Best Books for the Beach
What better time to catch up on some reading?
By Heather Harlan

Whether you’re craving a good novel, a few verses of poetry, some history or even wedding advice, there are plenty of good reads to pack in your beach tote this year.

HOUSE OF THE WINDS
by Mia Yun
Interlink Books, $22.95
Yun, a Korean American writer who now lives in New York but grew up in Seoul, has penned a poignant debut novel about the struggles of women raising families alone in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation and Korean War.

She recounts the story of Young Wife through the eyes of her youngest daughter. It’s a vivid world in which Grandfather dies with a crabapple in his mouth and the narrator’s “magic-wand” mother spins tales of a time when tigers smoked pipes. These are women who lived in a Korea that no longer exists, but Yun has patched together their lives from snippets of her own childhood memories where “women spilled stories and tears.” Don’t forget the tissues.

INTERPRETER OF MALADIES
By Jhumpa Lahiri
Houghton Mifflin Co., $12.00
In this collection of nine short stories, Lahiri vividly depicts the lives of Indian Americans -- characters whose experiences reflect the diversity (and sometimes discord) of America itself.

The book’s namesake story is told from the viewpoint of Mr. Kapasi, a tour guide entrusted to show Mr. and Mrs. Das and their three children, all from New Jersey, the sights around Konarak, India.

At first astonished by how foreign the ethnic Indian family seems to be, Kapasi soon finds himself drawn into their world as he points out monkeys and temples on the roadway. During the drive, he becomes ever more entranced by Mrs. Das, who has unwittingly seduced him by showing interest in his other job -- interpreting Gujarati patients’ complaints for a nearby doctor. When Kapasi describes his duties as “a job like any other,” Mrs. Das replies: “But so romantic.”

The reason for her interest becomes clear when Mrs. Das remains in the car with Kapasi during his last stop -- one in which the rest of the family goes on to explore a ruined temple. It is then that she reveals the malady eating away at her for eight years. One of her three children is not her husband’s, but that of a friend of his who had stayed with the couple for a week. The affair, apparently, took place with the only man who had opportunity to show interest in Mrs. Das, who has spent every weekend since childhood with Mr. Das, the son of her parents’ friends.

She wants “some kind of remedy,” she says to Kapasi, who “looked at her, in her red plaid skirt and strawberry T-shirt, a woman not yet 30, who lived neither her husband nor her children, who had already fallen out of love with life.” He doesn’t know what to say.

What he eventually comes up with serves as the very unHollywood-like denouements that are Lahiri’s trademark -- endings with multiple stray ends that leave you asking what happened next. Kind of like in real life.

THE HOUSE OF NIRE
by Morio Kita
translated by Dennis Keene
Kodansha, $14.00
Why would anyone want to bring a Japanese novel to the beach on a relaxing sunny day? They’re usually so gloomy. But not this House of Nire.

First published in 1963, Kita’s book has been hailed by critics as a comic masterpiece. Loosely based on his own relatives, Kita tells the story of several generations of the Nire family and the mental hospital they run from the end of the World War I to the end of World War II.

Kita introduces us to the pompous Kichiro Nire, who founded not only the hospital, but also the reputation of the family after changing the family name to something he thought would sound more sophisticated. The kooky clan and an assortment of odd friends, including an unsuccessful sumo wrestler, offer a satirical look at Japanese society during the first half of this century.

GEISHA
by Liza Dalby
University of California Press
If you’ve already read Arthur Golden’s novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, but still thirst for more about the ladies of “the flower and willow world,” try Dalby’s study of the real thing.

In 1974, Dalby, then a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, became the first non-Japanese ever allowed to entertain as a geisha in Japan. Her description of the year she spent doing research for her thesis while living and working amongst the few remaining geisha in Kyoto’s historic Pontocho district, offers a fascinating glimpse of an emblematic cultural tradition.

More than just a history and analysis of geisha as a unique social phenomenon, Geisha is also a personal account of her own relationships with these women and the closed society she shared with them for a while as their “sister and “daughter.”

Last year, Geisha was reissued in a new edition with a new preface updating what has happened to the geisha families Dalby studied and the general situation of geisha in present-day Japan.

ALAS! WHAT BROUGHT THEE HITHER?: THE CHINESE IN NEW YORK, 1800-1950
by Arthur Bonner
Associated University Presses
In Alas! What Brought Thee Hither, Bonner traces the history of Chinese in New York from the first seamen who arrived in the early 1800s on board trade ships to the establishment of a permanent community in lower Manhattan later in the century.

Bonner tells us about early immigrants such as Wong Chin Foo, the first to use the phrase “Chinese American.” The term, incidentally, was also the name of the first Chinese-language newspaper published in New York, which Wong published and edited for nine months in 1883 before it folded.

For source material, the author primarily relied on about 3,000 English-language period newspaper and magazine articles. Many cartoons taken from those publications stereotypically depicting Chinese as exotic, opium- smoking, rat-eating heathens are reproduced throughout the text. These snapshots reveal the prejudices of the times and how those biases influenced the development of the community.

WILD GEESE AND TEA: AN ASIAN-AMERICAN WEDDING PLANNER
by Shu Shu Costa
Riverhead Books, $15.00
Finally! A practical, detailed and illustrated guide on how to combine Eastern and Western traditions to create an unforgettable event.

Wild Geese and Tea covers it all -- from engagement to the actual marriage ceremony. There’s advice on food, floral arrangements, toasts and tea ceremonies. The book gives practical answers on how to stage group photos, showers, invitations and how to wear traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean wedding costumes -- basically everything you need to create a day to remember while incorporating ancient traditions in modern ways.

There’s also a month-by-month planner to help keep you organized while arranging the joyful chaos that usually ensues while planning a wedding.

Other AsianWeek staff contributed to this report.