nomadreader

The backstory: When the Emperor Was Divine , Julie Otsuka's first novel, was longlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize (now known as the Bailey's Prize.) I previously enjoyed Otsuka's second novel, The Buddha in the Attic . The basics: Set during World War II, When The Emperor Was Divine  is the story of a Japanese-American family living in Berkeley, California. The novel begins with the mother reading a notice about Japanese internment camp, and she begins packing her possessions, and those of her children. My thoughts: Julie Otsuka's prose is sparse and haunting. She manages the ultimate storytelling: she shows more than she tells. You won't find lengthy descriptions of people's feelings here. You won't even find the word interment camp. Otsuka dumps the reader immediately into the story without providing many orienting details. In this sense, the reader shares the confusion of the children, Those who are familiar with this time period will clearly know ...

Tonight, the winners of this year's National Book Awards will be announced. I mostly follow the fiction category, but I'm always excited to see which authors win across the board. This year in particular, several of the young adult and non-fiction titles sound quite appealing. For the first time, the National Book Foundation is offering a live webcast of the ceremony on its website . It starts tonight at 8 p.m. New York City time. I'll be watching live (perhaps even from my Kindle Fire , which is set to arrive today!) I managed to read all five of the fiction finalists this year, and I can honestly say I would be happy if any of them win . While I certainly have my favorites (more on that soon), the five titles are incredibly diverse and represent a fascinating combination of American voices in fiction . Although I had hopes for other titles to appear on the list, I welcome reading prize lists to discover titles I likely otherwise wouldn't have. It is incredibly...

The five finalists for this year's National Book Award in Fiction are: The Sojourn  by Andrew Krivak The Tiger's Wife  by Tea Obreht ( my reveiew ) The Buddha in the Attic  by Julie Otsuka ( my review ) Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories  by Edith Pearlman Salvage the Bones  by Jesmyn Ward My thoughts I've read two of the books. I thoroughly enjoyed Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic , and I'm thrilled to see it honored here. Although I think Tea Obreht is brilliant, The Tiger's Wife fell flat for me as a novel. I've heard wonderful things about Salvage the Bones  from both Wendy at Caribou's Mom and Audra at Unabridged Chick . I was in the library holds line for it, but I opted to buy it for my Kindle instead. The other two titles are new to me. The Sojourn  by Andrew Krivak comes from the revered Bellevue Literary Press. Somehow it wasn't on my radar, but it looks outstanding. I ordered it for my Kindle and will li...

The basics:   The Buddha in the Attic is the story of Japanese picture brides from their journey on a boat shortly after World War I until World War II. My thoughts: Julie Otsuka enchanted me from the very first paragraph: "On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonas we'd been wearing for years--faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and redyed many times. Some of us came from the mountains, and had never before seen teh sea, except for in pictures, and some of us were the daughters of fishermen who had been around the sea all our lives. Perhaps we had lost a brother or father to t...