her mother has plans for her to marry another young man who can save the family from starvation and ruin.

This was a really good book with a lot of insight into Korea before, after, and during the war.

Pachincko

Fiction by Min Jin Lee

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story, set in Korea and Japan and spanning most of the twentieth century, follows a wonderful character called Sun-Ja through most of her life. It's very very good; it reminds me of the work of Lisa See and Amy Tan, my favorite Asian authors.

I highly recommend this book!

Killing Commendatore

Fiction by Haruki Murakami.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Translated into English, this book covers close to 700 pages; I don't know how long the original Japanese text was. IQ84, which I read several years ago, (see below) was of a similar size and was well worth the reading; it was a great story. On the strength of my memory of that book by the same author, I read this whole book (it took me almost two weeks), waiting for it to get interesting.

It didn't. Not really.

The characters were okay, but nothing much happened to them, and what did happen just didn't make any sense. It could be that the whole story took place inside the main character's head. The only things I know actually happened: At the beginning of the book, the main character's wife divorced him for no reason. At the end of the book they got back together, also for no discernible reason.

Lest you think this is a spoiler: it isn't. He actually says near the beginning of the story that they would get back together at the end.

I can't recommend this book, even though I really have enjoyed others by this author. Sorry. But I did finish it...

I also read by this author: Norwegian Wood, IQ84

The Island of Sea Women

Fiction by Lisa See.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

I have already mentioned that I love Lisa See. So when I saw that she had a new book coming out, I jumped to get it. I expected a good story, probably about Asian (most likely Chinese) women, but I did not expect how different this one would be.

This book is set on the island of Jeju, which is off the coast of Korea, where the traditional society is very different from all the rest of Korea, or indeed most of Asia, and the world. The "sea women" mentioned in the title are traditional female divers who earned money for their families by harvesting sea creatures, while husbands watched their babies and cooked dinner at home. The story focuses mostly on a girl called Young-Sook from 1938-2008. It is fascinating!

One thing I was not prepared for is the atrocities committed after World War Two in this area, the memory of which was subsequently suppressed for over fifty years. It's terrible to think about the lives of innocent people lost. We like to believe that the Nazis were the only ones murdering huge groups of people, (oh, and Stalin, too) but these kinds of things crop up again and again in history. It's important to remember and not to repeat the evils of the past.

This was a wonderful character story, all in all, giving me a glimpse of a people very different from anything I've ever known, and yet still like me inside.

I highly recommend this book.

I also read recently by this author: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Fiction by Lisa See


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I have read everything I can find by Lisa See, and loved it, so I was excited to get this new book. It's as good as I expected, a story about a girl born in modern (late-twentieth-century) China but in a hill village so remote that she might have been born hundreds of years ago.

There are many different Chinese minorities, apparently, and they all have their own customs and ways. I did not realize how diverse a country China really is, although it should have been obvious, just based on how huge it is. Even the appearance that we think of as "Chinese" is only representative of one kind of ethnicity, called "Han majority" in this book. One of the ideas explored in this story is the difficulty of maintaining these small authentic cultures in the modern world.

Another thing the book talks about that I hadn't really thought about has to do with all this Chinese girls adopted by Americans in the past thirty years or so. How do these girls feel about all of this? Not to mention all of the young men growing up as only sons in China with no suitable wives around.  The One Child policy doesn't seem to have turned out as well as it could have. It is a lot to think about.

All of that aside, this is a great story about mothers and daughters that is worth reading.

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

Fiction by Kelli Estes


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is a story told from two perspectives: a modern white woman and a nineteenth-century Chinese woman. Both women are in Seattle and the surrounding waters.

I really liked the story of Mei Lien in the past, but the modern story was much less compelling. The book is definitely worth reading for the historical information, however. The facts are altered a bit to suit the author's setting, but the essential history told of Chinese immigrant persecution is true.

The Wangs vs. the World

Fiction by Jade Chang.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I just could not get into this book. I'm not sure why; I think it was that I didn't like the characters. And it's a library book, and I'm just going to give up and take it back....

China Rich Girlfriend

Fiction by Kevin Kwan


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a super fun book with a good plot and amusing characters. It's about the super-rich of Singapore, Hong Kong, and China. (Think Jackie Collins, but with Asians.)

It's a sequel to Crazy Rich Asians (see below), so read that one first for best enjoyment.


I also read by this author: Crazy Rich Asians