This is the only one of Kingston's books I have read but I have read it numerous times, because I taught it in a "Minority Visions in American Lit" course I taught when I was adjunct college teaching in the 1980s. Reading it over and over really made me appreciate how rich and unqiue it is. The book cover calls it an "autobiographical novel" -- as ambigious a genre category as you will ever come by. Essentially, it's a memoir about growing up Chinese American. Kingston conveys that experience through various styles and points of view, including a fantasy section about a girl who becomes a warrior and saves her family and country -- a classic childhood fantasy of pleasing everyone and saving the day. It's about the trials and tribulations of being -- and not being -- a good daughter; it's about being a sister; it's about voice (one of the characters stays home from school, unable to speak, for a long stretch of time); it's about family -- rituals, traditions, tribal expectations, food. It's a great, moving and enriching read.

I spent one winter ADDICTED to Ed McBain. I think I read 10 novels in a row. Of course, that barely made a dent! I read a lot of the NYC precinct novels and also a few of the Florida novels. After gorging myself, I haven't read any, since, but I do have ICE on my bookshelf since my brother told me he and his friends loved that one way back in the 70s or early 80s. Eventually I'll get around to it!

My sister-in-law handed me this book this past summer and said she thought I might like it. I ADORED it. It's the first and only novel by a Vietnamese woman writer -- born in Saigon in 1968; moved to USA when she was 6 years old. She published it in 2003; I am salivating in anticipation of her next book. This one tells the story of Binh, a Vietnamese cook who is exiled from Saigon and lands in Paris in the 1920s where he is eventually engaged as cook to Alice Toklas and Gertrude Stein. The book is a novel of ideas -- it's about class, race, nationality, sexuality, language, exile, identity, fame -- yet it's never didactic about those ideas; instead, it's emotional, poetic and incisive -- and there's amazing writing about food.

As with numerous authors, I am knocked out by a couple of books and, for some reason, never get around to the others! That's the case with Salter who has written at least half a dozen novels since the '50s and recently published short fiction -- yet I've only been compelled to read two novels, each of which is a KNOCK-OUT.

Start with A Sport and a Past Time. It's a bit of a dense, sometimes poetic read but it is worth it. A narrator voyeuristically tells the story of a love affair between a young American man and a young French woman. Very sensual, erotic and tragic. I read it more than 10 years ago and writing this makes me want to go back and re-read it.

After you read it, move on to Light Years, Salter's amazing evocation of a marriage. This one I did read twice. Very powerful about intimacy, yearning and loss. Enjoy!