11 Best 「amy tan」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
- The Joy Luck Club: A Novel (Penguin Orange Collection)
- Saving Fish from Drowning: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
- Where the Past Begins: Memory and Imagination
- The Kitchen God's Wife
- The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
- Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever, (of Authors) Tells All
- Mid-life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude
- Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me
- The Hundred Secret Senses
- The Bonesetter's Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
“The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich AsiansPart of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperbackWinner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today.The Joy Luck Club In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan’s debut novel—now widely regarded as a modern classic—examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters.
“A rollicking, adventure-filled story . . . packed [with] the human capacity for love.”–USA Today“A superbly executed, good-hearted farce that is part romance and part mystery . . . With Tan’s many talents on display, it’s her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations . . . that make this book pure pleasure.”–San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco art patron Bibi Chen has planned a journey of the senses along the famed Burma Road for eleven lucky friends. But after her mysterious death, Bibi watches aghast from her ghostly perch as the travelers veer off her itinerary and embark on a trail paved with cultural gaffes and tribal curses, Buddhist illusions and romantic desires. On Christmas morning, the tourists cruise across a misty lake and disappear.With picaresque characters and mesmerizing imagery, Saving Fish from Drowning gives us a voice as idiosyncratic, sharp, and affectionate as the mothers of The Joy Luck Club. Bibi is the observant eye of human nature–the witness of good intentions and bad outcomes, of desperate souls and those who wish to save them. In the end, Tan takes her readers to that place in their own heart where hope is found.“Amy Tan is among our great storytellers.”–The New York Times Book Review“Amy Tan has created an almost magical adventure that, page by page, becomes a metaphor for human relationships.”–Isabel Allende“With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and (of course) their consequences.”–Elle“A book that’s easy to read and hard to forget.”–Newsweek
From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir about finding meaning in life through acts of creativity and imagination\nIn Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals the ways that our memories and personal experiences can inform our creative work. Drawing on her vivid impressions of her upbringing, Tan investigates the truths and inspirations behind her writing while illuminating how we all explore, confront, and process complex memories, especially half-forgotten ones from childhood.\nWith candor, empathy, and humor, Tan sheds light on her own writing process, sharing her hard-won insights on the nature of creativity and inspiration while exploring the universal urge to examine truth through the workings of imagination—and what that imaginative world tells us about our own lives. Where the Past Begins is both a unique look into the mind of an extraordinary storyteller and an indispensable guide for writers, artists, and other creative thinkers.
Here is the eagerly awaited new novel from the author of The Joy Luck Club, the powerful and moving bestseller hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "powerful . . . full of magic". Convinced that she is dying, an elderly Chinese woman living in San Francisco decides to reveal all the confidences entrusted to her, thus beginning a series of comic misunderstandings about the secrets people keep.
Delve into the stories from Amy Tan's life that inspired bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement and the new memoir, Where the Past Begins Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists. Whether recalling arguments with her mother in suburban California or introducing us to the ghosts that inhabit her computer, The Opposite of Fate offers vivid portraits of choices, attitudes, charms, and luck in action--a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we all face today.
In 1992, a cadre of the world’s best selling authors formed a garage band called the Rock Bottom Remainders. For two decades the band played proudly (and terribly) to sold-out crowds across the country and raised more than $2 million dollars for charity. Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All is a collective book by Stephen King, Scott Turow, Mitch Albom, Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., James McBride, Ridley Pearson, Greg Iles, Ted Habte-Gabr, Sam Barry, and Roger McGuinn. These renowned authors share the behind-the-scenes, uncensored story of their two decades of friendship, love, writing, and the redemptive power of rock’n’roll. Includes stories, musings, group email exchanges, candid conversations, compromising photographs, and a writing contest in which several of the authors (including Stephen King) wrote a short story in King’s style. Readers get to guess which is the real thing
Writers and rock music critics describe their experiences touring with the rock band they formed to raise money for charity
Perfect for Mother’s Day, or for any day on which we wish to acknowledge this all-important bond, Mother is an awe-inspiring affirmation of the enduring love that exists in every corner of the globe.With her signature eloquence and heartfelt appreciation, renowned poet and national treasure Maya Angelou celebrates the first woman we ever knew: Mother. “You were always the heart of happiness to me,” she acknowledges in this loving tribute, “Bringing nougats of glee / Sweets of open laughter.” From the beginnings of this profound relationship through teenage rebellion and, finally, to adulthood, where we stand to inherit timeless maternal wisdom, Angelou praises the patience, knowledge, and compassion of this remarkable parent.
““As compelling as Tan’s first bestseller, The Joy Luck Club. . . No one writes about mothers and daughters with more empathy than Amy Tan.”–The Philadelphia Inquirer“[An] absorbing tale of the mother-daughter bond . . . this book sing[s] with emotion and insight.”–PeopleRuth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known. . . .In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter. When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion–all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLing in modern San Francisco. The truth that Ruth learns from her mother’s past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness.“A strong novel, filled with idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters; haunting images; historical complexity; significant contemporary themes; and suspenseful mystery.”–Los Angeles Times“For Tan, the true keeper of memory is language, and so the novel is layered with stories that have been written down–by mothers for their daughters, passing along secrets that cannot be said out loud but must not be forgotten.”–The New York Times Book Review“Tan at her best . . . rich and hauntingly forlorn . . . The writing is so exacting and unique in its detail.”–San Francisco Chronicle
A magical fable details the story of how Siamese cats got their dark markings on their faces and tails as Ming Miao tells her kittens the story of their ancestor, Sagwa of China, who tricked the Foolish Magistrate with an ink pot. Reprint.