the wish-list so far

my local librarians are either going to hate me, or just stare at me with blank expressions. also, this numbering is in order of addition to the wish list, not in order of preference. ETA: bold = interlibrary/local; italic = not available; # = local library; underline = author avail but not that title; neither = read/reading.

1. The Hell Screens — Alvin Lu
2. Death of a Red Heroine — Xiaolong Qiu
3. The Eye of Jade: A Mei Wang Mystery — Diane Wei Liang #
4. The Midnight Palace — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
5. The Age of Dreaming — Nina Revoyr
6. Southland — Nina Revoyr
7. Feng Shui Detective — Nury Vittachi
8. Moonrise, Sunset — Gopal Baratham
9. Shadow Theatre — Fiona Cheong
10. White Teeth: A Novel — Zadie Smith
11. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel — Yen Mo
12. Nervous Conditions — Tsitsi Dangarembga
13. Wizard of the Crow — Ngugi wa Thiongo
14. The Heart of Redness: A Novel — Zakes Mda
15. Running in the Family — Michael Ondaatje
16. My Name Is Red — Orhan Pamuk
17. Salt and Saffron — Kamila Shamsie
18. Burnt Shadows: A Novel — Kamila Shamsie
19. The Skull Mantra — Eliot Pattison
20. The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery — Amitav Ghosh
21. Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was — Angélica Gorodischer
22. The Dervish House — Ian McDonald
23. The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad — Minister Faust
24. The Alchemists of Kush — Minister Faust
25. The Devil's Whisper — Miyuki Miyabe
26. Chinatown Beat — Henry Chang
27. Babel-17/Empire Star — Samuel R. Delany
28. The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years — Chingiz Aitmatov
29. The Mistress of Spices: A Novel — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
30. My Soul to Keep — Tananarive Due
31. Brown Girl in the Ring — Nalo Hopkinson
32. Cast in Shadow — Michelle Sagara
33. Racing the Dark — Alaya Dawn Johnson
34. Salt Fish Girl — Larissa Lai
35. Fatal Remains — Eleanor Taylor Bland #
36. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel — Sijie Dai
37. Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle — Nora DeLoach
38. The Walking Boy: A Novel — Lydia Kwa
39. When Fox is a Thousand — Larissa Lai
49. Warchild — Karin Lowachee
50. The Hero's Walk — Anita Rau Badami #
51. Miss Chopsticks — Xinran
52. The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up — Yiwu Liao

I have no idea whether 'Minister Faust' is a real name or pen name, but it's a freaking brilliant name any way you look at it. It's a name that demands you do great, if kinda crazy, things.

If you can think of any other SF/F works, or any of these titles make you do the "if you like that [story description] you may also like" routine, please feel free to rattle off the "also likes" you've got.

nomnomnomnom

1. We went back again last night, and I finally had bibimbap. Omg, so gooooooood. I think this is what they meant in high school when they said IT ONLY TAKES ONCE AND YOU'RE AN ADDICT.

2. Book-searches last night, taking the recs from all ya'll, and firecat's suggestion to read up on 50books_poc and then went browsing through Amazon on top of that. Apparently, if you're going to set a book in Asia, especially the Far East, then you have to have "dragon" in the title. It's like naming a Chinese restaurant: two from column A, one from column B: lion, golden, palace, peking, etc. Except in this case it's dragon + generic verb or noun that'd be used in any other thriller/suspense. Add a "The" and you're set. Strangely, this also appears to apply to espionage/thriller works set in Indonesia, Indochina, Malaysia, and Singapore, but not works set in Japan (which get "sword" and "chrysanthemum" and "samurai" instead). I haven't found any Western-written espionage/thriller works set in Korea, though, so no idea whether the pattern, or what pattern, holds there. Still, it got pretty annoying after the twelfth title. Sheesh.

3. Now reading The Skull Mantra, which is well-written but so freaking bleak. (Not to mention awfully, ahem, pointed -- not critical per se, just plain pointed -- about China's role in Tibet and PRC politics in general, enough that I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Yes, I know it's a totalitarian system, but it just feels... something feels off to know such criticism is coming from an outsider, if that makes sense.) I figured get the depressing one out of the way, and then start on the rest. Maybe I should go ahead & reserve the next batch now, so it'll be ready by the time I finish this batch in the next day or so.

4. Local friend, invaluable resource for finding good spoons. Yay.