Thursday, December 31, 2020

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

A first-generation Chinese-American woman recounts growing up in America within a tradition-bound Chinese family, and confronted with Chinese ghosts from the past and non-Chinese ghosts of the present.

 “A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter

Named by The New York Times as one of the 50 best memoirs of the last 50 years.

In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. 

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present.

204 pages (May 1976)

 
 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 
 
Excerpt from Maxine Hong Kingston Talking Story from KQED Arts:

 
Excerpts from The Woman Warrior from SilvereyedKing:
 
Celeste Ng and Maxine Hong Kingston answer your questions about The Woman Warrior from PBS NewsHour:

Title Read-alikes: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan; The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan; The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min; Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas; American Like Me: reflections on life between cultures; Dimestore by Lee Smith; The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee by Rekdal Paisley; Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart; No-No Boy by John Okada; Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee; Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko; and Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker

From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.


493 pages (October 2019)


To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 

Northwest Passages Book Club: Author Libbie Grant (Olivia Hawker) (The Spokesman-Review)


Title Read-alikes; These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner; Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon; Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer; The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd; The Beekeeper's Promise by Fiona Valpy; The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; O Pioneers! by Willa Cather; Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde; Caroline by Sarah Elizabeth Miller; and River with No Bridge by Karen Willis.

Monday, December 28, 2020

Red at the Bone: a novel by Jacqueline Woodson

An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.

As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

208 pages (September 2019)


To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
Review from NPR


Jacqueline Woodson - Red at the Bone and Creating Empathy via Complex Stories | The Daily Show with Trevor Noah:


This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: Dominicana by Angie Cruz; Transcendent Kingdom; by Yaa Gyasi; God Help the Child by Toni Morrison; The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende; The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan; Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson; The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card; The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao; and If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

A Natural History of the Senses is a vibrant celebration of our ability to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see. Poet, pilot, naturalist, journalist, essayist, and explorer, Diane Ackerman weaves together scientific fact with lore, history, and voluptuous description. The resulting work is a startling and enchanting account of how human beings experience and savor the world.

It asks and answers such questions as: How do perfumers know which scents allure? Why does music move us? How did kissing on the mouth begin? What is our craving for chocolate? It illuminates the phenomenon of pheromones and looks into the question of whether they control us. Incorporated in its superb reporting and splendid prose are fascinating facts: Humans have about 10,000 taste buds, cows 25,000.  What are they tasting, and what are we missing? It probes such everyday mysteries as why leaves turn color in the fall and why we see them in color; and what it is that causes lovers to feel delight when they touch.

A Natural History of the Senses is at once an ingenuous exploration of the physical processes underlying our perceptions and an eloquent ode to life  a rare combination of science and poetry.

331 pages (May 1990)

 
 
A Natural History of the Senses (from the author's webpage) 
 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 
Video Book Review from Karen Evans:

A Natural History of the Senses Great Books Lecture from Johnson County Community College:

 
Title Read-alikes: The Sensational Past by Carolyn Purnell; The Planets by Dava Sobel; Touch by David Linden; Sapiens by Yaval N. Harari; The Scent of Desire by Rachel Herz; Brain Sense by Faith Hickman Byrnie; The Smell of Fresh Rain by Barney Shaw; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard; Flavor by Bob Holmes; Smellosophy by A. S. Barwich; The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser; and A Year in the World by Frances Mayes.

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Song of a Captive Bird: a novel by Jasmin Darznik

A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing poet Forugh Farrokhzhad, who defied Iranian society to find her voice and her destiny

“Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”—Forugh Farrokhzad

All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh is told that Iranian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel—gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother’s walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. It’s during the summer of 1950 that Forugh’s passion for poetry really takes flight—and that tradition seeks to clip her wings.

Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Forugh’s poems are considered both scandalous and brilliant; she is heralded by some as a national treasure, vilified by others as a demon influenced by the West. She perseveres, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules—at enormous cost. But the power of her writing grows only stronger amid the upheaval of the Iranian revolution.

Inspired by Forugh Farrokhzad’s verse, letters, films, and interviews—and including original translations of her poems—Jasmin Darznik has written a haunting novel, using the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran—and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world..

401 pages (February 2018)
 

 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
Jasmin Darznik reads from Song of a Captive Bird at The San Fransisco Public Library:

This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
 
Title Read-alikes: In the City of Gold and Silver by Kenize Mourad; The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi; The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman; The Book of V. by Anna Solomon; The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg; and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Dutch House: a novel by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett, the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder, returns with her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go.

"'Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?' I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer."

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. Filled with suspense, you may read it quickly to find out what happens, but what happens to Danny and Maeve will stay with you for a very long time.

352 pages (September 2019)


 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
Review from NPR


Ann Patchett on The Dutch House:

This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
 
Title Read-alikes: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin; Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner; The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid; Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout; The Turner House by Angela Flournoy; The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray; The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo; and The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

A sweeping historical novel about a dance-hall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers, set in 1930s Malaysia. Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.

Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever.

As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths wracks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.

Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love. But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming of age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.
 
400 pages (February 2019)


 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.) 
 

Chapter 1 of The Night Tiger read by the author at a Singaporean bookstore "Meet the Author" event:

This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
 
Title Read-alikes: Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan; Ghost Eater by Frederick Highland; The Garden of Evening Mists by Twan Eng Tan; The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden; Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord; Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu; Empire of Sand Tasha Suri; A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes; and The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan.

Monday, August 3, 2020

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

A richly imagined, powerful new novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious.

On a dark midwinter's night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed.

Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless.

Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son's secret liaison, stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson's housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone's. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl's identity can be known.

Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, the beginning of this novel will sweep you away on a powerful current of storytelling, transporting you through worlds both real and imagined, to the triumphant conclusion whose depths will continue to give up their treasures long after the last page is turned.

480 pages (December 2018)


 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 

Book Trailer:

Diane Setterfield on Once Upon a River:


This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: Sin Eater by Megan Campisi; The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern; The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya; A Tall History of Sugar Curdella Forbes; Orkney by Amy Sackville; The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton; The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian; and Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor.

Monday, July 6, 2020

Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich

From O. Henry Prize–winning author Emily Ruskovich comes a stunning debut novel about love and forgiveness, about the violence of memory and the equal violence of its loss.

Ann and Wade have carved out a life for themselves from a rugged terrain in northern Idaho, where they are bound together by more than love. With her husband's memory fading, Ann attempts to piece together the truth of what happened to Wade's first wife, Jenny, and to their daughters. In a story written in exquisite prose and told from multiple perspectives—including Ann, Wade, and Jenny, now in prison—we gradually learn of the mysterious and shocking act that fractured Wade and Jenny's lives, of the love and compassion that brought Ann and Wade together, and of the memories that reverberate through the lives of every character in Idaho.

In a wild emotional and physical landscape, Wade's past becomes the center of Ann's imagination, as Ann becomes determined to understand the family she never knew—and to take responsibility for them, reassembling their lives, and her own.

320 pages (January 2017)


To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 

Emily Ruskovich on The Today Show:


This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
 
Title Read-alikes: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout; The Very Marrow of Our Bones by Christine Higdon; Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden; Monogamy by Sue Miller; The Dutch House by Ann Patchett; The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout; Remember Me Like This by Anthony Bret Johnston; Maine by Courtney J. Sulivan; and Divisadero  by Michael Ondaatje.