The Sunday Salon and "Snow" books...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's that time of the week where we sit down, relax and talk books. So get comfy, pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa and let's talk…

Yesterday was the first day the snow came down steadily. It was windy and cold and the sky got dark around 4pm. No use in getting out the snow shovels until the morning after, because it snowed until late at night. This morning the sun smiled down on all that beautiful snow and the sound of plows, blowers and shovels could be heard echoing down the streets. So, I thought today we'd talk about "snow" books…

Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon… from Goodreads: In this elegant, haunting, and highly anticipated debut novel from 5 Under 35 National Book Foundation honoree Paul Yoon, a North Korean war refugee confronts the wreckage of his past. With spare, evocative prose, Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the war, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life in a port town on the coast of Brazil. Though he is a stranger in a strange land, throughout the years in this town, four people slip in and out of Yohan’s life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works, and who has his own secrets and a past he does not speak of; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia, a boy and a girl, who spend their days in the alleyways and the streets of the town. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must sift through his traumatic past so he might let go and move on. In Snow Hunters, Yoon proves that love can dissolve loneliness; that hope can wipe away despair; and that a man who has lost a country can find a new home. This is a heartrending story of second chances, told with unerring elegance and absolute tenderness.

Paul Yoon is one of the authors to keep your eye out for. He has gotten such praise as being one of the up and coming young authors of the day. This book has gotten great reviews and should showcase what is wonderful writing. I did enjoy his novel of short stories called Once the Shore, so Snow Hunters is on my "To Read" list now. Snow Hunters is available in a Kindle Edition, and Paperback now.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See…  A journey back to a captivating era of Chinese history where the journey delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship. In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, an “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she has written a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on the fan and compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together they endure the agony of footbinding and reflect upon their arranged marriages, their loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace in their friendship, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their relationship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

This is one of my all time favorite books! If you have a girlfriend, a BFF, or a Sister, this is a great book to share with them. The characters are wonderful, those two little girls will wrap themselves around your heart, and after you are done reading Snow Flower and The Secret Fan, the story will stay with you for a long long time. Here are the links for the Kindle Edition and the Paperback Edition .

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi… In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.

This book has gotten a lot of great pre-publication praise. Helen Oyeyemi's writing is suppose to be beautiful. A very controversial subject matter in such a deft hand should make this a great book club selection, but I think this is going to be one of those break out reads with a wider audience. Write this one down because you'll have to wait until March 6th 2014 for this to be out, but here you can pre-order Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel.