Where Is Your Bookmark? (Bookmarks / What I Was Reading Then and Now / TBR Love)

A weekly meme where readers share the first sentence of the book they are reading and say what they think. Hosted by the amazing Gillion Dumas of Rose City Reader.

The train that was delivering Junie to Trout River was just pulling out of the station and gathering speed, and already the compartment was filling up with cigarette smoke and the gregarious sound of sunflower seeds being cracked open. [opening of Swimming Back to Trout River]

A weekly meme in which readers share a random sentence or two from page 56 or 56% of the book they are reading. Hosted by the wonderful Freda of Freda's Voice.

She didn't need to look at the titles on the shelf to know which ones to take out. As she reached for them, she discreetly nudged a few backward so that they fell into the crevice between the bookshelf and the wall.

She put the small stack on a chair. 

The ringleader took a quick survey of the titles.

"Shred them," he said. [excerpt from 25% of Swimming Back to Trout River]

I am currently reading Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng and am about a third of the way in. The opening sentence gives us a glimpse of what the train ride was like for Junie as she traveled to Trout River, but it does not reveal much about the story, does it? While the opening takes place in 1981, the second excerpt takes us back to 1966 during China's Cultural Revolution to what was probably a common scene during that time period. As someone who values books and what they represent, I appreciate the character's small act of rebellion and can only imagine how she feels when she is told to destroy the books she does hand over.

A lyrical novel set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution that follows a father’s quest to reunite his family before his precocious daughter’s momentous birthday, which Garth Greenwell calls “one of the most beautiful debuts I’ve read in years.”

How many times in life can we start over without losing ourselves?

In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future.

What Junie doesn’t know is that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples anew with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. In order for Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three members of the family before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light.

“A beautifully written, poignant exploration of family, art, culture, immigration, and most of all, love,” (Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee) Swimming Back to Trout River weaves together the stories of Junie, Momo, Cassia, and Dawn—a talented violinist from Momo’s past—while depicting their heartbreak and resilience, tenderly revealing the hope, compromises, and abiding ingenuity that make up the lives of immigrants. [Goodreads Summary]

Does Swimming Back to Trout River sound like something you would like? What are you reading right now?

Originally a feature called Last Year I Was Reading created by Maria from ReadingMaria. 

I liked it enough to continue on my own, but have tweaked it

 to feature Five Years Ago I Was Reading. 

(I would have gone back ten, but I read so little in 2011)

Five years ago this week I was finishing reading A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi. I have read several of the author's books and enjoyed each of them. This particular novel follows two very different women, a well off woman who wants desperately to have a baby of her own but is unable to stay pregnant, having had multiple miscarriages, and the Indian surrogate they hire through a clinic in India who is trying to make ends meet to support her family. The author doesn't shy away from exploring issues of economic disparity and questioning whether clinics like the House for Happy Mothers is exploitation. The author's attention to the cultural, social and economical differences and the emotional impact on both parties was right on target.

Have you read A House for Happy Mothers or another book by Amulya Malladi? What were you reading five years ago?

Connect Five Friday is a weekly meme where readers share a list of five books, 

read or unread, or bookish things, that share a common theme. 

Hosted by the  Kathryn of of Book Date.

In celebration of Asian-American and Pacific Islander Month (AAPI), I thought it would be fun to feature books by authors of Asian descent for the month.  Not all of these authors are American nor are their books all set in the U.S. Here are five currently on my TBR shelves waiting to be read: 

The Mermaid from Jeju by Sumi Hahn

In the tradition of Yangsze Choo's Night Tiger and Min Jin Lee's Pachinko comes a magical saga that explores what it really means to love.

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth, and it is there she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place.

Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with their estranged father, Suwol is gone, the ghost of her mother haunts their home--from the meticulously tended herb garden that has now begun to sprout weeds, to the field where their bed sheets are beaten. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on without Junja.

The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan's forced withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid establishment of US troops, and her grandmother, who lived through the Japanese invasion that led to Korea's occupation understands the signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with and harboring communists, and the perils of post-WWII overtake her homelands, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike anything she's ever known. [Goodreads Summary]

Well-Behaved Indian Woman by Saumya Dave

From a compelling new voice in women's fiction comes a mother-daughter story about three generations of women who struggle to define themselves as they pursue their dreams.

Simran Mehta has always felt harshly judged by her mother, Nandini, especially when it comes to her little "writing hobby." But when a charismatic and highly respected journalist careens into Simran's life, she begins to question not only her future as a psychologist, but her engagement to her high school sweetheart.

Nandini Mehta has strived to create an easy life for her children in America. From dealing with her husband's demanding family to the casual racism of her patients, everything Nandini has endured has been for her children's sake. It isn't until an old colleague makes her a life-changing offer that Nandini realizes she's spent so much time focusing on being the Perfect Indian Woman, she's let herself slip away.

Mimi Kadakia failed her daughter, Nandini, in ways she'll never be able to fix---or forget. But with her granddaughter, she has the chance to be supportive and offer help when it's needed. As life begins to pull Nandini and Simran apart, Mimi is determined to be the bridge that keeps them connected, even as she carries her own secret burden. [Goodreads Summary]

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death. [Goodreads Summary]

 

Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim 

Become enamored with the splendor of Paris in this heartwarming and delightful story about writing one’s own destiny and finding love along the way.

Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people’s fortunes -- or misfortunes -- in tea leaves.

Ever since she can remember, Vanessa Yu has been able to see people’s fortunes at the bottom of their teacups. To avoid blurting out their fortunes, she converts to coffee, but somehow fortunes escape and find a way to complicate her life and the ones of those around her. To add to this plight, her romance life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai.

The day before her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa accidentally sees her own fate: death by traffic accident. She decides that she can’t truly live until she can find a way to get rid of her uncanny abilities. When her eccentric aunt, Evelyn, shows up with a tempting offer to whisk her away, Vanessa says au revoir to America and bonjour to Paris. While working at Evelyn’s tea stall at a Parisian antique market, Vanessa performs some matchmaking of her own, attempting to help reconnect her aunt with a lost love. As she learns more about herself and the root of her gifts, she realizes one thing to be true: knowing one’s destiny isn’t a curse, but being unable to change it is. [Goodreads Summary]

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (#1) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time? [Goodreads Summary]

Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think? I hope to feature more genre-specific novels by authors of Asian descent on my TBR over the next three weeks, so stay tuned! 

Every Friday Coffee Addicted Writer from Coffee Addicted Writer poses a question which participants respond on their own blogs within the week (Friday through Thursday). They then share their links at the main site and visit other participants blogs.

Do you collect bookmarks? (submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver's Reviews)

 

I have a nice collection of bookmarks--ones I picked up at bookstores I have visited or those I could not resist buying because I couldn't resist. There's also those that I have been given as gifts. So, not so much a formal collection as a good mix of bookmarks I have gotten here or there over the years. I have ones made out of cardstock, ribbons, crochet, wood, metal, postcards, old tickets, or magnet clips. I have homemade ones (my favorite being one my daughter made me for Mother's Day years ago). Some have tassels or charms attached. There's never lack of a bookmark around my house. I probably have 50+. And yet I still often use receipts, post-its, and scrap paper I find lying around. Go figure. 

A sampling of my bookmarks

What about you? Do you collect bookmarks?

 I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Be sure and tell me what you are reading and are up to!

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