Pick-a-Shelf discussion

Did you learn something new this month?
If set in an Asian country, do you want travel there now? Any particular reason?



In addition, don't forget to post:
*link to the book you've read
*a star rating -see below for template you can copy & paste ;)
*shelf nomination (see Shelf Lists for what has been and cannot be nominated)
*link to any PAS challenge/s you've fit this book into

Remember:
#Your nominated Shelf must have at least 1,000 books to qualify
#Entries for your nominated shelf will be calculated as follows;
+1 - posting the book you've read for this Monthly Shelf & star rating
+1 - word review (at least 3 sentences of your thoughts/feelings on the book)
+1 - link to another PAS challenge* where you've included this book

Star template:
★
★½
★★
★★½
★★★
★★★½
★★★★
★★★★½
★★★★★

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man by Jonas Jonasson
★★★.9 rounded to ★★★★

Allan Karlsson is back! His accidental further adventures begin on his 101st birthday when a balloon he and his pal Julian are on for his birthday celebration is inadvertently blown out to see. In a another series of funny, improbable events and circumstances he is once again involved with nuclear materials, as well as world leaders, a couple of neo-Nazi terrorists and various and sundry other people as he travels to Asia, North America, Europe and Africa from he same place we left him at the end of the first book.

While this wasn't quite as good as the first for me at times, at others I was chuckling out loud, and overall it deserves the four stars. While it is NOT the same as the first book, it is still Allen Karlsson being Allen Karlsson, and the other characters are all well done, even the ones based on real people (but used completely fictionally in this tale).

White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Historical Fiction
This was an ugly story as it must be, but important to acknowledge and understand. It is mostly set in the pre-WWII time, when the Japanese were enslaving Korean teens and young women as "comfort women" (rape) and in other ways torturing/killing the Korean populace. Warning - To tell this story, of course, there are rape scenes. I thought it was well-told, though, with the story of two sisters moving back and forth between 1943 and 2011.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo [9-aug-19] ★★★


This was an interesting read. I like the writing adn imagination of this author. Superstition, ghosts and afterlife were woven into the story in a beautiful way. The romance was lacking, but I still enjoyed it.

I also liked that it refered to The Ghost Bride, but you can read this book without reading the other. it was just a off hand remark someone made.

Used for:
- Lost part 3
- pick and mix - genre shelves

Nomination: kick-ass-heroine

LynnB wrote: "White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Historical Fiction
This was an ugly story as it must be, but important to acknowledge and understand. It is mostly se..."

i read this a couple years ago - the story of the sea women was particularly interesting but yes the rape scenes really stuck with you

Dee wrote: "LynnB wrote: "White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Historical Fiction
This was an ugly story as it must be, but important to acknowledge and understand. I..."

Thanks for the heads up. I have read too many rape scenes in novels and nonfiction and don't want to read anymore. Ever. The last straw was in one of the last Ken Follett novels I read AND one of Lisa See's novels.

The Leavers - Lisa Ko

Deming Guo is just a young boy when his mom disappears one day and doesn't return. soon he is put up for adoption by his Aunt and adopted by an all-white family in New York. But it is a story of self-discovery, finding who you are in a world where no one looks like you and also what really happened to his mother. The conflict primarily resides around Deming's life choices and which path should be walk - that of his adoptive parents or try to find his real mom and boy does he make a mess of his life along the way.

Shelved as Asia by 56ppl
Rating: ★★★½
Also Fits: Pick'n'Mix - Award Winning

Shelf Nomination: Adoption

The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin

Being that I am a history major i'm amazed how much I don't know about Chinese history (in general) - there were very few classes in college about those periods of history, which I think I would have loved to have taken). I enjoyed how the author managed to merge historical significant (as a way to control technology) with the science fiction of an alien race inbound to earth. There were a few parts where it was a bit slow (mostly in section II), but overall a solid read that I would give 3.5 stars. I'm curious to see how the rest of the trilogy plays out.

Shelved as asia by 106ppl

Rating: ★★★½
Also Fits: Pick'n'Mix - Award Winning

Shelf Nomination: Translated

I read The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past #1) by Liu Cixin together with Dee & Susan. I put this on my TBR because I was intrigued by a scifi written by a Chinese author plus it's a translated work. I don't really read many scifi and while, I don't hate scifi, I do find that I struggle with all the science stuff so it's not a fave genre as such.

Overall, I didn't mind the story but I think it does have the feel of a very long intro... maybe the action will start from book 2?

★★★
Also used for PnM (Genre Shelves)

Nominating: speculative-fiction

I read The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire by Jack Weatherford.



A thoroughly well-researched and beautifully written piece on an important part of missing history. A fantastic read that I definitely suggest.

I nominate lesbian

So far, I've finished two of my August books, and am in the process of reading a third.

Finished:

The Last Kashmiri Rose I used it for Moving Mountains, Seriously Serial, and Pick n Mix (Genre Shelves). It's a mystery that takes place in Bombay, India later in the British Raj, and I enjoyed it for the setting and its cultural and historical aspects as well as for the mystery. I gave it a solid 3 stars. My review here

The Three-Body Problem I used it for Seriously Serial and Pick n Mix (Genre shelves). I haven't written my main GR review for it yet, but I felt much like Tien did, that the entire book was basically a set up for the second one. I'm not sure whether I'll continue with the series or not, in spite of all its awards. I gave it a scant 3 stars.

I add my points to the nomination for refugees.

I've read In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom, ★★★★

I liked the book a lot and would recommend it, with the warning that the experiences told are obviously quite hard to stomach - even though Yeonmi Park said that many of the North Korean women she got to know later on did have experiences which were way more terrible than her own. But her own are bad enough for those of us who are lucky enough to have a "normal" life, I'd say. I don't agree with those reviewers who doubt the truth in what Yeonmi tells in her book - have those reviewers ever lived under a regime, have they ever been victims of human trafficking? I would say the answer is most probably no, so how do they think they can judge? How do they know the things Yeonmi tells are unlikely or not possible? As I said, I would recommend this book, but I would advise any Italian reader to read the original English version because the Italian translation is just plain awful.

I "second" Tien's nomination of speculative-fiction.

I read A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea.

It is the memoir of a life lived in hopes of betterment that resulted in only devastating poverty and starvation. The author left Japan at age 13 when his father took the family back to North Korea. Life in Japan was not easy for the family, so his father thought the return to North Korea would be a better life. Well, it wasn't. The returnees were considered the lowest of the low social groups and were treated very poorly. The author watched his mother and father die in extreme poverty. His own family of wife and three children were near death when he escaped via China after 39 years of life in North Korea. He thought he would be able to rescue his family when he got back to Japan. The Japan he remembered fondly as a child. He did make it back, but life remembered was not what he found. A very sad book, although it felt real. It saddened me to think that anyone must live in the described circumstances and makes me feel ill that I have no way to impact that.

I nominate poverty.

I read When Dimple Met Rishi which was shelved as Asia a few times. I rated it *4 STARS* The book was set in the US but I think because it was dealing with Southeast Asian characters it was shelved that way.

I really enjoyed it though. I don't read a lot of YA but this one really made me rethink that. The characters were nuanced, their stressors weren't necessarily unique to their culture but definitely affected them in a different way because they were American born children with their Indian culture dictating a lot of their choices.

I thought it was interesting how all Rishi was and how totally against everything Dimple was. By the end of the book I think they both found out some very significant things about themselves but also found new respect for the parents they thought they had figured out.

This book was so well written I was just immersed in the trials and tribulations of this couple. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to shake them at some point. But more than anything I just enjoyed the story and felt like I was drawn in.

I think this book really highlighted the fact that we need more "own voices" books. We need more mainstream books to highlight our diversity. And I really think we need it now more than ever.

I also used this book for: Seriously Serial '19 and Pick 'n' Mix (2019) - Stage 9: Settings (time)


My nominated shelf: Own Voices

I continued the trilogy with The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past #2) by Liu Cixin. The ending feels finished but yet there's book 3...

Still only 3.5* from me... to start with was the confusing plethora of new characters and the no chapters thing (what's with that!). But, I did read the last half of the book rather quickly. Despite some explosive action, I kept waiting for something infinitely worse (is that my pessimistic nature?). I think in a way this book is rather more thoughtful that I expected it to be.

Edit: I've just glanced at a review for book 3 that noted it can be read as a standalone.

Used for: PnM (Stage 1)

Nominating speculative-fiction

I read The Three-Body Problem. I joined the buddy read for this book, but it was not good timing for me. However, I hate to just return a book to the library without at least trying to read it...so I gave it a try.

Science Fiction is not my preferred genre. There...I said it.

There are a few writers in that genre that I will read, but usually I avoid it.

Well, I gave this book the "old college try"...and I really enjoyed it! 4*!!

It does rely a lot on Chinese history and astrophysics for a background, and I do not have a great knowledge of either. Yet with the translators clear but brief notes for the Chinese history and my own interest in the stars, I was able to make sense of much of those parts of the background story.

The characters were interesting...the story was full of regular emotion and thought that I could identify with...and, although the story seemed on a "let's annihilate all of humanity" course, for me, it ended on a positive note.

I found it interesting that the earthly story of initial contact with Trisolaris mirrored the story of the reception of the initial probe from earth. In fact, many of the interactions of the Trisolaris people mirrored the Earthly ones.

I also liked the fact that the policeman - an ordinary cop - pointed out to the scientists that aliens thinking earthlings were bugs was actually positive, since we on earth have tried for centuries to kill bugs and they still exist. Loved that analogy!

I highly recommend this book!

I read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
★★★★★

This book has been on my radar since its publication but I've never added it to my tbr because I know it'll make me sad... Not even after all the rave reviews and friends' high rec. However, it was available in audio so I thought I'd give it a go.

It did make me sad. Not in a heartbreaking sob-my-heart-out way but more in a life-is-hard way. As it's repeated in the novel, you'll just have to bear up and persevere. This just depresses me and of course, it affected my mood terribly so I'm very very very glad that it's over.

Otherwise, such beautiful prose! I love the strength of these women and descriptions of life. I absolutely agree with all the feelings of displacements and again, this also makes me sad...

Nominating: strong-women

For this month's shelf I read Strange Weather in Tokyo ★★★

It's a very short book about chance encounters Tsukiko, a woman in her 30s, starts having with a former high school professor.

We're not told much about her or her thoughts and interests, just that her life is bleak and we follow her in her rutine until things begin to change and she starts interacting more and more with other characters, some quite interesting. But at a certain point she gets confused (we too) and I won't say anything else to avoid spoilers!

I enjoyed the story- in spite of some of the dialogues at the end of the book- but it didn't leave much of an impression on me. What left me thinking was the background: The society described, the roles judged normal, the awkward interactions.

Rating: 3 stars

Shelf nomination: Nordic

Then I read Metro 2033 ★★★★★ (also useful for my Seriously Serial '19 challenge).

Let me tell you, this takes the concept of an action-packed book to a new level. You have a postapocaliptic Moscow where people live underground, in the Metro tunnels. Humans die if they go to the surface, but they aren't much better in the Metro system, because you have the normal dangers expected in such a situation and from so many different individuals packed together- each carrying a Kalashnikov-, but also those inherited from the nuclear war and even a few supernatural ones, without mentioning the unknown threats.

In such a state of things, a sheltered young man has to somehow carry a life-or-death message to the other end of the Metro system and the author certainly doesn't make it easy.

It had been a while since I had enjoyed a book this much and I couldn't put it down! The only drawback in my eyes was that all the Russian names of the characters and of the Moscow Metro stations took some getting used to, but the maps included were really helpful, even if they didn't include all the stations and they listed them with the Russian name, when in the text their names were translated (for example, Revolution Square appears in the map as Ploshchad Revolyutsii). (view spoiler)[I can think about another drawback: The last pages of the book. Well, author, you surprised me! But, was the Ender-Wiggin-moment really necessary? (hide spoiler)] The book is part of a series but can be read as a stand-alone.

A caveat for readers that only enjoy books with strong female characters (or, well, with female characters): This may not be a book for you.

Rating: 5 stars

Shelf nomination: Space

Elvenn wrote: "Then I read Metro 2033 ★★★★★ (also useful for my Seriously Serial '19 challenge).

Let me tell you, this takes the concept of an action-packed book to a new level. You have a postapo..."

This is on my wishlist, I may have to move it up since you are so enthusiastic about it!

I finished The Descent of Monsters before the end of the month, but forgot that I hadn't posted it here. It's the 3rd of a trilogy of silkpunk works by author J. Y. Yang. I liked this fine, but not as much as the first one. And I'm now realizing that I may have accidentally skipped reading the second in the series, so that may be why I didn't see find any continuity in this one. I think I'll have to read the second and then come back to this one.