I read Pachinko for a book club and also for my Reading All Around the World challenge. This book was also listed frequently as one of the best of 2016. It’s about a Korean family who move to Japan during World War II. While it covers several generations of the family, it focuses on relations…
The Sympathizer is a first novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for literature. It’s a fascinating look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath from the perspective of the Vietnamese. Right away it makes you realize how much Americans only see the Vietnam War from our own perspective, not those…
With the current news about deportations and ICE arrests, it felt important to me to read a book from the perspective of someone who has experienced it firsthand. Guerrero is not an immigrant herself, but her parents and older brother were born in Columbia. Guerrero’s parents were deported when she was only fourteen years old,…
This year, I’m focusing on reading more diverse books, which includes reading books about other countries. And so far this year I’ve made a good effort. Of the 30 books I’ve read this year, 8 are by authors of color. That may not sound like a great percentage but it’s a big increase for me. For…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is about books that are set outside the U.S. I try to read a lot of books that are set in other countries, although I don’t always succeed. For purposes of this list, I’m not including anything in the UK either, since a…
The Book Stop 