A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua

A RIVER OF STARS by Vanessa Hua is a well-written debut novel which tells the story of Scarlett Chen, a young and pregnant Chinese woman whose married employer/lover (Boss Yeung) has sent her to Mama Fang’s Perfume Bay near Los Angeles, California so that their child will be born there and have American citizenship. She and a young teenage mother-to-be, Daisy, make a surprising escape one night and despite some very real dangers end up in San Francisco’s Chinatown. There, they rely on neighbors’ goodwill, street smarts, and hard work to survive. Readers will be amazed at Scarlett’s resilience and (sometimes underhanded) resourcefulness, not unlike the similarly named character in Gone with The Wind. I initially requested A RIVER OF STARS because of its focus on the 21st century version of the American Dream, but parenthood, especially the relationship between mothers and daughters, is also very key and could potentially work as a basis for Junior Theme. Literature circles could definitely consider pairing Hua’s novel with other previously reviewed fictional works on immigration, such as Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran or perhaps Go, Went, Gone (to be read by our Global Voices class this year) or A Radius of Us or Behold the Dreamers.  A RIVER OF STARS garnered praise from authors Celeste Ng ("utterly absorbing") and Lisa Ko ("a riveting story"); plus, it was a LibraryReads selection for August 2018 and the BBC and the Economist featured positive reviews.    

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

SOURDOUGH by Robin Sloan is surprisingly one of my favorite reads of the summer. It’s about an overworked young programmer, Lois, who finds her passion – baking bread - and transforms her life and the life of others. SOURDOUGH is slow at times, but it has stayed with me due primarily to its endearing protagonist and its many humorous elements.  Initially, Lois has little life outside of working at General Dexterity in the Bay Area.  Her poor sleeping and eating habits gradually improve due to a mysterious local take-out’s soup and bread.  Sadly, the chef and his deliveryman brother run into visa issues and leave their “number one eater” (Lois) a yeasty sourdough starter and special ethnic music. Lois soon learns to bake bread, construct an oven, and even experiments with programming a robot to break eggs. This is a fun read about the possibility of following your dreams (even if you do not realize that is happening) from Robin Sloan, the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, an Alex Award winner.

A very interesting juxtaposition would be to have a group read the fictional SOURDOUGH (featuring its robot character and almost magical biological substance) and also LIFE 3.0 by Max Tegmark which is non-fiction, dealing with the dangers of super intelligence and AI. 

Tegmark, a professor of physics at MIT, argues that the most important conversation of our time is about the future of AI and he quotes numerous experts in his text.  Tegmark also makes good use of charts and visuals to explain his thinking, saying “the goal of the book is to help you join this conversation.”  There is quite a bit of background material to sift through, however, and his explanations were sometimes quite dry or even a bit condescending given the topic. A review in August 29th’s Wall Street Journal notes that LIFE 3.0 is likely to be controversial, with the bulk devoted to “how things could go wrong.” I agree that this is an extremely important issue, but it is a little unclear who Tegmark’s target audience is for this disturbing forecast.

Honestly, I felt that SOURDOUGH opened my mind more to the possibility of using robots and made me feel genuinely excited about the near-term future. I also want to learn more about Vivek Wadhwa and his book, The Driver in the Driverless Car, just featured on the PBS NewsHour.