Weekend Reads: “The Last Story of Mina Lee”

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received this book as part of my goodie box from the Romance Slam Jam 2023 conference.

“The Last Story of Mina Lee” is a dual timeline contemporary tale about the titular Mina Lee and her daughter, Margot. Mina is a Korean immigrant; Margot is born in the United States. The two are estranged, in the main, but Margot’s (view spoiler)[ accidental discovery of her mother’s death (hide spoiler)] sets the tale in motion.

Margot and her gay best friend Miguel start trying to learn more about Mina’s life over the course of the book; in so doing, Margot learns a great deal about herself.

This book looks at not only the complexities of mother/daughter relationships but also the challenges faced by immigrants and their next-generation family.

This book is poignant, and beautifully written. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Weekend Reads: “Being Henry: The Fonz … and Beyond”

Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and Beyond by Henry Winkler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an utterly charming memoir!

Henry Winkler lets us see behind the scenes into his difficulties growing up in a strict-to-abusive household, as well as his struggles with dyslexia. Somehow, he managed to graduate from Yale (a fact of which I was previously unaware) and start a career as an actor.

Behind his best-known character, the supremely confident Fonzie, is a quiet guy who lives with tremendous insecurities. And Winkler isn’t shy about letting us know why and what they are.

I felt like I had a friend talking to me, especially in the more poignant moments of the book — and there are plenty of them, along with the humor.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Weekend Reads: “The Temps”

The Temps by Andrew DeYoung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A clever look at modern office life in the tech world, as seen through the eyes of temporary employees facing awful circumstances.

If you’ve ever been a temp or a contractor, you know that your work is vital to the function of the organization … but you’re also an outsider. Events, all-hands, and the like? You can’t go. And that’s how this book starts. The temps are excluded from an outdoor all-hands … and then there’s a chemical weapons attack that has horrific effects on those outside.

The only survivors are the temps. One guy, Jacob, hasn’t even been through an orientation, so he’s not sure what Delphi does, but he’s determined to find out. Brent, who was a manager in one of the food courts, sets himself up as leader overseeing the supplies. Swati just wants to keep teaching yoga. And pretty soon, there are conflicts all over the place.

There are some seriously unexpected turns in this post-apocalyptic tale. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

View all my reviews

Weekend Reads: “Christmas Town”

Hi, everyone. I thought I’d go with a seasonal read this time. Happiest of holiday to you and yours!

Christmas Town by Shawn Inmon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this short story over the course of two evenings, but you really could do it in one.

Peter is a stressed-out lawyer on his way to a new corporate job in Boston. When he stops to look at a Christmas village display in Sea-Tac, he wonders what it would be like to live there … and after a black-out, that’s just where he wakes up.

Nothing in town is quite as idyllic as he imagined, but he still learns some important lessons about himself along the way.

An entertaining tale created by a gifted author. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Weekend Reads: “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant”

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Curtis Chin’s memoir about growing up in Detroit’s Chinatown moves from funny to poignant back again with the kind of deft hand you’d expect from the founder of the Asian American Writers Workshop. He’s also a sought-after documentary film producer, and the journalistic bent of his memoir shows why.

We not only see his large and often dysfunctional family (six kids, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa) in the titular restaurant but in their home life. Curtis not only has to deal with racism outside his family’s insular community, but also with the realization that he’s gay. Because this happens in the early 1980s, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, the situation is nothing like the present day. There are no support groups, and young LGBTQ+ people have very few resources.

It isn’t until Curtis goes to college and gets a job in a local diner that he meets a broader group of friends who are ready to accept not only his experience as a first-generation American, but also his burgeoning sexuality.

I laughed sometimes, and I cried … and I wanted to eat a whole lot of dishes from his family’s restaurant.

This memoir is just delightful.

View all my reviews