Thought Train to Pusan

CBR11 Bingo Square: Birthday Originally I wanted to read Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere for the birthday bingo square, but since our library had this book available first, I figured it was worth a read. And it certainly hit on a few soft spots in my heart along the way. Emotions? Yeah, I have those in spades, and this book absolutely brought some of them out. Everything I Never Told You centers on a mixed-race Chinese American family named the Lee’s in the 1970’s, whose middle daughter Lydia is found having drowned in lake near the Lee’s house. The novel then flits back and forth, through the history of the family and how they relate to one another both before and after this tragic incident. Lydia’s mother is convinced someone else knows something or had a hand in her death, while the police find nothing but evidence that Lydia was a loner and believe she killed herself. Through investigating the family’s histories and the secrets they keep between o...

CBR11 Bingo Square: Travel Now perhaps the characters in this story don’t journey far beyond their city (though they do end up in the outskirts) and largely travel within it in a physical sense, but this novel also includes a journey to an unseen world of djinn, and therefore I picked it for the Travel square for CBR bingo. Alif the Unseen centers around a young hacker who goes by the pseudonym Alif, in an unnamed city along the Persian Gulf. This city is a security state, and he provides services to any dissidents who want to speak freely. After getting tangled up in a bit of a mess with a woman, and creating a program that can identify people’s digital footprints, he finds himself in trouble not just romantically, but now with a Prince who goes by the alias of The Hand, who seeks to imprison those who speak against the state. On the run with his neighbour, Dina, who accidentally gets caught up in everything, and with nowhere to hide, Alif finds himself se...

CBR11 Bingo Square: Reader’s Choice (replacing: Classics) Let me begin by saying that I did indeed want to read a classic for my classics square: I really wish I could get into the old language more, but it’s such a struggle for me! And truth be told I did start reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula , but I just kept drifting and realized about a tenth of the way in that I wasn’t up to the task (so instead I connived my friends into watching the movie as a part of our weekly movie-nights Keanu-athon, and boooooy howdy does that movie make some choices ). Anywho, I therefore am using my Reader’s Choice square for the spot of Moonshot . Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection is indeed exactly as described on the tin. This collection of short comics and graphic stories come from indigenous authors and artists (including but not limited to those identifying as Métis, Inuit, Dene, Anishnaabe, Cree, Mi’Kmaq, Caddo, Haida, Sioux, and Suquamish), and largely focus on lesser-known stories a...