en-US Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:41:37 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 2419439 Alternative cover edition here.

These three short stories, The Counterfeiter, Obasute, and The Full Moon, explore the roles of loneliness, compassion, beauty, and forgiveness in day-to-day life in Japan, all within the context of the Buddhist-influenced notion of inescapable predestination.]]> 124 Yasushi Inoue 0804832528 Julie 0 3.61 1949
author: Yasushi Inoue
name: Julie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/14
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]]> 18378296 Julie O'Yang Julie 0 to-read 5.00 2011
author: Julie O'Yang
name: Julie
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15991317
* A shamelessly original work of art that you can read legally outside China. � New Beijing Voice

* A tour de force. � Leanne Delehanty,author and visual artist

* A refreshing pallet of colours…A subtle undercurrent of prose � Ashish Anant, Out of the Blue

* This is the kind of book that you read from cover to cover and when you are done, it changes you. Transforms you. From Cover to Cover. � Priyanka Dey, Neverland .

* [...] reminds you of the joy of discovering a treasure, and wondering why there aren't a few hundred-thousand more who have already found it before you. � Gabriel Ricardo, Unlikely stories.

* […] has all the essential ingredients that makes a bestseller. There never seems to be a damp moment with the right choice of words. � Creative Ecstasy

* History is written only once, so is Butterfly by Julie O'Yang. � Young Chronicle

*…wounding, destroying even, but never devastating, for amidst everything there is laughter. � Jeremy Fernando, author, literary critic

*...this is nothing like I’ve read before. The writing style is "different� , somewhat a la Haruki Murakami. � The Vault of Books


Set against the backdrop of the SecondWorld War/Sino-Japanese war (1931-1945), the story centres around the fatal love between a married Chinese woman and a young Japanese soldier. However, the fantastic tale is not as simple as its plot suggests. In the forties of the 20th century, one summer day, on the bending shore of the magical, eternal river Yangtze, a woman meets a young stranger she falls in love with. But he can’t love her back, and she can’t love him if she would have known why he has hunted her down all over China to tell her a dark secret�

BUTTERFLY is a modern fairy tale that explores passion beyond all forbidden boundaries and love tested to its limits to defy even death. Taking a stab at sensitive historical, social issues such as the Rape of Nanking, the question arises, what is love? Where is the salvation in all the heartlessness of mankind? Are we able to love, a deed that is so often taken for granted? Perhaps love is neither simple nor always pleasant or even inhuman. In the end the protagonists have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be reunited again on the bank of the Yangtze River, where they met seven decades ago.]]> Julie O'Yang Julie 0 5.00 2011
author: Julie O'Yang
name: Julie
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/12
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]]> 474078 Dr. Zhivago and Romeo and Juliet.  Its mysterious author was recently the subject of a feature article in the New Yorker, which has inspired a forthcoming biography. Out of print for nearly three decades until the hardcover re-release last year, Ali and Nino is Kurban Said's masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.

It is the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea, poised precariously between east and west.  Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim schoolboy from a proud, aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European sensibilities.   To be together they must overcome blood feud and scandal, attempt a daring horseback rescue, and travel from the bustling street of oil-boom Baku, through starkly beautiful deserts and remote mountain villages, to the opulent palace of Ali's uncle in neighboring Persia.  Ultimately the lovers are drawn back to Baku, but when war threatens their future, Ali is forced to choose between his loyalty to the beliefs of his Asian ancestors and his profound devotion to Nino.  Combining the exotic fascination of a tale told by Scheherazade with the range and magnificence of an epic, Ali and Nino is a timeless classic of love in the face of war.]]> 282 Kurban Said 0385720408 Julie 4 3.93 1937
author: Kurban Said
name: Julie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1937
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/10/16
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]]> 15840137 95 Wouter Noordewier 9060195582 Julie 0 to-read 4.00 1978
author: Wouter Noordewier
name: Julie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13501106
Fiona Gavelle is living a dismal existence. She works in a dusty law office where she does more secretarial than lawyer work and her husband thinks she should work and keep house simultaneously.

One snowy night, Fiona learns she has been unceremoniously booted from her crummy job, has the final argument with her spouse, leaving her no choice but to move in with her favorite aunt. With little else to do, she drives a friend to the funeral of a judge she saw at a reception.
To her surprise she is hired to represent the estate, but before long, Fiona begins to discover things that don’t fit. She blithely moves along trying to focus on building her own law practice until she is visited by the gravelly voiced Detective with big brown eyes.]]> 255 Una Tiers Julie 0 to-read 4.10 2012
author: Una Tiers
name: Julie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13625403 196 Julie O'Yang 1469991632 Julie 0 labyrinth-of-solitude � New Beijing Voice

A tour de force.
� Leanne Delehanty, author and visual artist.

Butterfly is a book that reminds you of the joy of discovering a treasure, and wondering why there aren't a few hundred-thousand more who have already found it before you.
� Unlikely stories.

History is written only once, so is Butterfly by Julie O'Yang.
� Young Chronicle

A book that has all the essential ingredients that makes a bestseller. There never seems to be a damp moment with the right choice of words. � Creative Ecstasy

]]> 5.00 2011
author: Julie O'Yang
name: Julie
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2012/01/01
date added: 2012/09/18
shelves: labyrinth-of-solitude
review:
A shamelessly original work of art that you can read legally outside China.
� New Beijing Voice

A tour de force.
� Leanne Delehanty, author and visual artist.

Butterfly is a book that reminds you of the joy of discovering a treasure, and wondering why there aren't a few hundred-thousand more who have already found it before you.
� Unlikely stories.

History is written only once, so is Butterfly by Julie O'Yang.
� Young Chronicle

A book that has all the essential ingredients that makes a bestseller. There never seems to be a damp moment with the right choice of words. � Creative Ecstasy


]]> 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 Julie 0 4.08 1966
author: Truman Capote
name: Julie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/17
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]]> 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Julie 0 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Julie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/17
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Julie 0 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: Julie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/17
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]]> 28385 In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lies his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narrator’s life—the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.
First time in Penguin Classics


A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition


The first completely new translation of Proust's novel since the 1920s, following Lydia Davis's brilliant translation of Swann's Way


Ìý±Õ±Õ> 533 Marcel Proust 0143039075 Julie 0 4.42 1919
author: Marcel Proust
name: Julie
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1919
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/09
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]]> 292336 "Five charming novellas...which have astonishing freshness, color, and warmth." The New Yorker

First published in 1686, this collection of five novellas was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy world that was Genroku Japan, and the book's popularity has increased with age, making it today a literary classic like Boccaccio's Decameron, or the works of Rabelais.

The book follows five determined women in their always amorous, erotic and usually illicit adventures. The five heroines are Onatsu, already wise in the ways of love the tender age of sixteen; Osen, a faithful wife until unjustly accused of adultery; Osan, a Kyoto beauty who falls asleep in the wrong bed; Oshichi, willing to burn down a city to meet her samurai lover; and Oman, who has to compete with handsome boys to win her lover's affections.

But the book is more than a collection of skillfully told erotic tales, for "Saikaku…could not delve into the inmost secrets of human life only to expose them to ridicule or snickering prurience. Obviously fascinated by the variety and complexity of human love, but retaining always a sense of its intrinsic dignityhe is both a discriminating and compassionate judge of his fellow man."

Saikaku's style, as allusive as it is witty, as abbreviated as it is penetrating, is a challenge that few translators have dared to face, and certainly never before with the success here achieved in a translation that recaptures the heady flavor of the original.]]> 272 Saikaku Ihara 0804801843 Julie 0 3.61 1686
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: Julie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1686
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/30
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]]> 25191
His most personal book, A Personal Matter, is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child.]]> 165 Kenzabur� Ōe 0802150616 Julie 0 3.91 1964
author: Kenzabur� Ōe
name: Julie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/30
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]]> 535739 Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels, a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world's great civilizations. Chi-chen Wang's translation is skillful and accurate.]]> 329 Cao Xueqin 0385093799 Julie 0 4.01 1761
author: Cao Xueqin
name: Julie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1761
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/28
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]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Julie 0 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Julie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/28
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]]> 13331301
Butterfly is a haunting love story a la Romeo and Juliet of the Orient. The modern fairytale explores passion beyond all forbidden boundaries and love tested to its limits to defy even death. Taking a stab at sensitive historical, social issues such as the Rape of Nanking, the question arises, what is love? Where is the salvation in all the heartlessness of mankind? Are we able to love, a deed that is so often taken for granted? Perhaps love is neither simple nor always pleasant or even inhuman. In the end the protagonists have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be reunited again on the bank of the Yangtze river where they met seven decades ago.]]> 197 Julie O'Yang Julie 0 4.32 2011
author: Julie O'Yang
name: Julie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]>