Bookworm, Interrupted

There was a bitch in the BEL (Busan English Library) yesterday, and it was me.

I'm usually mindful of the fact that when I am out in public, I'm not just me.  I represent all Americans.  It's up to me to make a good impression on the Koreans.  It comes with living and working in another country, and I usually step up and try to be pleasant and helpful if someone wants to practice chatting in English or needs help with English homework.

Yesterday though, I didn't quite meet my standards.  The Bookworm Inside Me refused to yield.

There I was, sitting in my proper section of the library (the Orange Corner), reading a book.  I was pretty caught up in it when I felt someone plop down next to me and say "Excuse me".

I reluctantly dragged my eyes off the page and my brain out of 1910s Deep Valley (okay, I confess: I was reading a Betsy-Tacy book) and the woman launched into a grammar question about when it's appropriate to use a colon and when it's appropriate to use a relative clause.

I was supremely annoyed, and couldn't even force a smile.  My thoughts probably showed on my face: 

 Shit. Nowhere to run to.  Nowhere to hide.

Go away, I'm reading.  

Give me a break! It's the weekend.

The nice part of me struggled for control:  Aren't you ashamed of yourself?  Look good for America!

I don't feel like explaining grammar!  Now that I've finally got a proper library to hang out in, I want to relax and read without the threat of having to pull a mini-lesson out of my butt at a moment's notice!

You're reading a Betsy-Tacy book, for God's sake.  It wouldn't kill you to break off for a few minutes.  Quit acting like you're an animal and she's gotten too close to your food dish.

Grrrrrrrrr!

I couldn't bring myself to be entirely rude, but I was pretty terse with my explanation, and I served it up with a pleasepleasepleaseleavemealone expression. I also kept my book open, and as soon as she got up, I went right back to reading before she'd even walked off.

It's just like Julian Smith says: 

If you ever interrupt me

You can bet you're gonna see

The nasty me, the nasty me, the nasty me...

During my next visit to the BEL, I've got to find a place where I can be concealed and still remain in my proper area of the library.  Perhaps I could enlist the aid of the staff, but I think it would go like this:

The Library Situation: Busan English Library

I had an inkling that The Library Situation in Busan must be pretty good when coworkers that didn't strike me as particularly bookish asked the newbie me if I had been to the Busan English Library yet.  They spoke of their own visits.  They gave me directions.

I was all hmmmmmmmmm?! but my expectations were low.  In my mind was a sad-smelling little space about as big as a janitor closet equipped with a row of crumbling John Grisham paperbacks.

I couldn't have been more wrong, and I couldn't be happier about my wrongness.

It's a REAL library!  It's nice: Spacious, clean, quiet, plenty of seating, technology and loads of books for children, young adults and adults.  The Busan English Library is all that its name implies. 100% English books.

Of course, the BEL has been designed for the purpose of helping Korean kids get a leg up on English, but the very excellent by-product is that wayguk (foreigner) bookworms such as myself have a place to dwell. And dwell.  And dwell.  The operating hours are excellent: 9 am to 9 pm 7 days a week.  Closed only on national holidays.

Here's a video that shows the inside of the library.  See you in the Orange Corner!

May 2013: Getting Voracious with Fiction

Looking back, my fiction reading for May seems quite dark:

1. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson.  It's to Johnson's credit as a writer that I felt as if I were going crazy in a claustrophobic world  as I read about Pak Jun Do, the orphan master's son, who everyone assumes is an orphan. I think it was the government public-service announcements that did it.  North Korea is a bizarre place.  Whatever Johnson has created can't be too far off the mark.  I'm pleased that he won the Pulitzer for fiction this year.

2. Finn - Jon Clinch. Ever since I saw Neville Brand as Pap Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960), I've been frightened and disturbed by this lowlife presence.  Jon Clinch doesn't do anything to improve on Finn's (readers only know him by his surname; his first name is alluded to but never revealed) reputation, although he provides some surprises.  I'm relieved that he didn't decide to imitate Mark Twain's style or use of dialect.  Actually, the mood of the novel made me think of Jim Thompson. The prose is dark, twisted and yet strangely beautiful.

3. Your Republic Is Calling You - Young-Ha Kim.  Ki-Yong is a 42-year-old foreign film importer who lives in Seoul with his wife and teenaged daughter. Exactly half his life ago, at the age of 21, he was dropped as a sleeper agent from North Korea into the neighboring South.  He assumes that the North has forgotten about him, then one day, he gets a coded email telling him that it's time for him to return.  I liked the premise of the novel and found Ki-Yong and his situation intriguing, but was less gripped by the back stories of his wife, daughter, lover, and a plethora of other minor characters. Even so, I was entertained because the novel takes place in locales around Seoul that are fairly familiar to me.  Young-Ha Kim is often compared to Haruki Murakami.  I actually think he's better.

4. The Game - Jack London.  An early novella of London's about a young boxer's last match, on the eve of his wedding.  Primitive but effective.

5. Where the Lilies Bloom - Vera and Bill Cleaver.  A YA novel set in Appalachia. 14-year-old Mary Call's dying father and remaining parent extracts from her an ungodly amount of unrealistic deathbed promises that she strives to fulfill. This novel has a wonderful regional flavor and it's slyly humorous in many places. With her steely determination and sometimes prim use of language, Mary Call reminds me a lot of Mattie Ross from True Grit.  There was a movie based on this book that was also very well done.  Whatever happened to Vera and Bill Cleaver?  Their books were excellent, but they seem to be forgotten 40 years later.

6. Doc - Mary Doria Russell.  John Henry "Doc" Holliday's life story, concentrating primarily on the time when he was in Dodge City with the Earp brothers and Big-Nose Kate.  As I read, I could see Val Kilmer so clearly in my mind's eye.  That is a very, very good thing.  Mary Doria Russell feels compelled at times to introduce a 21st century sensibility to the story, but her touch is fairly light.  I'll be seeking out more of her books.

7. Germinal - Emile Zola. This is one of the stronger novels in the Rougon-Macquart series,  based on an actual coal miner's strike in northern France in the 1860s.  Zola must have done an extensive amount of research to have written so convincingly and compellingly about the dangerous and squalid conditions in which the miners and their families were forced to live and work, generation after generation.  Not a cheerful book by any stretch of the imagination, but pungent, powerful and a great read.  I'm not sure what to read next in this series.  I might revisit Nana.

May 2013: Getting Voracious with Nonfiction

I read 13 books this month.  For some readers that might be like spit in the ocean, but for me, it's a large amount -- especially since I'm not on vacation.  I think the key to my success is that I only went to one movie (The Great Gatsby) in May.

I'll discuss my nonfiction reads here and talk about the fiction in my next post.  Surprisingly, all but one of these were library books.  Speaking of which, I must update everyone on The Library Situation here in Busan.  It's good.  It's very, very good.

1. Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon -Leonard Mosley.  The biographer does a good job of showing that Hollywood mogul Daryl Zanuck had a messed up childhood with rotten parents, but his maternal grandfather was a positive influence, so one's sympathy only goes so far.  After that, the details of his disgusting and pathetic behavior turned me into a one-woman chorus of "ewwwww."  Actually, I have some issues with the biographer as well.  I can't help feeling that on some level, he admired Zanuck, especially in the womanizing department. There's something in his recounting of Zanuck's exploits/exploitation that's just a shade too breathless. Also a product of that generation in which men behaved badly and women were supposed to smile and be quiet, Mosley comes across as a callous and dismissive ass when he discusses a couple of troubled young starlets who, one way or another, ended up in Zanuck's clutches.  I'm going to try to remember the few glimpses of Hollywood in the golden age and forget the rest.

2. Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - Sam Gosling, Ph.D.  Extremely entertaining look at how much we reveal of ourselves by our surroundings.  Dr. Gosling lets readers in on the secret of how to be 'super snoopers' and learn home to home in on the essence of people's real personalities rather than being swayed by artfully placed objects meant to create a not-quite-accurate impression.  Check out Gosling's videos on YouTube. He's hot in that mad scientist sort of way.

3. 117 Days Adrift - Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. One of the best survival stories I've ever read and easily my favorite read for the month.  In 1973, a seafaring couple from England, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were cast adrift when an injured whale damaged the yacht they had scrimped and saved for years to buy. Thinking quickly, they got as much food and as many supplies as possible into a life raft with a dinghy attached.  During their ordeal, Maurice fell into despair. Maralyn found ways to keep their minds sharp and occupied with games and also plans for the future.  She was also cool and inventive, creating fishing hooks from the spring action part of a safety pin.  I was so pleased to read that it was a Korean fishing boat out of Busan, Weolmi 306, that rescued the Baileys and used every resource available to restore them to health.

4. Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost At Sea - Steven Callahan.  Another true story of survival at sea.  While the Baileys' book was more about what they did to survive, Callahan's book contains a great deal of what Callahan thought about during those two-and-a-half months lost at sea.  He also shares what his parents and brother's efforts to find him when they didn't hear from him in an expected time frame.  Luckily for Callahan, he managed to save a survival at sea book when he was forced onto the life raft.  He had also read about others in the same peril, including the Baileys!

5. The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee.  A "biography" of cancer. Mukherjee, an oncologist, traces this disease back to its first mention in ancient Egypt.  Most of the incidents related are from the past 100 years, as researchers made great strides in identifying causes and treatments were developed and fine-tuned.  Although the science writing in The Emperor of All Maladies is often challenging to follow, everyone should read this book, since almost all of us are affected by cancer either directly or through a loved one an acquaintance.  I actively sought out this book because my sister-in-law has been battling uterine leiomyosarcoma for several years.

6. Onions in the Stew - Betty MacDonald.  Because of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, I've always liked Betty MacDonald, but I fell a little bit out of love with her back in 2009 when I read The Egg and I.  As I said at the time, I wasn't prepared to give up on her, so I was pleased to find Onions in the Stew available for Kindle. This is the fourth and final humorous memoir by MacDonald, detailing her second marriage (she dumped the jerk chicken farmer from The Egg and I and took the kids) and life on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, near Seattle.  As always with Betty, life has its share of challenges, but most of her grousing is good-natured.  The thing that really struck me was the huge amount of smoking that went on in this book.  Even her adolescent daughters smoked! It was chilling to read, knowing that Betty MacDonald died of cancer at the age of 50.  After I finished Onions, I went a little Betty-mad over at abebooks.com and bought The Plague and I, which chronicles her bout with TB and time in a sanatorium and Anybody Can Do Anything, her account of trying to find work during the Depression.

Literary Bonanza, Korean Style!

...not to be confused with Gangnam Style, of course...
Oh no, did I really just write that?  Ahem.  I need a do-over.

How do you say jealous in Korean?

I have no idea!  I asked one of my students, and he assured me that there was no word for jealousy in Korean, because Koreans never feel jealous of one another.  According to him, they just say "Wow..." in an admiring tone.  Since jealousy is one of those universal emotions, I was going to argue the point, but then again, I'm not Korean, so I let it slide.

Choose your language and prepare to find the word for jealousy, because I'm about to make you feel that way:

On May 25th, I went to the 10 Magazine book club in Seoul.  The featured guest was Young-Ha Kim, the author of the novels I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and Your Republic is Calling You and Black Flower.

Krys Lee, whose book Drifting House is the best short story collection I've read in decades, moderated a discussion with Young-Ha Kim about writing and translation.  Seeing them sharing the same stage was incredible. Kim has a wonderfully dry wit and a well-developed sense of irony.  He also has a deft touch with answering audience questions, even when they are a bit on the cringeworthy side.  Krys Lee must have been born asking thoughtful questions.  She comes across in all her appearances as so caring and so respectful of other writers. No matter how well-known she becomes (which is a given) she will always have that sensitivity; she will never let it become all about her.

(Fun fact: Young-Ha Kim did a new and better translation of The Great Gatsby into Korean in 2009. The previous version apparently had everyone speaking to each other in formal language. He got the idea to do a new translation when he overheard some high school boys in a bookstore complaining bitterly about it.  The book is now #2 on the Korean bestseller list, because of the movie version.  Kim remarked that none of his own novels have cracked the top ten list yet.)

Young-Ha Kim also read a short excerpt from Your Republic is Calling You.  I quickly found the passage in my copy and followed along.  Maybe I should have just been drinking in his voice, but I enjoyed the double experience.

During the short break, I gathered my nerve and approached Young-Ha Kim, clutching my copy of Your Republic is Calling You.  Having found out in the first part of the event that he also lives in Busan, I used that as my opening.  "Where do you live?" I then said brightly.  (Ooops, a little bit stalker fangirl. Tune it back a little.) I quickly named the sections of the city where I live and work and said how much I like the city. Young-Ha Kim admitted that he lives in Haundae, near the beach, then said since we are neighbors, when I see him, I should say hi.  What a charming man.  (I think I'll take a walk on Haeundae Beach next weekend, clutching a copy of Black Flower.)

Also on hand to dazzle my bookworm eyes was Charles Montgomery, who does the very excellent blog Modern Korean Literature in Translation.  He is superhuman in his efforts to get Korean literature out there, translated and available to English-language readers.  He needs to be; Korean publishers come across as clueless at best and recalcitrant at worst about promoting their literature to an international audience.  They are so bad that when I got here in 2004, I just figured that there was no Korean literature, until I found a few slim volumes tucked on a shelf in Kyobo.  Anyway: Charles. Good guy, good work.  His blog is also the best place to check out photos and videos of the wonderful day I've been blathering on about: Go here. Run, don't walk.

As if all those fabulous people weren't enough to put me on permanent squeeeeeeeeeee!, there was one more surprise.  There was a hot-looking Korean guy in the audience, listening attentively to Young-Ha Kim, who in turn wrapped up his appearance by introducing his "honored guest" Chang-Rae Lee.  Lee, a Korean-American novelist, is the author of Native Speaker, Aloft, A Gesture Life and The Surrendered, which was one of the Pulitzer fiction finalists in 2011.  Classy guy. I'm sure Young-Ha Kim would have gladly shared the stage with him, but Lee let it be Young-Ha Kim's show.  I think that's the theme of my report here.  All the principals involved in this event showed so much grace and class.

So yeah, three authors in one room at the same time.

Are you jealous of me?

Buying Happiness

Money isn't supposed to buy happiness and mere objects can't really make us truly happy.  Still, there must be some correlation between the little sum I gave Amazon over the weekend and the squeeeeeee!-ness that I felt yesterday when I got to work and saw that I had mail.

I'm back to reading Germinal after a week's interruption.

 So glad things are back to normal.

Oh, Kindle. I Hardly Knew Ye :(

It was kind(le) of a rough week in Bookwormlandia.  I was getting to the most dramatic part of Germinal, and my Kindle started acting crazy.  At first, it was small things like not saving pages and frozen screens, but then it grew to more serious matters like instantaneous battery drain and disappearing archives and then vanishing books, including the aforementioned Zola book.  I caught on pretty quickly that my Kindle wasn't just joking around with me.  Troubleshooting efforts failed. Finally, horribly, I was confronted with the blank screen pictured above.

There was also a rough moment in which the Kindle was done for, I was at work, I'd finished my library book (The Game by Jack London) and I couldn't find a thing to read on the subway ride home. Madness!

Although I'd had my Kindle for more than a year, Amazon is sending me a new one that has been generously discounted.  It will arrive sometime this week.  I wish I knew why this one gave out after only 18 months.  I did use it every day, but I was very careful with it and didn't abuse it in any way.  It seems as if it should have lasted a little longer.  Maybe I had too many books loaded on it?  If that's the case, so much for whole library in my hands.  I'm wondering if I do indeed need to invest in another Kindle, a backup Kindle, as my friend Teri suggested.

While waiting for the new Kindle, I've been ransacking my home library as well as the others in the area for shorter books that I can comfortably carry in my bag and read on the subway.  This is also a prime opportunity to get back into audiobooks.  In addition, it's a wake-up call to stock my office with some reading material so I don't get caught short again.