Hi everyone! I’m looking for a REALLY AMAZING book to read with my book club. We’re a group of mid—20s to early 30s people (mostly women) who will read any genre.
What I’m looking for:
– About Asians in any way (I am Asian/American)
– Ideally less than 400 pages
– Ideally the book is relatively hopeful and uplifting in some way, no explicit assault
– You personally highly recommend this book!!
Some popular past books:
– Woodworking by Emily St. James
– Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
– Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
– Piranesi by Susanne Clarke
I am a bit of a perfectionist and want my next recommendation to the book club to be an AMAZING read!! I’d love to hear any suggestions even if they don’t fit everything I’m looking for. Thanks for all your help 🙂
by ruubees
10 Comments
Yellow face by RF Kuang, or really anything by her, she is amazing. Some of her other work is a little more academic/fantasy. Katabasis was a recent 5 star read for me.
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
I’m going to put this down but it might not be what you want for your book club.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo is a well-written historical fiction novel set in the Chinatown area of San Francisco in the mid-1950’s. It’s a coming-of-age LGBTQ story.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
I really loved Yōko Ogawa. Not uplifting, but beautifully written.
Or you could go non-fiction and read Erika Lee’s excellent _The Making of Asian American_.
Jasmine Nights by S.P. Somtow
Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
If asian sci-fi is on the menu The Tea Master and The Detective is a great sci-fi novella, but it’s just under 100 pages in most formats
For something a little different, I really loved *Portrait of a Thief* by Grace D. Li. It’s about five Chinese-Americans who get hired to steal Chinese art objects and artifacts from various museums and repatriate them. I found it sort of half-literary, half-thriller, and a a lot of fun, even when it was digging into some deep themes.
_Southland_ by Nina Revoyr