Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel
For the most part, Chinese characters represent individual things such as objects or actions. In theory this would enable them to be understood across multiple languages. In some sense they can. Japan users Kanji to represent ideas that would be understood by those that know Chinese. Korea and Vietnam had also used Chinese characters for some communication. Ancient Chinese was primarily a literary language that would be used to communicate ideas and not necessarily one spoken by normal people. The pictographs were intelligible, shared ideas. However, they were just part of the language. Everyday speech also has some indication of sounds and grammatical structure. Ancient Chinese was similar to Latin in that it could communicate ideas across languages, but could not display the vernacular spoken language. Modern Chinese has adopted from ancient Chinese to write modern Mandarin. Japanese has incorporated Hirigana (and Katakana) with the characters for Japanese. Vietnamese and Korean have pivoted away from the characters altogether, adopting their own alphabet or a Latin letters for writing. The book has been adapted from an academic work for a general audience and still has some of its academic feel while covering the topic generally.
Immigrants often have a tough life. They leave their home in hopes of a better life, but often encounter more struggles and discrimination. Chinese immigrants have an interesting history. The current wave is mostly highly-educated and land directly in their profession. However, there were previous immigrants that hoped to escape the impoverished life back home - only to see China make a turn and become well-to-do while they struggled in menial jobs in America.
A Chinese woman came to America as an performer. The world lots interest in her when she stopped performing. However, she continued to live with the trauma of her life. Her descendents also had their own personal trauma. Even when things seemed to be going well, something would arise to cause them to spin into mental distress. 
Ava Wong, a Stanford educated Chinese-American lawyer finds herself in a pickle. Her husband has required both of them to authorize expenditures on their account. She is on a trip to China and doesn't want to have her dirty laundry aired. She contacts an old roommate and finds some quick money by helping out with a counterfeit ring. This gives her money of her own. The two women become more and more involved. They import counterfeit luxury bags from China to the US. They will buy the "real" bag from a retail store, then return the fake for a refund. Then they can sell the real one online. They end up getting a number of others to help them with the operation. However, it starts to unravel. Stores identify the fakes and a detective infiltrates the operation.
The Chou family are immigrants who run a Chinese restaurant in Haven, Wisconsin. They have conflicting dreams and goals. There is a mixture of Buddhism and Christianity religion, Chinese and American culture, and fitting in and remaining separate. There are challenges fitting in to a culture when you are not really Chinese or really American. The Chou family also has plenty of "standard" family conflicts, especially over money. It all culminates with the family patriarch ending up dead in the freezer. We never know for sure how he died, but one son ends up being convicted on circumstantial evidence. (He had motive for doing it - he even acknowledged the motive on the witness stand and called himself a wimp for not following through.) 
The Chinese were instrumental in building the transcontinental railroad. Without their labor and industriousness, the railroad would have never been completed when it was. Alas, very little is known about their history. Ghosts of Gold Mountain attempts to remedy this. Alas, because few detailed records are available, the book is mostly a recitation of facts and occasional anecdotes. There is no life story that we can follow to understand the life of the Chinese laborer.
Ball Lightning is a rarely seen, not very well understood form of lightning-look power. In the book, Cixin Liu creates his own explanation of it. The novel starts with the protagonist's parents getting vaporized before his eyes. This drives him to explore ball lightning. He meets up with others that have interest in the subject. One woman is keen an using in as a weapon. A scientist has an understanding of the phenomenon as in the quantum realm. Those incinerated by ball lightning live in a state of being neither dead nor alive. The whole concept is not understood with our current understanding of physics. The ball lightning effects can be used to wipe out electronics, vaporize specific things or control tornados. Various parts of the research are used as both offense and defense in a war that breaks out. In the end some research foreshadows "others" watching the earth (in the three body problem.) The author has a nice afterward where he explains how he was influenced by other science fiction writers to create this novel. The novel has a fairly "young" feel to it - at times it feels almost like a young adult sci-fi novel. Then it bounces to more detailed scientific explanation. There is warfare and destruction, but it feels like it is more at a distance. It is interesting that there is a progression from the child-focused Supernova Era to the young adult Ball Lightning and then the more dark adult Three Body Problem. 
To Hold Up the Sky is a collection of short stories written between 1999 and 2017 and recently translated to English. The audiobook is narrated by various narrators and very well down. The stories include: 
A distant store has gone supernova. This has sent particles to earth that cause chromosome damage. All adults will die within a year. However, children are able to repair their chromosomes and will continue to live. The earth needs to plan for children quickly taking over.
This new philosophical transaltion of Dao De Jing gives us a lot of commentary. Perhaps way too much commentary. The introduction greatly overshadows the actual content of the book. And the content of the book contains more commentary than actual text. Common themes emphasized are the power of the week over the mighty, pacifism, and importance of the role of women, anti-materialism and the importanace of ones place. These seem like very modern norms. Is this just a modern reading of Daoism, or is this an accurate judgement? I'm interested in exploring some of the original text in more detail - though without the weight of pre-built interpretations.
Joy Luck Club is a collection of stories of Chinese women who have lived in San Francisco. Some stories deal with life in China, but most deal with life in San Francisco. In one, a mother remarks that she hoped to raise a Chinese woman with all the benefits of America, but instead got an American woman. That becomes a sad theme in the book. In spite of growing up in a large Chinese community, these women have mostly lost their Chinese culture. They live like Americans. When they go back to China, they are clearly foreigners. However, in America, they are often not seen as "true Americans" (In one story, she is mistaken for Vietnamese.) The old culture is lost, but there is not a new culture to replace it. 
Mormons, Chinese and Nigerians all have been disproportionately successful in America due to the "triple package". This package includes, the paradoxical mixture of a superiority complex and a chip on the shoulder together with delayed gratification. The package is something that is held by and indicates success in a group. Individuals members of the group may or may not achieve success. However, as a whole, the group will have greater economic success than the population at large.