Gung Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Spring Festival, all! I had hoped to have a new book review prepared by tomorrow as my New Years gift, but familial health issues have decreased my reading time. That said, have a great holiday, open up those Hong Bao envelopes and toss some lettuce into the next lion’s mouth you see!

More Exciting News!

My friend, Laura Manivong, has her first book coming out in March. “Escaping The Tiger” is a fictionalized account of her husband’s escape from communist Laos in 1992. I can’t wait for the book’s release as I’ve only seen one chapter (which enthralled me). Check out the Kansas City Star’s interview of Laura and her husband, Troy, or you can return here in a few weeks for my own interview with Laura.

Correction: This is her first novel. 🙂

Stoked

I’ve kept quiet about some of this until I knew it would happen. Several months ago I discovered a favorite author of mine, Guy Gavriel Kay, has his next novel, “Under Heaven” coming out and it’s set in Alternative World Tang Dynasty China. Once I recovered from shock (he’s always stayed in Europe before) I contacted his press agent and was given the go ahead to receive a galley for review purposes. The reviews will go up in China History Forum Online’s newsletter, The Historical Novel Review site (where I currently have “Ransom” by David Malouf reviewed), The Ron Empire, my facebook account, She Writes, GoodReads and anywhere else I can think of to put it. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I feel like a bird of prey hovering over my mailbox.

It did not come this morning. I hope it arrives by Friday as I will have two hours of mine-all-mine reading time that morning. Can we say excited? I thought we could. 🙂

Study of Body Language and Its Implications

Okay, I’m going to cheat a little this morning and direct you to a recent study, a book and fellow author’s site: All That You Desire.
The topic of the article is the difference between how Asians and Caucasians read body language and may well force me to change some things in my ms.
The book is on a related topic in that the author is a former FBI agent and an expert on reading body language. He will tell you there are many universal tells of human body language. Apparently there are Cultural differences in how we read and interpret that language, though, some of which Jeannie Lin discusses on her blog. Pretty cool and thanks for the heads up, Jeannie!

Book Give Away Quiz

Okay, as promised, we’re going to play a game and do two give aways. The first person to answer either question correctly gets their choice of two books.

Question #1.Who can tell me which book of Amy Tan’s features two sisters and a tale of rebellion, previous lives and self sacrifice during both modern day and the Taiping Rebellion?

Question #2. What Lisa See novel involves dark fantasies, opera and women of seventeenth century China?

I’ve got two books to offer as a prize:
“Born Confused” by Tanuja Desai Hidier or

“Saving Fish From Drowning” by Amy Tan.

Hidier’s novel is a paperback edition and Tan’s is in hardback, for those of you who care about such things. ;D

I have a confession to make: I haven’t read either novel yet. So whichever book is chosen, I’d love to hear the winner’s opinion on the book, or (dare I hope?) a book review with the winner as a guest blogger.