120 books

#29 of 2012: Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

I’ll admit: When I first saw the spine of this book, I thought it was going to be an Asian lit of some sort. How stereotypical but I intentionally think like that nowadays because I’m on the hunt for Asian lit. So I turned it over and gasped a little - not because it was yet another YA novel with an ugly, typical cover, but because of its size, which was like a children’s picture book! That turned on a light bulb in my head and made me proceed leafing through the pages (even though the blurb didn’t really perk me up - extremely talented piano girl goes missing lalalala… HEY! That’s another Asian lit stereotype ticked off from the list, come to think of it.). And what a pleasant surprise - it was indeed like a picture book (or maybe more approps, scrapbook) that tells the story of Glory, this piano prodigy, who had lots of troubles in her life due or NOT due to the fact that her mother died when she was young and her dad had to raise her up in the Bronx all by himself. For such a conventionally-covered book, it had a fresh way of telling a not-so-original story. I liked that instead of me visualizing the images in the story, I now had the chance to interpret the pictures in my own words. Not that the book didn’t have a definite flow because it definitely did, what with all those postcards, letters, IM-ing and emailing, and YouTube linking that were sent between Glory and Frank, her boyfriend who sounded macho by name but only by name (well, go see him in the book and judge). Worth picking up, especially if you’re a photography enthusiast.

Yay!s
-Those photos will really buy you in. It’s kind of like Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up, but with WAY MUCH LESSER words. (So if you can’t read… Lol only kidding.)
-Speaking of Daniel Handler, he praised this highly. Birds of the same feather, I suppose?
-Contains lots of classical references, too, if you’re into that. In fact, the title of the book is one. (And not something East Asians use for eating….)

Boo!s
-I do love pictures (err, who doesn’t) but I like my books with more words. This one probably had only less than twenty pages combined of real text.
-This book can come across as something that would feed your curiosity but not one you’d return to from time to time.
-Also: Not very handy. You’d have to carry around a mailman’s bag like mine if you can’t read it in just under an hour.