“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 …
Tag: books read 2008
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 …
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young Ha Kim (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)
Having read and very much enjoyed the Portable Korean Library translation of “The Photo-Shop Murders” and especially “Whatever Happened to the Guy in the Elevator,” I went into this book expecting something dark, funny, and entertainingly disturbing. Kim scores on about half of those expectations: this “novel” (at 120 pages, it’s more of a novella, really) is somewhat disturbing and rather dark. There are entertaining and funny moments, but I was in fact a little bewildered by the book. It certainly didn’t seem to me to be written by the same person who’d written “Whatever Happened to the Guy Stuck …
Education Fever: Society, Politics, and The Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea by Michael J. Seth
I’ve decided to stop doing the “bookdumps” I’ve been doing, where I briefly review a ton of books, and instead give individual reviews — however brief they might sometimes be — their own individual posts. I’m starting with the Hawai’i Studies on Korea series hardback Education Fever: Society, Politics, and The Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea by Michael J. Seth, an academic text about the history of education, attitudes towards it, and its development in South Korea. This book should, in my opinion, be required reading for anyone who’s coming to work as a teacher of any kind in …
Books & Mags Read Recently
It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, so while I’m in a procrastinating mood, I figured now’s a good time to get to it. Here are the books and magazines I’ve read in the first nine weeks of 2008: