A Hmong Family Memoir

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang

Biographical but also an attempt to tell the story of a Hmong family and their journey from Laos via Thailand to St. Paul Minnesota. Although I think it was too ambitious to combine the author's story with a history of the Hmong people, it is a powerful book. It is striking that many of these families survived and prospered in the US because they arrived here before so called welfare reform.

Stop Paying Attention

French Milk by Lucy Knisley

What a great book. Lucy describes a six week stay in Paris with her mother. Both of them facing milestone birthdays 50 and 22. The title is a play on fresh whole milk available in Paris.
Lucy has a series of cartoon strips.

The 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge-List

Number	Title/Author
1	Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library - Don Borchert
2	This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation - Barbara Ehrenreich
3	Homestead - Rosina Lippi
4	Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
5	Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism - Kevin Phillips
6	St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised Wolves: Stories - Karen Russell
7	Most of It - Mary Ruefle
8	Smile As They Bow - Nu Nu Yi
9	That Little Something: Poems - Charles Simic
10	Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia - Ahmed Rashid
11	The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley
12	Personal Days: A Novel - Ed Park
13	Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
14	Willful Creatures - Aimee Bender
15	Locas: A Love & Rockets Book - Jaime Hernandez
16	The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories - Aimee Bender
17	The English Major - Jim Harrison
18	All Souls - Christine Schutt
19	Fables: Legends in Exile - Volume 1 - Bill Willingham
20	Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link
21	Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
22	Tender As Hellfire - Joe Meno
23	Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
24	The Digital Plague (Avery Cates) - Jeff Somers
25	The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
26	Feminine Gospels: Poems - Carol Ann Duffy
27	I See You Everywhere - Julia Glass
28	The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead - David Shields
29	The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
30	Demons in the Spring - Joe Meno
31	F.D.R.: The First Hundred Days - Anthony J. Badger
32	Home: A Novel - Marilynne Robinson
33	The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog - Nancy Ellis-Bell
34	Tamara Drewe - Posy Simmonds
35	Knockemstiff - Donald Ray Pollock
36	The Forever War - Dexter Filkins
37	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
38	Seven Notebooks: Poems - Campbell McGrath
39	The Best American Poetry 2008 (Best American Poetry) - Charles Wright
40	Ghost Radio: A Novel - Leopoldo Gout
41	Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood - Mark Harris
42	The Glass Palace: A Novel - Amitav Ghosh
43	The Only Window That Counts - Deborah Keenan
44	Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey
45	A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats - Spike Carlsen
46	God's Silence - Franz Wright
47	Lunch (Wesleyan Poetry) - D. A. Powell
48	Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice) - Alex Lemon
49	Bellocq's Ophelia: Poems - Natasha Trethewey
50	A Day and a Night and a Day: A Novel - Glen Duncan
51	Wanda Gag - Audur H. Winnan
52	Kingdoms - Deborah Keenan
53	Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
54	Germania: A Novel - Brendan McNally
55	Sleeping Beauties - Susanna Moore
56	The Heretic Hotels - Nolan Zavoral
57	Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
58	Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
59	First Person and Other Stories - Ali Smith
60	The Black Diamond Detective Agency - Eddie Campbell
61	Sway - Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
62	in the penny arcade - Steven Millhauser
63	Yesterday's Weather - Anne Enright
64	Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynn Truss
65	The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You - Neil Gaiman
66	House of Music - Suzanne Swanson
67	The Numbers Game - Michael Blastland
68	French Milk - Lucy Knisley
69	The Whiteness of Bones - Susanna Moore
70	The Latehomecomer - Kap Yang
71	Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
72	Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
73	Innocent - Ian McEwan
74	Alec: After The Snooter - eddie campbell
75	The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, 1945-William I. Hitchcock
76	The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: Poems - August Kleinzahler
77	The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan - Gregory Feifer
78	Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking - Aoibheann Sweeney
79	An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2 - Ivan Brunetti
80	Edge in the Kitchen, An: The Ultimate Guide to Kitchen Knives How to Buy Them, Keep Them Razor Sharp, and Use Them Like a Pro - Chad Ward
81	From a Crooked Rib - Nuruddin Farah
82	The Knife Thrower - Steven Millhauser
83	To Siberia - Per Petterson
84	Classics for Pleasure - Michael Dirda
85	Charming Billy - Alice McDermott
86	The Cure for Modern Life: A Novel - Lisa Tucker
87	A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East--from the Cold War to the War on Terror - Patrick Tyler
88	Cancer Vixen: A True Story - Marisa Acocella Marchetto
89	Straight Man - Richard Russo
90	The Outcast - Sadie Jones
91	For the Relief of Unbearable Urges - Nathan Englander
92	Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs - Melody Peterson
93	The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 Louise Erdrich
94	When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel - Kate Atkinson
95	Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems - Deborah Keenan
96	Remainder - Tom McCarthy
97	The book of One Hundred Truths - Julie Schumacher
98	Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
99	North of the Port -Anthony Bukoski
100	Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
101	Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
102	Crossing California - Adam Langer
103	1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History - Charles Bracelen Flood
104	Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun
105	Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories - Kevin Wilson
106	Lush Life: A Novel - Richard Price
107	Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat - Adam Langer
108	Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day - Peter J. Bentley
109	Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
110	The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
111	Tales of Burning Love: A Novel - Louise Erdrich
112	Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago
113	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals - Jane Mayer
114	Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - Sam Gosling
115	The Ascent of Money : A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson
116	American Wife: A Novel - Curtis Sittenfeld
117	Blueprint for Disaster: A Get Fuzzy Collection - Darby Conley
118	Spillville - Patricia Hampl
119	Twelve Below Zero - Anthony Bukoski
120	Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays - David Foster Wallace
121	The Washington Story - Adam Langer
122	The Ghost in Love: A Novel - Jonathan Carroll
123	Gemma Bovery - Posy Simmonds
124	The Summer of Love - Debbie Drechsler
125	Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond - Denis Johnson
126	The Building - Will Eisner
127	Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley
128	Evidence: Poems - Mary Oliver
129	Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel - Rivka Galchen
130	How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic
131	Camera - Jean-Philippe Toussaint
132	Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - David Foster Wallace
133	Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity - Michael Lewis
134	Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes - Anders Nilsen
135	The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant - Robert Sullivan
136	The Great Perhaps: A Novel - Joe Meno
137	The Other - David Guterson
138	Living to Tell: A Novel - Antonya Nelson
139	Female Trouble: Stories - Antonya Nelson
140	Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan
141	The Learners: A Novel - Chip Kidd

If you love short stories

In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser

An incredible blend of stories from August who makes incredible animated figures, to a magical trip to a penny arcade, and "Cathay" imaginary land.

I love short stories and these are great

More from the Sandman

The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman


This is another fine novel from this author. It shows the complexity possible in a graphic novel. The intertwining of fantasy and reality. Not so subtle digs at contemporary culture (Barbie and Ken). As you read it you quickly realize that you can't tell which narration is "real".

The literacy sky is falling

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a history and a defense of punctuation. She worries that we no longer even type but just send (internet). "...it is a matter for despair to see punctuation chucked out as worthless by people who don't know the difference between who's and whose, and whose bloody automatic grammar checker can't tell the difference either."


View all my reviews.

Great debut novel

Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney


I saw this cover on a blog devoted to book covers. It is one of several covers for this book. I loved this cover. While at my public library I saw the book. I am so glad that I read it. It is hard to believe this is her first novel.

The story has "coming of age" intertwined with loneliness. She literally grows up on an island off the coast of Maine. It is also a tale about how we develop our sexuality.

Answers to life's persistent questions

Smile

The picture taker of the pictures in the previous posts. Click on the picture for a larger image.

21th Century Civil War General on a horse?

Note the interesting "things" in the "statute".
Click on the picture for a larger image.

These can found outside the US Federal Court House in Minneapolis

Every "girl" needs pet rabbit.
If you kiss this frog, does it turn into a prince?

Demonstrator from the RNC?

The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Eddie Campbell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mysterious train bomber...private detectives, head of US secret service controlled by a group of foreign governments...and all of this at the turn of the 19th century


View all my reviews.

Book Review

Songs for the Missing: A Novel by Stewart O'Nan

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
It was good...Last Night at the Lobster is a "tough act to follow". It reminded me a little of Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones. I agree with other reviewers it does remind us of the other victims...parents, siblings, friends

Review

The Heretic Hotel by Nolan Zavoral

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Hard to believe this is his first book of poetry...it is splendid
Again evidence of why poetry is the finest form of writing

The 2009 - 100+ Reading Challenge

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the best book I have read so far this year. It is a funny book with a philosophical vein and lots of "insider" humor and references to long standing philosophical questions. You have to love a book that can use the word autodidact...

This summary can be found on Amazon.com.
Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknown to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building’s tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.
Then there’s Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma’s trust and to see through Renée’s timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

The 2009 - 100+ Reading Challenge

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Why I love poetry...touches on the complexity of interracial marriage..role of black soldiers in the civil war

The 2009 - 100+ Reading Challenge

The First Person: and Other Stories by Ali Smith

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This collection reinforces my love of the short story. The stories explore (as the book jacket states) the subtle relationship between what we know and what we feel.

Read in 2009

Number	Title/Author
1	Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library - Don Borchert
2	This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation - Barbara Ehrenreich
3	Homestead - Rosina Lippi
4	Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
5	Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism - Kevin Phillips
6	St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised Wolves: Stories - Karen Russell
7	Most of It - Mary Ruefle
8	Smile As They Bow - Nu Nu Yi
9	That Little Something: Poems - Charles Simic
10	Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia - Ahmed Rashid
11	The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley
12	Personal Days: A Novel - Ed Park
13	Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
14	Willful Creatures - Aimee Bender
15	Locas: A Love & Rockets Book - Jaime Hernandez
16	The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories - Aimee Bender
17	The English Major - Jim Harrison
18	All Souls - Christine Schutt
19	Fables: Legends in Exile - Volume 1 - Bill Willingham
20	Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link
21	Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
22	Tender As Hellfire - Joe Meno
23	Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
24	The Digital Plague (Avery Cates) - Jeff Somers
25	The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
26	Feminine Gospels: Poems - Carol Ann Duffy
27	I See You Everywhere - Julia Glass
28	The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead - David Shields
29	The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
30	Demons in the Spring - Joe Meno
31	F.D.R.: The First Hundred Days - Anthony J. Badger
32	Home: A Novel - Marilynne Robinson
33	The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog - Nancy Ellis-Bell
34	Tamara Drewe - Posy Simmonds
35	Knockemstiff - Donald Ray Pollock
36	The Forever War - Dexter Filkins
37	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
38	Seven Notebooks: Poems - Campbell McGrath
39	The Best American Poetry 2008 (Best American Poetry) - Charles Wright
40	Ghost Radio: A Novel - Leopoldo Gout
41	Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood - Mark Harris
42	The Glass Palace: A Novel - Amitav Ghosh
43	The Only Window That Counts - Deborah Keenan
44	Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey
45	A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats - Spike Carlsen
46	God's Silence - Franz Wright
47	Lunch (Wesleyan Poetry) - D. A. Powell
48	Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice) - Alex Lemon
49	Bellocq's Ophelia: Poems - Natasha Trethewey
50	A Day and a Night and a Day: A Novel - Glen Duncan
51	Wanda Gag - Audur H. Winnan
52	Kingdoms - Deborah Keenan
53	Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
54	Germania: A Novel - Brendan McNally
55	Sleeping Beauties - Susanna Moore
56	The Heretic Hotels - Nolan Zavoral
57	Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
58	Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
59	First Person and Other Stories - Ali Smith
60	The Black Diamond Detective Agency - Eddie Campbell
61	Sway - Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
62	in the penny arcade - Steven Millhauser
63	Yesterday's Weather - Anne Enright
64	Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynn Truss
65	The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You - Neil Gaiman
66	House of Music - Suzanne Swanson
67	The Numbers Game - Michael Blastland
68	French Milk - Lucy Knisley
69	The Whiteness of Bones - Susanna Moore
70	The Latehomecomer - Kap Yang
71	Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
72	Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
73	Innocent - Ian McEwan
74	Alec: After The Snooter - eddie campbell
75	The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, 1945-William I. Hitchcock
76	The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: Poems - August Kleinzahler
77	The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan - Gregory Feifer
78	Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking - Aoibheann Sweeney
79	An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2 - Ivan Brunetti
80	Edge in the Kitchen, An: The Ultimate Guide to Kitchen Knives How to Buy Them, Keep Them Razor Sharp, and Use Them Like a Pro - Chad Ward
81	From a Crooked Rib - Nuruddin Farah
82	The Knife Thrower - Steven Millhauser
83	To Siberia - Per Petterson
84	Classics for Pleasure - Michael Dirda
85	Charming Billy - Alice McDermott
86	The Cure for Modern Life: A Novel - Lisa Tucker
87	A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East--from the Cold War to the War on Terror - Patrick Tyler
88	Cancer Vixen: A True Story - Marisa Acocella Marchetto
89	Straight Man - Richard Russo
90	The Outcast - Sadie Jones
91	For the Relief of Unbearable Urges - Nathan Englander
92	Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs - Melody Peterson
93	The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 Louise Erdrich
94	When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel - Kate Atkinson
95	Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems - Deborah Keenan
96	Remainder - Tom McCarthy
97	The book of One Hundred Truths - Julie Schumacher
98	Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
99	North of the Port -Anthony Bukoski
100	Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
101	Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
102	Crossing California - Adam Langer
103	1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History - Charles Bracelen Flood
104	Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun
105	Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories - Kevin Wilson
106	Lush Life: A Novel - Richard Price
107	Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat - Adam Langer
108	Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day - Peter J. Bentley
109	Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
110	The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
111	Tales of Burning Love: A Novel - Louise Erdrich
112	Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago
113	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals - Jane Mayer
114	Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - Sam Gosling
115	The Ascent of Money : A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson
116	American Wife: A Novel - Curtis Sittenfeld
117	Blueprint for Disaster: A Get Fuzzy Collection - Darby Conley
118	Spillville - Patricia Hampl
119	Twelve Below Zero - Anthony Bukoski
120	Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays - David Foster Wallace
121	The Washington Story - Adam Langer
122	The Ghost in Love: A Novel - Jonathan Carroll
123	Gemma Bovery - Posy Simmonds
124	The Summer of Love - Debbie Drechsler
125	Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond - Denis Johnson
126	The Building - Will Eisner
127	Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley
128	Evidence: Poems - Mary Oliver
129	Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel - Rivka Galchen
130	How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic
131	Camera - Jean-Philippe Toussaint
132	Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - David Foster Wallace
133	Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity - Michael Lewis
134	Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes - Anders Nilsen
135	The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant - Robert Sullivan
136	The Great Perhaps: A Novel - Joe Meno
137	The Other - David Guterson
138	Living to Tell: A Novel - Antonya Nelson
139	Female Trouble: Stories - Antonya Nelson
140	Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan
141	The Learners: A Novel - Chip Kidd