I primarily listen to audiobooks using Libby, and sometimes Audible. Feel free to ask me about how I have 8 cards on Libby.
Check out my book lists about things like Asian authors, or Autistic characters!
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As a broad category of identity, “transgender” has given life to a vibrant field of …
I'll come back to this one. The writing style makes it really hard to follow the argument because and the first chapter is a medically framed history of trans terminology which isn't the most thrilling.
When thirteen-year-old Ellie's Grandpa Melvin, a world-renowned scientist in the body of a fourteen-year-old boy, …
It has good reviews but I didn't realize it is a kids book. At the start, there's a shallow comparison made between middle schools and prisons that did not sit right with me. The voice of the narrator did not help with its delivery.
Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's …
I learned about this book because the author came to my school freshman year. I didn't get one of the free copies they were giving out at the time, but it stayed on my mind and I saw it as an audiobook so I figured I'd check it out. Oh boy, what a journey, harder and harder to put down. If you're familiar with "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, you're introduced to several different characters with some common themes that link them to a major event—that is what came to mind when reading this book structure wise. I never finished "the Overstory" and I wouldn't compare the plot otherwise. For "There There", the final event, as well as things that happen to characters of various indigenous descent, all connected to Oakland, will sit with you for a long time. It's different from other books by indigenous folx, I've read with …
I learned about this book because the author came to my school freshman year. I didn't get one of the free copies they were giving out at the time, but it stayed on my mind and I saw it as an audiobook so I figured I'd check it out. Oh boy, what a journey, harder and harder to put down. If you're familiar with "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, you're introduced to several different characters with some common themes that link them to a major event—that is what came to mind when reading this book structure wise. I never finished "the Overstory" and I wouldn't compare the plot otherwise. For "There There", the final event, as well as things that happen to characters of various indigenous descent, all connected to Oakland, will sit with you for a long time. It's different from other books by indigenous folx, I've read with an emphasis on cultural loss/revitalization/reclamation in an urban context. It reminds me more of what I've heard from indigenous podcasts about current indigenous issues. I really enjoyed the role of grandmothers in this book as well.
Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's …
Complicated and good
As a broad category of identity, “transgender” has given life to a vibrant field of …
After reading the intro, the writing is pretty academic, and I hope I don't get lost.
Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's …
Not sure where the plot is yet, but the vignettes introducing us to characters have been good so far.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful …
Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.
I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. …
Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.
I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. There are times that this book feels like a typical YA novel and I wish it said more, but there are other times I remember how important it is that it's doing exactly what it's doing (I say as a queer trans Asian person myself). Just... maybe for someone younger than me (in my 20s)?
As others mentioned, this book could use some content warnings on the traumatic experiences that the main character especially experiences. I also noticed that aspects about inter-Asian discourse aren't really touched on: there's a celebration of primarily East and Southeast Asian cultures, not really a mention of many other cultures like South Asian or issues of colorism.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San …
Not since Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich's …
Started listening to this audiobook. It was referenced in the Afrominimalist Guide and the author visited my college and free books were distributed before the pandemic. I never got a copy though.
A new cookbook from the star of Netflix's Chef's Table and one of the world's …
Received this as a gift. Seems to have lots of great photos.
A collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, …
Started reading this today by reading the vampire squid part to my partner
Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our …
Didn't enjoy the style of writing. Lots of academic style references that are hard to follow. Certainly making a point but not expressing anything that felt new or radical to me personally.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful …
Already excited just from the character introduction so far
In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these …
I listened to this as an audiobook, though not one I'd suggest listening to aloud in public. The book follows the journey of Japanese women from being shipped to the US, sold off to husbands who were not who they were told they were, up to a few decades later at the establishment of the first internment camps (around the 1940s). The writing never pulls any punches in telling the grim truth. The pluralistic narrative is a chorus that echos a collective memory of both things that were shared or specific to one person or another. The blurring of these narratives also tunes into how these individual voices have been historically erased, ending up in vague memories that make it harder to distinguish who is who among the "We" or "They", especially emphasized with the final parts of the book.
As the weeklong Taungbyon Festival draws near, thousands of villagers from all regions of Burma …
Nu Nu Yi begins the story by threading through a handoff of perspectives between those at the Taungbyon festival: from a pickpocket, to a wealthy woman asking for good fortune, to the spirit wives themselves, all tied to this event. Toward the latter half of the story, we are set through a drama focusing on Daisy Bond in particular into the end of the festival period. As a whole it's not too long of a read and does well to propel you to another world that pulls the curtains back behind a festival, showing what people are really thinking when it comes to spirits, love, wealth, and power.
The Taungbyon festival is not something that my family participated in, yet it's one of my main connections to queer trans history in Myanmar. Natkadaws are spirit wives, composed of effeminate gay men, trans women, others elsewhere and in between, and those …
Nu Nu Yi begins the story by threading through a handoff of perspectives between those at the Taungbyon festival: from a pickpocket, to a wealthy woman asking for good fortune, to the spirit wives themselves, all tied to this event. Toward the latter half of the story, we are set through a drama focusing on Daisy Bond in particular into the end of the festival period. As a whole it's not too long of a read and does well to propel you to another world that pulls the curtains back behind a festival, showing what people are really thinking when it comes to spirits, love, wealth, and power.
The Taungbyon festival is not something that my family participated in, yet it's one of my main connections to queer trans history in Myanmar. Natkadaws are spirit wives, composed of effeminate gay men, trans women, others elsewhere and in between, and those who are not a part of that at all—but are looking to profit off the festival. It is difficult to read this book with the way it captures the queerphobia and transphobia that has it mark on the majority of people in society. I see how my family might struggle to imagine I might be anything like them. If not for their role as spirit wives, their identities would not hold them to any standard of acknowledgement, though given it is driven by the colonizers discretion, this didn't necessarily leave them any better off. I wonder what those festivals might be like now with the most recent coup and pandemic; it would be hard to get any of my family to tell me.
