Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu is the 2020 National Book Award Winner for Fiction. This title is also the One Book Everyone Reads title for 2021 at the Wilmette Public Library. We have many students who are researching about xenophobia and Asian Americans and they will find much to explore in the programming which the public library has coordinated – a full list is here, including a chance to meet the author (via Zoom) on April 14 at 7:00pm. Called “a delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire” by The Washington Post, INTERIOR CHINATOWN is the story of a young Asian actor, Willis Wu, who dreams of becoming a star, the Kung Fu Guy. Instead he and his parents (old Asian woman and old Asian man) are forced to play stereotypical and generic roles. Yu shares Wu’s inner dialogue as well as the script of a cop show in which the actor is appearing, cleverly tying the two together. Amongst its many accolades, INTERIOR CHINATOWN received a starred review from Booklist. 

Genius Makers by Cade Metz

I so appreciate the advanced reader copies which are made available through Net Galley. For example, I was able to alert a Junior Theme student to the recent publication of THE GENIUS MAKERS by Cade Metz.  That new text deals with artificial intelligence and neural networks.  This text was the perfect fit for a student who had been exploring the use of AI in medicine and just wanted to step back and take a broader view on the history of artificial intelligence and changes that may be forthcoming.  Formerly with Wired magazine, Metz is now a technology correspondent with The New York Times and writes about “The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World.”  Focusing on the innovators and creators as well as events like AlphaGo’s win, Metz divides the book into sections, labeled A New Kind of Machine, Who Owns Intelligence?, Turmoil, and Humans are Underrated. Throughout, he engagingly introduces numerous characters and raises many questions while touching on ethics (e.g., learned biases, facial recognition), international relations, and the role of start-ups. Supplemental sections include a timeline, description of the players, notes and a helpful index. THE GENIUS MAKERS received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Library Journal.

Other non-fiction titles available through Net Galley often include recent publications from Harvard Business Review Press; for some reason, these get pulled back quickly and I often miss a chance to preview them. Two that I saw recently would also be of interest to students: MY ROBOT GETS ME by Carla Diana and GLASS HALF-BROKEN by Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg.

Carla Diana’s book is subtitled “How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human.” From both a design and an investment perspective, MY ROBOT GETS ME offers a fascinating look at the development and funding of "smart" products.  As the publisher points put, “The ‘smart home’ market will reach well over $100 billion in the next five years on the promise of products that are truly integrated with our cooking, cleaning, entertainment, security, and hygiene habits.”  

Ammerman (Director of the Harvard Business School Gender Initiative) and Groysberg (the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School) subtitled their work (forthcoming in mid-April) “Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work.” GLASS HALF-BROKEN sounds like a promising source for student researchers who are exploring the gender inequities which continue to exist in terms of leadership opportunities, mentorships, hiring biases, and compensation differences. I look forward to seeing hard copies of both titles.

The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson

The cover of THE NARROWBOAT SUMMER by Anne Youngson (Meet Me at the Museum) splendidly conveys the sense of idyll and adventure which this novel delivers. Two woman, Eve and Sally, face changes in their lives due to an executive job loss for one and a dissolving marriage for the other. By sheer happenstance, they have a chance to co-captain a narrowboat for its incapacitated owner, Anastasia, who is facing her own health problems. Despite their total inexperience, the two strangers manage to move the boat and their lives forward. Youngson captures the slow pace of the river journey and its uncertainty in terms of working the locks, living on the water and relating to other (often eccentric) members of the riverboat community. At the same time, she allows the reader to have glimpses of the personal choices and growth which Eve and Sally experience: “So I don’t think we should be in a rush to define what’s worth doing, do you? We don’t want to risk imposing some framework on the borders of chaos that might eliminate the possibilities and leave us with only the same answers as we had before.” THE NARROWBOAT SUMMER offers readers a chance for introspection and a happy adventure – enjoy!

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

James Shapiro’s SHAKESPEARE IN A DIVIDED AMERICA focuses on eight moments in American history between 1833 and 2017 to explain “What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future.” Shapiro, currently the Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, says that “Shakespeare took root in the United States because he spoke to what Americans cared about.” Shapiro is a noted authority, having written other books about Shakespeare’s works and having served on the board of directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Here, he combines history and literature while looking at divisive issues like immigration, same-sex love, and Manifest Destiny. Shapiro’s analysis has recently been published in paperback and I can see where this text might have some interest for our American Studies classes, but it would be helpful to have more of a curriculum guide. In 2020, SHAKESPEARE IN A DIVIDED AMERICA received a starred review from Publishers Weekly as well as being named one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year and a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. 

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World

An international bestseller, THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

by Laura Imai Messina is one of my most favorite books of the year.  I honestly had thought it would be a bit morbid, but instead I found Messina’s English debut to be a beautiful story of hope that I did not want to end.  Messina, who has lived in Japan for 15 years, explains to her readers about the disconnected phone booth that exists in Otsuchi, Japan. Conceived as a means for speaking “on the wind” with deceased loved ones, especially those killed in the March 2011 tsunami, the phone booth sits at the bottom of a garden. It draws people from around the world, including Messina’s fictional characters: Yui has lost her daughter and mother and Takeshi has lost his wife.  They meet multiple times at the phone booth, gradually learning about each other and rebuilding their lives. This is an emotional story – filled with grief, and growing trust, and dreams, and love. With so much death and despair in the past year, THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD shows that while still remembering loved ones, healing exists; there is promise and potential in the future. Highly recommended.  

For more on the phone booth itself and the aftermath of the tsunami (10 years ago today), please see coverage from the BBC, NPR’s This American Life, and Reuters.