![]() ![]() Her younger brother, Ren, travels to Akakawa with the intention of quickly settling her affairs and returning home to Tokyo. ![]() Rainbirds opens shortly after the brutal stabbing death of 33-year-old Keiko Ishida, an English-language teacher living in a small Japanese town named Akakawa. But beyond the practical matter of availability, I also found myself deeply intrigued by the strange characters, surrealist nods, and recurring themes of emotional and geographic isolation rendered in these Japanese authors’ works - the same qualities that drew me to Clarissa Goenawan’s atmospheric debut novel, Rainbirds. “Where are all the Koreans?”Īt the time, English translations of Kōbō Abe, Yasunari Kawabata, Haruki Murakami, and Banana Yoshimoto were simply easier to find in the United States than English translations of Korean authors, for whom there was less demand. As was the case with many Koreans of his generation, living under colonial rule left him with some lingering resentments toward the Japanese, so much so that when I went to college and majored in Asian Studies, he questioned why I only seemed to bring home books by Japanese authors. ![]() ![]() MY FATHER GREW UP in Pusan, South Korea, during the Japanese occupation. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Isaac is determined to find the book-it will make him rich! He opens many books in his search, but quickly closes them when they don’t turn to gold. This special book, hidden somewhere in the world, holds all the answers to every question and turns to solid gold when opened. that is, until he meets an old shopkeeper who tells him about The Book of Gold. ![]() Young Isaac Gutenberg isn’t a curious boy. Franklin’s Flying Bookshop brings the magic of classic fairy tales into the twenty-first century through exquisite illustrations, and will enchant children as well as anyone who loves books. Together they hatch a plan to share their love of books with others by opening a bookshop―a flying bookshop, that is―right on Franklin’s back!įranklin, a well-read and peace-loving dragon, and Luna, a young girl with an independent spirit and an insatiable love of reading, make fantastic role models for young children. They instantly become friends and talk nonstop about what they’ve read: books about roller-skating, King Arthur, spiders, and how to do kung fu. One day, he meets a girl named Luna who, rather than being afraid, is fascinated to meet Franklin, having recently read all about dragons in one of her books. Franklin the dragon loves stories and loves reading stories to people too, but everyone is too scared to even talk to him. ![]() ![]() ![]() There's a huge red puddle in the center of Carver's stomach, it is surrounded by gobbets of torn white flesh that looks like suet. ![]() Following the preliminary scenes, The Regulators is almost unrelentingly violent, the language used to describe the aftermath seeming to revel in it: As Desperation worked with classic "Stephen King" motifs to tell its story, so The Regulators updates and twists themes prevalent in "Richard Bachman" novels. Stephen King's impetus for reviving the Bachman pseudonym first reveals itself here. An unearthly red van with a radar dish on the top pulls onto the street, reveals its armaments, and begins shooting the paperboy is only the first to die. Within the first twenty pages, though, the quiet is shattered. ![]() The idyll of Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio reads almost poetically, these initial passages reminiscent of King's poem, "Brooklyn August" ( Nightmares & Dreamscapes). The Regulators opens with a cozy, comfortable depiction of a suburban summer's day, told in the immediacy of present tense. It looks like a house where lunatics live ![]() ![]() ![]() Social hierarchies didn't stop at water's edge, but rather applied to the "wooden world" as the ships tacked across the Atlantic.Īnson's armada floundered while rounding Cape Horn, battered by punishing gales and towering waves. (Grann draws heavily from their journals.) Among the hundreds of men onboard were John Bulkeley, a robust, charismatic gunner and teenaged John Byron, an aristocratic midshipman and grandfather of the future poet. A lesser vessel, the Wager was captained by the egomaniacal David Cheap, Anson's protégé, determined to prove his mettle. ![]() This is the stuff that sea shanties and sailor yarns are made of.Īs the two countries mustered arms, the Crown dispatched Commodore George Anson and a small armada on a side mission: to vanquish a Spanish galleon laden with treasure. ![]() In his enthralling, seamlessly crafted "The Wager," David Grann re-creates an all-but-forgotten episode from that conflict: the calamitous voyage and shipwreck of HMS Wager off the coast of Chile, and the survivors' fraught treks home. The War of Jenkin's Ear (1739-1748) has long slipped beyond the horizon of popular imagination and into the study carrels of aspiring historians, but at the time it was a flex for the Spanish and British empires as they expanded influence and filled coffers. ![]() ![]() ![]() When his family is about to implode, Michael finds hope through Rufus, an astute retired bus driver he meets over a game of blitz chess in Dupont Circle. A lucrative career, a Georgetown brownstone and a BMW coupe didn't deliver happiness as promised. ![]() Michael had simply followed his Greek father's instructions for a successful life, but something went terribly wrong. Jamie prefers to spend her time fostering illicit Internet relationships. Michael longs to reignite the passionate love they once felt for each other. His disillusioned wife, Jamie, is sick of his anger outbursts, and wants him out of her life. He explodes over minor irritations like being stuck in traffic, and his tantrums need to stop. ![]() Michael Stolis, a DC attorney, is frustrated by twelve-hour work days, tightly scheduled weekends, and his family's chaotic habits. Touching, romantic, and deeply provocative, A Stop in the Park, follows the story of a man and a woman who yearn to escape the trap of the modern Amer Touching, romantic, and deeply provocative, A Stop in the Park, follows the story of a man and a woman who yearn to escape the trap of the modern American dream. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() His contributions can be seen in some of the special constitutional provisions for social equality for the Scheduled Castes (the term for untouchables first used by the British). One of his critical works is The Annihilation of Caste, which was an undelivered speech he wrote in 1936.Įlected to chair the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly in 1947, Ambedkar abandoned many of his radical convictions as he steered the Assembly through the process of drafting India's constitution. ![]() Amedkar became a staunch anti-oppression advocate for Dalits through his politics and writing. He argued that this system was sanctified through religious codes that forbade intermixture of castes and confined social interaction to a regulated structure. He subsequently obtained master's and doctoral degrees in economics from the London School of Economics (1916–1922).Īmbedkar saw the caste system as an unequal mode of organization of social relations, with the pure and the impure at either extreme. at Columbia University in New York (1913–1916). Image from Flickr, shared under Creative Commons Licenseīhimrao Ramji Ambedkar belonged to the Mahar caste, one of the untouchable/Dalit castes in India. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Accessibility. ![]() ![]() ![]() But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities.Īnd museums describing the Death the catastrophic war that was about to occur the horror and the long winter that would follow. A human-English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking-civilization. ![]() NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface.and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.įor the Stone was from space-but perhaps not our space it came from the future-but perhaps not our future and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The 21st century was on the brink of nuclear confrontation when the 300 kilometer-long stone flashed out of nothingness and into Earth's orbit. New York Times bestselling author Greg Bear's Eon is now available for the first time in trade paperback. ![]() ![]() The Gray Lady Winked pulls back the curtain on this illustrious institution to reveal a quintessentially human organization where ideology, ego, power and politics compete with the more humble need to present the facts. It doesn't just cover the news: it creates it. With thousands of reporters covering events from all corners of the globe, the Times has the power to influence wars, foment revolution, shape economies and change the very nature of our culture. ![]() Think a newspaper can't be responsible for mass murder? Think again.Īs flagship of the American news media, the New York Times is the world's most powerful news outlet. ![]() Any book that casts a critical eye on the Paper of Record's history, as this book does, is performing a valuable service." - Glenn Greenwald, Journalist & New York Times Bestselling Author "The New York Times is by far the most influential newspaper in the world and thus receives far too little journalistic scrutiny due to its power to affect careers. ![]() ![]() However, this structure gives the author the Involved I started to resent somewhat the sections about Ruth and wished that Great-grandmother who is a Zen nun and radical female author living in a mountain temple. With her suicidal father and develops a reverence for her 104 year old She navigates the horrendous abuse from her fellow schoolmates, attempts to deal I was equally gripped by this shy, awkward girl’s fate as She realizes was written some years ago and sets about trying to track down Ruth becomes obsessed with the girl’s story which ![]() The book is very reminiscent of the movie Never Ending Storyīecause alternating between chapters where Nao tells her story are chaptersĪbout a woman named Ruth living in a remote location in British Columbia who discovers Nao’s confessional In California and finds herself taken back to live in her parents’ nativeĬountry Japan. Might make this more of a scholarly diatribe than a moving story, but Ozeki writesĪ skilful engrossing narrative about an adolescent girl named Nao who grew up ![]() You might think dealing with such grandiose subject matter Buddhism and quantum physics make happy bedfellows in this entertaining deeply-personal ![]() ![]() ![]() Recaptured after five days, Malika was finally able to leave Morocco and begin a new life in exile in 1996.Ī heartrending account in the face of extreme deprivation and the courage with which one family faced its fate, Stolen Lives is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey to freedom. After fifteen years, the last ten of which they spent locked up in solitary cells, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel with their bare hands and make an audacious escape. and her mother were immediately imprisoned in a desert penal colony. Malika, her five younger brothers and sisters. Then, on August 16, 1972, her father was arrested and executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Fortuately for her, she comes from a well-known. Adopted by the king at the age of five, Malika spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the seclusion of the court harem, one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom, surrounded by luxury and extraordinary privilege. The difficulty of her return from prison to freedom is beautifully described. Born in 1953, Malika Oufkir was the eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's closest aide. ![]() ![]() A gripping memoir that reads like a political thriller-the story of Malika Oufkir's turbulent and remarkable life. ![]() |