The original draft of my review of Christine Yano's Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the Pacific was well over 5,000 words (I think at one point it was closer to 10). I really, really loved this book, in a way that went deeper than my particular relationship to Hello Kitty. After some serious edits, it went up in The New Inquiry in October; I really do hope that you'll read it.
I'd read some of the essays that formed the basis for chapters prior, but it was only when I heard from one of the editors that they would be interested in a review that I went out and found a copy of Yano's Airborne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways and read it. Yano is an incredible writer. I honestly can't recommend anything she's done enough, although of course I think Pink Globalization is the most important and the most interesting.
The bonus supplement for today is another book that I didn't start reading (or even buy) until after I had started on this particularly ill conceived journey, so it didn't show up on the list; Candy by Sawira Kamash. It's a history of candy from around 1880 to the present. Maybe you'll enjoy that too.