Over the last couple of months, I’ve seen an unusual number of orchestra concerts, and mostly they’ve been quite good. I’ll get to all that in a bit, but I want to generalize a little about concertgoing in Korea first. The programs here tend to be even more conservative than what I was used to in Saskatoon, Sasktchewan, the last time I was attending classical music concerts regularly. In Saskatoon, you would often see a contemporary composition open a concert — often enough that I had something to really look forward to most of the time. But in Korea, it’s …
Category: REVIEWS
From a Student Paper
I’m grading at the moment, and I ran across something so priceless I couldn’t NOT share. (I am not mentioning the student’s name, so it’s anonymous, but as a piece of observation by someone from another part of Northeast Asia, it’s fascinating and made me laugh aloud!) It’s from a paper discussing the hybridity of Korean popular culture, and what foreign influences have affected Korean popular culture. It’s written by a foreign student who had the following to say about her experiences of “culture crash” (ie. Culture Shock) and the shock of coming into contact with real-life Korean culture, in …
Zombie Drought & Other Thirsts
Go to Postcards From Hell and read my pal Tristan Davenport’s story “La Sequía”. I mean, the first sentence is: Contrary to promises made in church, death does not give her the use of her legs back. You know you want to. (And yeah, there’s been lots of cool stuff on Postcards From…, so go and troll the archives. But this story just hit me. Not just because he’s a classmate of mine from Seattle, either.)
Magazine Catchup Part I – Asimov’s & F&SF, August ’07 and Interzone July-Aug ’07
In the last year, I traveled a lot — weeks and weeks, in fact — and ended up falling far behind on my magazine subscriptions. I usually catch up during the semester, sneaking a magazine in here or there, but last semester was so incredibly busy that I barely read any of my magazines. So here I am, in April, reading magazines from last August. Well, the good news is, I’m at least enjoying them, and catching up somewhat. Asimov’s Science Fiction‘s issue from last August (2007) was one I was very eager to read. Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling …
Transcribed Marginalia on Librarything!
This is trippy. Librarything is hosting an index of annotations and marginalia in the books of famous individuals’ libraries. The linked example is of marginalia transcribed from John Adams’ library. Sooner or later — like, maybe after I die of old age, but someday, anyway — this kind of index is going to be built right off the annotations that professional and amateur scholars, book-lovers, and others make in their electronic texts. They’ll be able to both annotate into, and upload annotations directly from, their reading interfaces. Online will be indexes with marginalia and notes and comments, and students will …
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler… and What We’re Missing Today
This book came up at a party I was at, and when she heard that I had it on the bookshelf, but hadn’t read it yet, told me I could probably get through it in a couple of hours. I scoffed, because I’m a slow reader, but she was right, that was all it took. Properly speaking, I never bought this book. Lime snagged a box of books on some online Korean doctors’ message board, and bought the box for the Robin Cook paperbacks, but a few other things were included, such as autobiographies by the Clintons, a copy of …
Thank You, Gim Hyung Tae
I don’t know whether he’d like or approve of any of my fictional depictions of Korea, but I find Gim Hyung Tae a great inspiration in that area. Whenever I’m writing anything trippy, weird, or odd about this country in my fiction, I turn to his music for inspiration. It’s a strange combination of trance, rock, folk, and 뽕짝 — in proportions that vary from song to song and album to album, but always in proportions that both work, and sound absolutely like Gim Hyung Tae. By the way, if you’re looking for his CDs, you’d be best to ask …
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
“You have to read this!” I said to Lime as I finished this book. “Mmmm,” she said, nonplussed. I say this sometimes about books I know would take her ages to read — English, after all, being her second language. “No, no, you can read this easily. There are no words in the book.” “Then how can I ‘read’ it?” she said. “Trust me. There’s a story. And it’s beautiful, and moving, and good. You’ll love it.” Tobias Buckell’s mention of the book; warning, it was the review linked above that got me excited about it, and you’ll probably end …
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
I rarely inhale books, but today was one of those days. I whipped through this book, disillusioned — who’d have thought I could be more disillusioned than I had been? — yet not really surprised. Doubtless, some interpreted this text as an attack on Mother Teresa, but if you read it carefully, it’s much more an attack on the media — conservative and liberal alike — that, during the woman’s life, glossed over major issues in her work and beliefs, issues that the majority of human beings would probably take issue with if presented directly, and beatified Mother Teresa in …
Seumniette?
I’m somewhat mystified, but had to share: Lime just informed me that, among Korean fans of the TV series Lost, in online discussions the character Juliette, is (sometimes: see the comment section) referred to as 슴리에트 “슴리엣”, which for those of you who can’t read Hangeul sounds like “Seumniette.” The “n” sound is a liason between the m in “Seum” and the “l” in “-liette,” so the latter half of the name, “-liette” obviously taken from the character’s name, but “seum” requires a little explanation if you don’t speak Korean. It’s the second half of the word “gaseum” (which could …