와… 지금은 못 쓰서 매일 전주에 2003 전주 국제 영화제 가봐요. 잼이 있어요! 좋은 영화 많이 봤어… 그리고 오늘은 다시 가러 영화를 봐요. 그런데 나중에 (아마 내일) 더 썰거요. 안녕!

A lot of students ask me what’s the best way to study English. I always tell them, in Korean, something that a musician friend named Hyo Sang once told me: “연습 많이 살길이다…” (roughly, “Yeonseop mani salkilida…”) which I’m told means something like “The way (literally “road”)of life demands a lot of practice”, or, “Practicing must become a way of life.” It’s exactly the right way of putting it, both in terms of music and in terms of language study.

I have been thinking for a few hours, trying to figure out what this book is about. If you haven’t read it, you ought to. Here’s a page of reviews about it from over at Amazon. This book is impeccably horrible, which is to say that it is horrifying and perfectly so. Süskind is a master of the craft of writing, and the vividness he brings to every moment in this novel is so immersive that just for the quality of the book I cannot recommend it more highly. Suskind’s restraint is stunning; he refrains from any great detailed descriptions …