Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2021-07-21 08:59 pm
sophinisba) wrote2021-07-21 08:59 pm
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Books!
Hello, Dreamwidth, it's been three weeks since my last books post and I have finished four more books, bringing me up to 20 for the year. Whoo! One of those books was for work but I will tell you about the other three: Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, and How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith.
I mentioned in my last books post that I had Your House Will Pay out from the library but hadn't started reading it yet. This is part of my project of reading more books by Korean American authors, and also my new habit of combining reading with listening to an audiobook, and it worked out really well! Steph Cha had previously written several novels set in Los Angeles and starring a Korean American police detective, and this one is a little less of a detective novel but has some elements of that. Its chapters alternate between the perspectives of a Korean American woman in her 20s and a Black man in his 40s, and it takes a bit to make sense of the connections between their families, which go back to events of 1991 and '92, inspired by true events and really very sad and depressing history. I really liked the way both these POV characters and most of the others were written, with lots of empathy despite being super different and at times hating each other. It also resonated well with things I'd read by two other Korean American authors from LA, Nancy Jooyoun Kim in the novel The Last Story of Mina Lee (which I haven't finished but probably will later this summer) and especially Kathy Park Hong in the book of essays Minor Feelings.
I also enjoyed this audiobook, which had the alternate chapters narrated by a Black actor and a Korean American actress. At first I didn't care for the actress Greta Jung's style very much -– her narration is fine but she does most of the other character voices by just, like, sounding angry? But the other narrator, Glenn Davis, is delightful, and I appreciated that neither of them tried to do accents for characters of different ethnicities than theirs. So anyway for a while I was trying to listen to his chapters and read hers in the paper book, but the book was also such a page-turner that I eventually sort of quit that and just consumed it in whatever way was convenient. I really recommend this book! Also it seems I will end up listening to more audiobooks narrated by Greta Jung because she also did Pachinko and The Last Story of Mina Lee and other books I'm interested in, so that's all cool.
So then browsing books on Overdrive I was interested to see a book by Nicola Yoon, which looked like a Korean surname but had a Black woman on the cover. Turns out this is a Jamaican American woman married to a Korean American surname, and a book about a Jamaican American girl who (sort of) falls in love with a Korean American boy. Also turns out it's YA, and I don't usually read YA, but I was intrigued and feeling open, and it was available as both an ebook and an audiobook, so I checked them out and again consumed them quickly and enjoyed it. It has extremely short chapters –– again, alternating between these two main characters plus a few others –– and three narrators for the audiobook, and the writing was lovely and the story very sweet. I especially enjoyed the last couple chapters, which I listened to on a plane last week. It was my first time on a plane in a year and a half, and that's a situation where I often get very emotional about books and movies, and it worked out well again this time.
I guess The Sun Is Also a Star was made into a movie that didn't get very good reviews, and I probably won't watch it, but who knows.
Then this past week I checked out How the Word Is Passed, a new nonfiction book by the poet and essayist Clint Smith. In each chapter Smith tells about visiting a different place where people teach and learn about the history of slavery, mostly in the United States plus one chapter in Senegal. I expected this to be very thoughtful but also enjoyed how much reporting was in it, like how much transcription it included of things people said on tours, and then Smith would add his own research, so I really learned a lot. It was also more positive than I expected, since in some of the chapters he encountered tour guides and historians who were really doing great work in informing people about history. There were also chapters about stories not getting told properly. Smith also includes some of his personal reflections, and in the last chapter he interviews his own grandparents, who grew up in the segregated South and whose grandparents were born just before or after the end of slavery, and he talks about how much closer it is to our own lives than some folks like to think. I liked this book a lot and am recommending it to all my friends! It also made a nice complement to On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed, another thoughtful and personal book about history that I'd read earlier this year.
I have just checked out and read the first two short stories from the collection You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld, whose modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice Eligible I enjoyed so much a few years back. I have also checked out Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi for a second time and read a short chapter of it tonight but am not especially feeling it.
I mentioned in my last books post that I had Your House Will Pay out from the library but hadn't started reading it yet. This is part of my project of reading more books by Korean American authors, and also my new habit of combining reading with listening to an audiobook, and it worked out really well! Steph Cha had previously written several novels set in Los Angeles and starring a Korean American police detective, and this one is a little less of a detective novel but has some elements of that. Its chapters alternate between the perspectives of a Korean American woman in her 20s and a Black man in his 40s, and it takes a bit to make sense of the connections between their families, which go back to events of 1991 and '92, inspired by true events and really very sad and depressing history. I really liked the way both these POV characters and most of the others were written, with lots of empathy despite being super different and at times hating each other. It also resonated well with things I'd read by two other Korean American authors from LA, Nancy Jooyoun Kim in the novel The Last Story of Mina Lee (which I haven't finished but probably will later this summer) and especially Kathy Park Hong in the book of essays Minor Feelings.
I also enjoyed this audiobook, which had the alternate chapters narrated by a Black actor and a Korean American actress. At first I didn't care for the actress Greta Jung's style very much -– her narration is fine but she does most of the other character voices by just, like, sounding angry? But the other narrator, Glenn Davis, is delightful, and I appreciated that neither of them tried to do accents for characters of different ethnicities than theirs. So anyway for a while I was trying to listen to his chapters and read hers in the paper book, but the book was also such a page-turner that I eventually sort of quit that and just consumed it in whatever way was convenient. I really recommend this book! Also it seems I will end up listening to more audiobooks narrated by Greta Jung because she also did Pachinko and The Last Story of Mina Lee and other books I'm interested in, so that's all cool.
So then browsing books on Overdrive I was interested to see a book by Nicola Yoon, which looked like a Korean surname but had a Black woman on the cover. Turns out this is a Jamaican American woman married to a Korean American surname, and a book about a Jamaican American girl who (sort of) falls in love with a Korean American boy. Also turns out it's YA, and I don't usually read YA, but I was intrigued and feeling open, and it was available as both an ebook and an audiobook, so I checked them out and again consumed them quickly and enjoyed it. It has extremely short chapters –– again, alternating between these two main characters plus a few others –– and three narrators for the audiobook, and the writing was lovely and the story very sweet. I especially enjoyed the last couple chapters, which I listened to on a plane last week. It was my first time on a plane in a year and a half, and that's a situation where I often get very emotional about books and movies, and it worked out well again this time.
I guess The Sun Is Also a Star was made into a movie that didn't get very good reviews, and I probably won't watch it, but who knows.
Then this past week I checked out How the Word Is Passed, a new nonfiction book by the poet and essayist Clint Smith. In each chapter Smith tells about visiting a different place where people teach and learn about the history of slavery, mostly in the United States plus one chapter in Senegal. I expected this to be very thoughtful but also enjoyed how much reporting was in it, like how much transcription it included of things people said on tours, and then Smith would add his own research, so I really learned a lot. It was also more positive than I expected, since in some of the chapters he encountered tour guides and historians who were really doing great work in informing people about history. There were also chapters about stories not getting told properly. Smith also includes some of his personal reflections, and in the last chapter he interviews his own grandparents, who grew up in the segregated South and whose grandparents were born just before or after the end of slavery, and he talks about how much closer it is to our own lives than some folks like to think. I liked this book a lot and am recommending it to all my friends! It also made a nice complement to On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed, another thoughtful and personal book about history that I'd read earlier this year.
I have just checked out and read the first two short stories from the collection You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld, whose modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice Eligible I enjoyed so much a few years back. I have also checked out Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi for a second time and read a short chapter of it tonight but am not especially feeling it.