Essays, Short Stories, and a Fantasy: Sunday Salon

 In my mailbox

I requested this book because of its use of Japanese mythology in its storytelling.

The Lost Souls of Benzaiten

by Kelly Murashige Pub Date Jul 23 2024

Soho Press, Soho Teen, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Teens and YA, OwnVoices

Description

This heartfelt and quirky young adult fantasy debut follows a young outcast on a journey of transformation . . . into a robot vacuum cleaner.

A fresh twist on Japanese mythology that doubles as a deep, honest dive into mental health.

“I wish to become one of those round vacuum cleaner robots.” That’s what Machi prays for at the altar of Japanese goddess Benzaiten. Ever since her two best friends decided they want nothing to do with her, Machi hasn’t been able to speak. After months of online school and a carousel of therapists, she can no longer see the point of being human. She doesn’t expect Benzaiten to hear her prayer, much less offer a different prayer on Machi’s behalf—that Machi  discover the beauty of humanity, ultimately restoring her to her previous self.

From an author to watch, The Lost Souls of Benzaiten is a highly original debut about the nature of happiness and the potential for healing.

Thanks to Soho Press for a review copy of this book.

Ebook Downloads

The cover and the title grabbed me. Besides, I wanted to read more short stories from a woman's point of view.

Miss Kim Knows

And Other Stories

by Cho Nam-joo, Jamie Chang (translator)

October 29, 2024; Liveright, NetGalley

Description

From the international best-selling author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a collection exploring the intimacies of contemporary Korean womanhood.

A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again.

Miss Kim Knows follows eight women, ranging from preteens to octogenarians, as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. “Despite her characters’ hardship and disappointments, there is mischief and glee to be found in these pages” (Hephzibah Anderson, Observer), resulting in another riveting read from an essential voice in world literature.

Collection of Essays

Dancing on My Own

Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy

by Simon Wu

Published June 25, 2024; Harper

Description

An essay collection on the aesthetics of class aspiration, creating art and fashion, and the limits of identity politics by emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu

Some interesting and revealing quotes from the essays about being artistic, and being an immigrant:

"...we had chosen to follow our passions into precarious creative professions where few others looked like us and our parents could offer little help. Children of immigrants who pursue creative careers often contend with the perceived opportunity cost of endangering the economic foothold their parents carved out for them." (from "For Everyone")

Simon Wu is a curator and writer involved in collaborative art production and research, and is currently in the PhD program in history of art at Yale University. His family immigrated to the U.S. from Myanmar. 

 What are you reading/watching this week?  

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves 

Sunday Salon: Travel Stories of Normandy and Two Picture Books

 

Title: The Bear and the Paving Stone by Toshiyuki Horie with Geraint Howells (translator)

Published Feb. 1, 2001; Pushkin Press; NetGalley

Genre: short stories, novellas, France, Japanese

 Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, three dream-like tales of memory and war.

 I enjoyed the author's descriptions of the Normandy coastline and countryside, the views of Mont St. Michel in Brittany, the stories of the old friends the narrator visits near these places.

The second story is the narrator's poignant look at a young girl as she grows up with the same passion - building sandcastles on the beach, at ages 6, 15, and in her 20s as a young mother.

The third story is humorous and another adventure in Normandy with the Japanese narrator, who like the author, is a scholar and teacher of French literature.

I found these stories interesting because of the author's unique point of view, his humor, and interest in the human condition.

Title: The Lucky Red Envelope: A Lift-the-Flap Lunar New Year Celebration by Vikki Zhang

Genre: children's picturebook

Publication: December 5, 2023; Wide Eyed Editions; NetGalley

The Lunar New Year 2024 is coming up soon on February 10, the Year of the Dragon! An auspicious year, hopefully for the good! I found this delightful illustrated children's book that I enjoyed, even as an adult and grandparent!

The book is an elaborately and gorgeously illustrated story of a little girl and her baby brother who celebrate the Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) with their parents at their home. The pictures show the decorated family home and the family table with various holiday foods and treats.

I enjoyed the illustrations with red colors everywhere in the home, the abundance and variety of the foods and gifts, plus the red envelopes with money that children traditionally receive for the new year.

It was difficult to read the ARC ebook as I wanted to see the finished hardbound copy with the fold out flaps meant to delight children readers. I definitely want a paper copy for new year gifts!

Lovely story, pictures, and concept.

Title: The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang, Jiemei Lin (illustrator)

Publication: March 4, 2024; Carolrhoda Books; NetGalley

Genre: picture book,educational

Book Publisher: At first, no one noticed when I stopped talking at school. In this moving true story, Kao Kalia Yang shares her experiences as a young Hmong refugee navigating life at home and at school

My review: Young children can stop talking for many different reasons. Khao Kalia Yang stopped talking at age seven in the first grade. Her teachers and even her parents can't seem to understand why, but Khao later tells us that she stopped wanting to speak the language spoken by people who disrespected and humiliated her Hmong mother and had no time or patience to try to understand her mother's halting English in stores and elsewhere.

I found it interesting that the teachers did not come up with the explanation so common for this kind of silence. They didn't attribute it to shyness, as it was clearly, in this case, something more profound.

The story is good for children and adults of all ages who come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English, and with their children who are comfortable in their own language but reluctant speaking English.

An educational book, with lovely illustrations, that has an important message for every reader.

What's on your reading schedule this week and/or the rest of the month?i

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Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday.

Book Beginning: First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

 

First Person Singular Stories by Haruki Murakami, April 6, 2021, Knopf

The picture of the snow monkey on the cover reminds me of winter coming, as autumn is just about here, and the temperatures will soon be dropping. It also reminds me the library will be after me to return this book, which has been on my shelves for too long. So let me begin reading with the First Paragraph. 

First paragraph, first story (Cream):

So I'm telling a younger friend of mine about a strange incident that took place when I was eighteen. I don't recall exactly why I brought it up. It just happened to come up as we were talking. I mean, it was something that happened long ago. Ancient history. On top of which, I was never able to reach any conclusion about it. 

 

Page 56: (Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova)

The editor did kick up a bit of a fuss about my having tricked him. I didn't actually fool him, but merely omitted a detailed explanation. 

Has anybody read these stories yet? 

 Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Six Degrees of Separation: Nature, Relationships, Food

 

Books Are My Favourite and Best hosts Six Degrees of Separation, and this month starts with Phosphorescence.  Add six books that link together in some way, and see where you end up.

 Julia Baird’s part-memoir-part-essay-collection, Phosphorescence, focuses partly on the awe of nature, of water and the ocean, and of long-term relationships.  

This book led me to The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. It celebrates long term relationships and love of nature, the ocean, and of all creatures, in particular, cats.

The next link is 

Cygnet

In Cygnet by Season Butler, June 25, 2018, Harper, a book set on a beautiful island off the coast of New Hampshire, nature and the ocean are prominent, and relationships are paramount to survival.

The next link is to 

We Two Alone by Jack Wang, September 1, 2020, stories where a relationship thrives or falters in the midst of harsher realities. 

This links to a memoir on family relationships and their importance

Savage Feast, February 26th 2019, Harper

Thinking of food leads me to a book of short stories, 

Bread and Salt: Stories by Valerie Miner, September 5, 2020

Short stories lead to another collection, this one dealing with nature:

Sandlands by Rosie Thornton, October 28, 2016. Book description:
This beautifully written short story collection is inspired by coastal England.

What books are you linking to this month's Six Degrees of Separation prompt? 

Sunday Salon: Reading Books Other than Mysteries, Thrillers

 Since last week, when I decided to skip thrillers and mysteries for a month or more, I've read the following books in other genres, realizing that I might not have picked them up or even finished them so soon before that decision! 

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali, June 2019, Gallery Books

Genre: historical novel, romance

Setting: Tehran and USA

I cried a lot reading this one, especially towards the ending, and loved how the main characters expressed their sentiments, in sometimes poetic fashion. Set in Iran during the country's 1953 revolution, this romance breaks hearts, more than just the lovers', who are constrained by family as well as by the country's politics.  Roya and Brahman meet and fall in love in the stationery shop owned by Mr. Fakhri, who has a hand in the ultimate fate of these two lovers. 

I gave this an enthusiastic five but won't reveal more of the plot so as not to be a spoiler!

We Two Alone by Jack Wang, September 1, 2020

Genre; short stories, Chinese diaspora

I read this book at different times - the wonder of reading short stories I've found is being able to read them as you wish, over time or all at once. The collection is described as covering the Chinese diaspora across the globe over the past hundred years, and yet there are only seven stories, a few heartbreaking. Cultural and racial prejudice,  the demands of society and family, and the intrusion of real life impact the relationship between people in each of these stories. This explains the title of the short story collection, We Two Alone. 

Another five stars.

A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, April 2019, Purnell

Genre: biography, history 

Setting: London, France, Spain, Italy, USA

A great book for WWII history buffs who want to follow the resistance in France that was aided by England and the Allies. It details numerous underground and subversive activities in Europe, many led by a young American woman, who was recruited by the British into Churchill's spy organization. One of the greatest spies in American history, she is called, although this book is the first to detail all Virginia Hall did to help win the war.

 I had to read this book slowly, as it's so packed with information and people and events during the resistance, told chronologically, that it's hard to digest all at once. Kudos to the author for putting these events all together and to show us the woman, the spy, and the heroine.  war. 

I'm currently reading Leonora in the Morning Light by Michaela Carter, April 6, 2021, a novel based on the life of Surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington, and set in France, England.

Next on my list will be The Anglophile's Notebook by Sunday Taylor, a book about Charlotte Bronte. 

Also Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang, March 2020, HarperCollins

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon

Bread and Salt: Stories by Valerie Miner - Book Beginning

 

Bread and Salt: Stories by Valerie Miner, September 5, 2020, Whitepoint Press

The characters in these stories live and travel in Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, France, and the United States and consider their individual agency in both local and global contexts. (publisher)

Book beginning:

Il Piccolo Tesoro 

I'm stepping into an expresso bar, fragrant with strong coffee and sweet cornetti, when my attention is drawn uphill by a weathered pink and green sign offering a vacancy at Il Piccolo Tesoro. The small treasure. I'm not greedy. The adjective appeals as much as the noun promises. 

I chose this Ligurian village in the sensible way, by spreading a map of Italy across my kitchen table in Toronto, closing my eyes and pushing a pushpin into destiny.

Page 56:

But when he got transferred up the coast, she couldn't bear commuting 100 miles down to the city, cutting him out of her days like that. ("Quiet as the Moon")

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya: Book Beginning

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader
From the library:

The Lonesome Body Builder

The Lonesome Body Builder by Yukiko Motoya, November 6, 2018, Soft Skull Press
Genre: short stories, in translation

Book beginning:
The Lonesome Bodybuilder (story)

When I got home from the supermarket, my husband was watching a boxing match on TV. 

"I didn't know you watched this kind of thing. I never would have guessed, " I said, putting down the bag of groceries on the living room table. He made a noncommittal noise from the sofa, He seemed to be really engrossed.  

"Who's winning? The big one or the little one?"

Theme of the story: What does it take for an introverted husband to finally take notice of his wife?  She goes on to become a body builder.....

Page 56:
(from the story, An Exotic Marriage)

I felt a lingering guilt about how easy I had it. Owning a home at this age, I felt as if I had somehow managed to cheat at life.

I am finding these to be thought-provoking and very unusual stories. Use of magical realism. 

Book Beginning: Beasts and Children by Amy Parker

Beasts and Children: Stories by Amy Parker, February 2, 2016, Mariner Books
Source: library

First story beginning: "The White Elephant"

Carline and I sat at the breakfast table dressed as the dancing ostriches from Fantasia. It was Halloween morning, 1967 - the last year of my family's unbroken life - and my older sister and I were having a fight with our mother. She had made these outfits for our schools' costume parade.

There are ten stories in the book.

Page 56 from the story, " Rainy Season."

Maizie gets away with familiarity because she's young and cute.

About the author: Amy Parker is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin. She spent her childhood overseas among the diplomatic corps and is ordained in the Soto Zen monastic lineage. She lives in Wichita, Kansas.

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Reader, I Married HIm, edited by Tracy Chevalier: Book Beginning

Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre

Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracy Chevalier, 2016 
Short story beginning:
To Hold by Joanna Briscoe, page 55

Reader, I married him because I had to. 

You see, we did in those days. There was no glimmer of a choice. 

My hand in marriage was requested by the boy with the triangular Adam's apple and a shuffling thirst for a girl. He was the lad who worked for his parents' motor garage on a yard beyond the village, and I hadn't expected his offer after a lifetime of nods, three conversations, one dance and no kiss with him. But he knocked on our door and asked my father, who postponed his answer, crimson-necked. Using half an excuse, he told Dougie Spreckley to wait. 

Twenty-one writers have contributed to this short story collection, with the same theme based on the Jane Eyre novel. I have read several and am slowly enjoying the rest! 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Sunday Salon: Short Stories and Nonfiction

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit Mailbox Monday.

I''m in a a strange non-reading mood this mid summer. Been starting and discarding books left and right. I think I might be having beach fever and feel like leaving off reading for a while.

These look good though.

Pacific by Simon Winchester, expected publication October 27, 2015; Harper
A biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature.

Mendocino Fire by Elizabeth Tallent, expected publication October 20, 2015; Harper
...the master of short fiction delivers a diverse suite of stories about men and women confronting their vulnerabilities in times of transition and challenge.

Two new books to share. What's on your reading desk? 

Book Beginnings: TRIGGER WARNING by Neil Gaiman

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

Trigger Warning: Short Fiction and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Published February 3, 2015 William Morrow
Genre: poetry, short stories

Book beginning:

Introduction
I. Little Triggers 

There are things that upset us. That's not quite what we're talking about here, though. I'm thinking rather about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, thrown us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming.Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers leaving us pale and gasping and shocked.  

And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. 

page 56:

I said, "There are many for whom the lure of gold outweighs the beauty of a rainbow."
"Me, when young, for one. You, now, for another."

Book description:

"Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction--stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013--as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.
Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion." (publisher)

My comments: The basis of the book seems to rest on the idea that there are little words, incidents, events, or images that can trigger memories in us, welcome or not. Sometimes without warning. Books fall into this category for Gaiman as well as for me, a reader. I am eager to get into his stories and his thoughts written in prose and verse.

Thanks to William Morrow for a review/feature copy of this book. 

Cozy Mystery Short Stories by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Visit Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader for this weekly Friday meme.

Here are two short stories/cozy mysteries that you will enjoy, by mystery writer Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Ding Dong Bell: The Kitten in the Well

Book beginning:

This story takes place in the fictional village of Knavesborough, Yorkshire, in the early 1990s.

"He won't get away with throwing me out of here! Not after forty years, he won't!" The old woman was so agitated that the words cascaded out of her mouth, and Reverent Gershwin took a quick step backwards, out of firing range. Ursula Abbot gave the large pot on the cooker an indignant shove on the cooker so the goulash slopped over, and flies rose in a dark formation above the food before settling down again. 

She grabbed a greyish dishcloth and dabbed it around haphazardly in the mess. Three cats came bouncing to help her remove the tempting pool of sauce on the kitchen floor.  

"Well, but I can't imagine Mr. Alnwick won't consider your age..., the vicar began.

A clean and cosy short story, featuring the popular Gershwin family in Knavesborough. It all begins quite innocently with a visit to an old cat woman, but no matter what the Gershwins stick their noses in, something sinister will happen. Revisit the 1990s and meet Rhapsody, Harmonia and Psalmonalla Gershwin, the spunky sisters and their curious kitten.
(goodreads)

Green Acres

Mrs Vanilla McVities, the former cook of Netherfield Manor, has bought an old mansion and converted it into an old people's home. Rhapsody Gershwin, librarian and amateur sleuth, pops in to visit a neighbour and finds herself on the business end of murder. A sheep dog also plays an important role in the story - you'd be barking to miss this one.  A short story in the Rhapsody Gershwin series, set in Knavesborough, a fictional Yorkshire village. First published in the anthology "The Red Shoes". Now you can find out what happened to a couple of the quirky inhabitants since we left them at the end of  the cozy mystery, "The Cosy Knave". 
(goodreads)

Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen is a teacher from Denmark. In her spare time she reads and writes crime fiction in English and Danish, and in 2010 she sold her first flash stories to American magazines and publishers.

Since then she has published two collections of flash fiction, "Candied Crime" (humour) and "Liquorice Twists" (a bit darker). Her most popular story is "The Cosy Knave" - a humorous and cosy novel featuring village constable Archibald Penrose and the librarian Rhapsody Gershwin.

LATEST NEWS: "The Red Shoes" - four irreverent short stories characterized by dark humour, quirky characters and severed limbs.

Author of "Heather Farm", bestselling ghost story on Amazon.com in 2011.

COMING SOON: "Anna Märklin's Family Chronicles" - a historical mystery, set in Denmark and Sweden. Published in Denmark in 2011.