Slumping In January

My totals haven't been this bad since graduate school! So far, I've read only 2 books this month and 511 pages of Middlemarch. I am getting a little bit of a break though -- I fly out of Korea back to the US on January 31st around noon, and thanks to the magic of time travel (or at least time difference), I'll get to my destination on ...January 31st!

I (reluctantly) left Middlemarch behind and decided to travel with the 3 books for my Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge:
Let's Eat Korean Food - Betsy O'Brien
Fried Eggs With Chopsticks - Polly Evans
Consider The Oyster - M.F.K. Fisher

When I got to Seoul, I went to What The Book? hoping to pick up a copy of Lonesome Dove, but no joy. After looking at what Updike they had available (small but very nice selection), I decided to work on my Pulitzer shelf and bought a copy of The Bridge Of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. It's the 1928 Pulitzer fiction winner. This purchase dovetails nicely with my resolve to concentrate my US book buying frenzy into this particular area. I'm hoping to find Lonesome Dove (I need it for the February 15th book group meeting), The Optimist's Daughter, Advise and Consent, The Fixer, Humboldt's Gift, The Confessions of Nat Turner, One Of Ours, Alice Adams, and The Magnificent Ambersons. Wish me luck. My Inner Completist Bookworm is bouncing off the walls with this one.

I hope to post while I'm gone...or at least read *your* blogs!

John Updike

Today brought surprising and sad news. John Updike died. Updike is one of my "Big Three" (the others are Larry McMurtry and Anne Tyler). Although it was delusional, I let myself think that he would go on forever. I just finished reading Roger's Version, a novel he wrote back in 1986. The most expensive book I own is a Franklin Library copy of Rabbit Run. Yes, I'm babbling. The news doesn't want to sink in. I felt exactly the same way when Rabbit Angstrom died at the end of Rabbit At Rest. I'm lucky that Updike was so prolific -- there's tens of volumes of his -- fiction, nonfiction and poetry -- that I haven't read yet.

Get Outta Town

Overall, I love my life in Korea, but sometimes it has a way of bringing me to my knees and seriously messing with my private view of myself as an international woman of mystery.

I found out recently that I can't just blithely sashay into Immigration and ask to have my E-2 visa with my current/almost former university extended until I can get a new visa with Erewhon University. This was my plan, though. But 10 days before my visa was to expire, I found out that Immigration needs 30 days' notice for a visa extension. Whoops. Rewind to December 31st? Uh-uh.

As a result, I must leave the country, come back in on a tourist visa, then arrange to get a new work visa. What fun.

I've decided to use the time and opportunity to go to the United States, visit my family, do some shopping, eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and hopefully, hit a couple of bookstores. I can only stay for a short time because I've got to come back, do all of the aforementioned, move all my stuff to Erewhon, and be ready to report for work on March 2nd. It's doable.

With the new year approaching, things will be quiet until I fly on Saturday. I'll use that time to pack, organize my stuff, write a few blog posts, finish the kimchi in the refrigerator and try to patch up my international woman of mystery self-image. That last will take some doing. I feel like a dunce for not seeing to things in a timely manner. I had all the scraps of information at my disposal and didn't put them together intelligently.

But on to more important things: I must figure out what I'm going to read on the plane! There's also a 4-hour layover in Tokyo and if I'm slightly unlucky and miss my connection from Dallas to Kansas City, there'll be another layover.

Here are my ideas:

1. The 3 books for the Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge: Fried Eggs With Chopsticks, Consider the Oyster and Let's Eat Korean Food.

2. Manhunt (the book about the search for Abraham Lincoln's killer)

3. Something from the Pulitzer shelf. Possibilities are: The Age of Innocence, Beloved, Interpreter of Maladies, American Pastoral, A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain and Martin Dressler. Also, maybe Lonesome Dove. I'm hoping to find a copy before I fly away.

`

4. Go on an Anne of Green Gables binge and finish the series.

5. Something else. The international bookworm of mystery is taking suggestions.

Gulp

I had a strange conversation with my director this morning:

Director: Susan, (long pause) you read a lot of books.

Me: Yes, I can't help it.

Director: When you move, you can leave your books -- your novels -- here.

Me: Leave my books here?

Director: You can leave your books here (another long pause) if you don't want them.

Me: Uh, well...okay.

Director: You can bring your novels to the office.

Me: Ummm...okay.

Director: Have a good day.

Me: Uh, yeah...you too! Bye!

I was a little panicked. "You can" is the way my director usually frames his directives. I've always figured in the Asian indirectness and translated them to "you must" and we've gotten along fine. But my books? Have library, will travel. No way am I leaving 300+ books behind!

After another cup of coffee, I was able to put things into perspective: Still Asian indirectness, but this time, he's asking for a favor, not wanting to seem greedy. He's doing what I do, and here's what he really said: "If you have any books that you don't want anymore, I'd be happy to take them off your hands." Yes, my director and I are greedy bibliomaniacs, but you have to speak up here. I still cringe when I remember the Kiwi student who knocked on my door a few years ago: "Hi...I was on my way to the rubbish bin with these books, and then I remembered that you like to read. Want them?"

I also recalled that my director continually hones his English skills by reading novels. He's delighted when he comes across an idiom, and copies it in a notebook he keeps at the ready. I saw one of his notebooks when I first came to the school. There were pages of idioms from what I think of as the "hardboiled" school of writing, [example: "He was looking for a sock in the jaw."] and underneath each idiom, a line of Korean writing, presumably giving the literal meaning: ["A punch. Not the item of clothing."] When my director was on sabbatical in California a few years ago, he hit used bookstores with a vengeance. Although our reading tastes are markedly different, I had a wonderful time checking out the shelves in his office during my first few weeks of work, before I got that first paycheck.

Calmer now, I'm looking at my shelves and discovering novels that I've read and can bear to part with. [Stand to part with. Not the animal.]

Katie John

Does anyone remember the Katie John series by Mary Calhoun? As far as I know, there were four books:

• Katie John -10-year-old Katie John Tucker and her parents move from California to Barton's Bluff, Missouri. Great-Aunt Emily died and left a huge old house to Katie's mother, and the Tucker family will live there until they can sell it. Katie gradually gets used to small-town life, makes friends, gets into a lot of scrapes, and begins to dread the day they will return to California. In the end, Katie's parents decide to stay in the old house and rent the extra rooms to borders.

• Depend On Katie John - Katie's adventures continue. She and her best friend Sue try different money-making ventures to raise money so they can go see the movie Little Women. Katie makes friends with Edwin, the "odd boy" in her class. She gets a dog (beagle?) that she names Heavenly Spot.

• Honestly, Katie John! - Katie is now in the sixth grade, and things are changing too fast for her. The girls seem to like boys, lipstick and movie actors, much to her disgust. Katie tries to deal with this by rebelling and ends up a pariah for a while. Highly imaginative, she finds an old house on one of her solitary hikes, and a picture of a young girl she decides was named Etta. Comforted, she relies on this image for a while to figure how and where she fits in at school and home.

• Katie John And Heathcliff - I haven't read this one, but Katie's in junior high. Last of the series. I didn't know there was a fourth one until just recently.

Katie John is by turns, wise and clumsy and mercurial. She has a tendency to go off half-cocked and often ends up in some mortifying but hilarious situations. Author Mary Calhoun had a gift for characterization; Katie just leaps off the page.

If you see this series at a book sale or in the children's/YA of your library, check it out.

Ten Years Ago And Today: Middlemarch And Me

How can one novel change so much in 10 years? Of course it's not Middlemarch -- it's me. I just finished Book One and here are some of my impressions:

• 10 years ago, I read Middlemarch during a break from my graduate studies. I read quickly and avidly, feeling so grateful that I wasn't reading language-learning theory. As a result, I think I missed a lot of George Eliot's wit.


• 10 years ago, I dismissed Mrs. Cadwallader as a damned busybody. She still is, but her comments are so sharp and funny, I look forward to her appearances in the novel.


• Dorothea seems heartbreakingly young this time. When the novel opens, she and Celia have been orphaned for a mere 6 years. I wonder if missing her parents has anything to do with her religious fervor and her determined attraction to Mr. Casaubon.


• 10 years ago, Mr. Casaubon chilled my blood every time he showed up in the novel. Today, I actually have some sympathy for the man as he approaches his wedding day and is somewhat surprised to find that the prospect of matrimony isn't really making him feel happy. Also, he's being pretty patient with Will Ladislaw.


• 10 years ago, Will Ladislaw had my sympathies because he was trying to find himself. Being cute and good-natured didn't hurt his case, either. Now I'm irritated with him because he's letting Mr. Casaubon support him while he fiddles around and doesn't seem in a hurry to settle on a profession. Furthermore, he comes off as a little contemptuous of his cousin.


• Sir James is a classy guy. Although Dorothea rejected him, he didn't withdraw his help with her plans for the cottages. He continued to treat her the same, and he was rewarded for his fine behavior by getting to experience how satisfying a friendship can be between two people of the opposite gender who have no agenda or entanglements to complicate things. I don't remember being struck so by his quality 10 years ago.


• Lydgate is a smart guy and will be a fine doctor for Middlemarch, but his standards for ideal womanhood seem laughably shallow. I'm rolling my eyes. If memory serves, he will definitely get what he asks for in Rosamond Vincy.
  

I'll be glad when vacation gets here and I can take long, uninterrupted dips into this novel to further see how it's changed for me. I also wish I could quickly flash-forward and find out if the novel will change again when I read it in 2019!

2008: The One Hundred

(In reverse order:)

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing. A must-read for everyone, and next summer when you're looking for the perfect Father's Day gift, remember what Bybee told you.

The Oregon Trail - Francis Parkman. I found this to be dull reading, but I'm sure it was on-the-edge-of-your-chair reading back in the 1840s, when it was first published.

High Tide In Tucson - Barbara Kingsolver. I'm really becoming a big fan of Kingsolver's nonfiction. I hope her writing starts to sway more in that direction; she does it so well.

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread - Don Robertson (re-read). Morris Bird III, I'll love you forever.

Eye Of The Needle - Ken Follett. Lovely escapist reading! I turned pages so fast it looked like I was fanning.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (Book Group). Mitzi chose this book because the token guy in The Jane Austen Book Club asks one of the women to read it. She resists for a while, then reads it and something else, then they fall in love. Well, book group selections have been chosen for stranger reasons. Mitzi, you done good. Ursula K. Le Guin's anthropological background stands her in good stead as she creates a world complete with mythology, language, a politcal climate, intricate geography, sexuality and other unforgettable features of culture on the planet Winter.

My Name Was Judas - C.K. Stead. Judas Iscariot didn't hang himself! He moved to Greece and lived a long and happy life. In his 70th year, he begins to reflect on his childhood friend Jesus, and one of the disciples shows up on his doorstep. Each chapter ends with a thoughtful and often bittersweet poem containing 13 syllables.

The Innocent Man - John Grisham. I'm sure the Ada, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce won't be using this book to promote their city. An appalling look at police work at its shoddiest and most inept.

Old School - Tobias Wolff (Book Group). Read This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolff's memoir of his life before he went away to private school) first, then this novel as a companion piece. I understood what he was trying to accomplish, but I found the final chapter problematic, although I couldn't figure out another approach. The wicked send-up of Ayn Rand is worth the price of admission.

The Chronicle of Manchiwidang - Moon-Soo Kim. A short Korean novel about a son whose father has compelling but unrealistic dreams about their ancestral home and their place in life. A brief but enlightening look at how Koreans seem to be reeling from how much their country has changed in 50 short years.

Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner (The Pulitzer Project). I want more Stegner!

Mr. Pip - Lloyd Jones. This book, especially Matilda's mother's uneasy relationship with Great Expectations and Mr. Watts strained my credulity at times. It seemed a little awkward, and hardly more than a means to the violence near the end. I did like how Jones peeled back some of the layers of Mr. Watts' background. I was also glad to have read Great Expectations fairly recently.

Dreams From My Father - Barack Obama. I read this right after the election with my emotions running high. A thoughtful memoir that reads like a novel at times. I hope that one day, Obama will write more about his mother. I actually find her more fascinating than his father.

Fearless Interviewing - Marky Stein (Re-read). This book feels like it has a curse on it. I read it before 3 interviews and didn't get the job each time. For the 4th interview, I left it on the shelf and got the job. I'm probably going to unload it soon. Any takers?

Matrimony - Joshua Henkin. I was going crazy trying to figure out who the creative writing professor was at the beginning of the novel. Maybe Richard Yates? I liked how Henkin kept the tone of the novel quiet and understated, but when Julian and Mia separate, everything was a little too quiet. I'm looking forward to Joshua Henkin's next novel.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris. The part that seems to stay with me is "Old Faithful" when Hugh and David are in London and David has a painful boil the size of a peach pit at the top of his butt crack. He begins musing about fidelity, then brings it all together brilliantly when Hugh lances his boil for him, and the nasty thing spews like...well, you know.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz (The Pulitzer Project). I was dazzled by the combination of 20th century Dominican Republic history woven so expertly with references to geek culture. And the language! Spanish and English co-mingled with a street cadence. Junot Diaz is a genius.

Princess Diana - Joanne Mattern. A YA biography of the late princess. Worth reading for the fair and balanced look at her life, and the author isn't "writing down" at all.

Books: A Memoir - Larry McMurtry. I gushed at great length about this book back in October. I'm sure I'll be reading it again soon.

How Koreans Talk: A Collection of Expressions - Sang-Hun Choe & Christopher Torchia. I've got plans to do a full-blown review.

Stumbling On Happiness - Daniel Gilbert (Book Group). Basically, this book tells us how our brains don't really do past and future very well, and are constantly tricking us. Funny and informative, but the title is somewhat misleading.

Going Solo - Roald Dahl (In Their Shoes Challenge)

The Whale Rider - Witi Ihimaera

JPod - Douglas Coupland (2nd Canadian Book Challenge AND Orbis Terrarum Challenge -- CANADA)

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (The Pulitzer Project AND Book Group). I've got plans to read more McCarthy.

A Spectacle Of Corruption - David Liss (Book Group)

Plainsong - Kent Haruf

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan. I can't stop thinking about this book. Definitely a top read for 2008. My coworker, Martin lent it to me, but I want my own copy.

The Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett

Persuasion - Jane Austen (Book Group)

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Orbis Terrarum Challenge -- ENGLAND)

The Hungry Ocean - Linda Greenlaw (In Their Shoes Challenge)

Atonement - Ian McEwan. That's a hell of a way to act in a library!

Ex Libris - Anne Fadiman (re-read, Book Group) So much love! I want my copy back.

Anne Of The Island - L.M. Montgomery (2nd Canadian Book Challenge)

Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Native Speaker - Chang-Rae Lee

My Detachment - Tracy Kidder (In Their Shoes Challenge)

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

A Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (The Pulitzer Project)

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth - Chris Ware (Graphic Novel Challenge)

Self-Consciousness - John Updike

The Bone People - Keri Hulme (Orbis Terrarum Challenge -- NEW ZEALAND)

Unless - Carol Shields (2nd Canadian Book Challenge)

The Tale Of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo (Book Group)

Tete-A-Tete - Hazel Rowley (In Their Shoes Challenge). Joint biography of Simone de Beauvior and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies (2nd Canadian Book Challenge). Robertson Davies rocks.

Monday Mourning - Kathy Reichs (Book Group). I like the TV show "Bones" better.

The Witch Of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Grizzly! Real-Life Animal Attacks - Allan B. Ury

Fat Girl - Judith Moore

Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill (Book Group)

The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer (The Pulitzer Project)

Caught By The Sea - Gary Paulsen

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery (Book Group)

High Sierra - W.R. Burnett. This guy gives James M. Cain a run for his money.

My Life And Hard Times - James Thurber

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (The Pulitzer Project AND Book Group)

I Have The Right To Destroy Myself - Young-Ha Kim. Aaargh! Give me back my time!

Diane Arbus -Patricia Bosworth (In Their Shoes Challenge)

The Coldest Place On Earth - Tony Vicary. Even though things went badly for Scott and his team, they seem like they would have been interesting to hang with.

Sunshine - Norma Klein (re-read)

Ex Libris - Anne Fadiman. Yes! I love this book!

Anne of Avonlea -L.M. Montgomery (Canadian Book Challenge)

Oil! - Upton Sinclair (Book Group)

The Oxford Murders - Guillermo Martinez (Orbis Terrarum Challenge -- ARGENTINA)

A Summons To Memphis - Peter Taylor (The Pulitzer Project AND Orbis Terrarum Challenge --USA). I'm glad I read a Pulitzer prizewinner, but can't really recommend this one. Too slow, too muted. I wonder if Joshua Henkin likes Peter Taylor's writing. I'm not being insulting; I'm really curious.

Cash - Editors of Rolling Stone

An Appointment With My Brother - Yi Mun-Yol (Orbis Terrarum Challenge --SOUTH KOREA)

The Known World - Edward P. Jones (The Pulitzer Project AND Book Group)

Is There A Doctor In The Zoo? - David Taylor. I'm really pleased to have discovered this author. I'll be on the lookout for more of his adventures as a zoo vet.

What Is The What - Dave Eggers

Truth & Beauty - Ann Patchett (In Their Shoes Challenge)

...If You Lived In Colonial Times - Ann McGovern

Korea Bug: The Best Of The Zine That Infected A Nation - J. Scott Burgeson. Standing ovation.

Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography - David Michaelis (In Their Shoes Challenge)

Suite Francaise -Irene Nemirovsky (Book Group). I'm looking for a copy of Fire In The Blood.

The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

The Borden Tragedy - Rick Geary (Graphic Novel Challenge). Owning Geary's whole "Victorian Murders" series would be great fun.

Fall On Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald (Canadian Book Challenge). I didn't like this one at all. Not even its Canadian-ness can make me like it.

The Case Of Madeleine Smith - Rick Geary (Graphic Novel Challenge)

A Bad Case Of Stripes - David Shannon

Brainiac - Ken Jennings (In Their Shoes Challenge)

How To Be Good - Nick Hornby

You Suck - Christopher Moore (Book Group)

The Uninvited - Geling Yan

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt - Nick Hornby

Me Talk Pretty One Day -David Sedaris (re-read, Book Group)

Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea - Guy Delisle (Canadian Book Challenge and Graphic Novel Challenge)

Polite Lies: On Being A Woman Caught Between Cultures - Kyoko Mori

All Families Are Pyschotic - Douglas Coupland (Canadian Book Challenge)

The Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (Book Group). I liked his follow-up novel better.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography Of Emma Goldman - Sharon Rudahl (Graphic Novel Challenge)

A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews (Canadian Book Challenge)

Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck (In Their Shoes Challenge). I wish I'd read more Steinbeck in 2008.

Scoundrels and Scallywags: Characters From Alberta's Past - Brian Brennan (Canadian Book Challenge)

The Book Of Proper Names - Amelie Nothomb. I can't even tell you how much I loathed this book. Words fail me. I'm down to sound effects.

We Are All Fine Here - Mary Guterson

New Book Resolutions

We're already a few days into the new year and I haven't made a thing that even remotely resembles a resolution. I've shoved my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm into a closet (if you call her "Tuffi" it makes her really mad!) and now it's time to get down to work:

1. Complete Middlemarch. I've already started my 10-year reread, but have gotten a little sidetracked by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

2. Finish the Canadian Book Challenge. I'm stalled at book #4. According to John's rankings, I've been a New Brunswicker for months!

3. Read more Pulitzers. Easy enough -- I've been building my Pulitzer shelf for the past couple of years and now have an excuse to go out and buy another. The next (February 15th, if you're in Seoul) book group selection is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Yes! I haven't read this book since the late 90s and I'm looking forward to revisiting what feels like an old friend.

4. Make frequent use of the library at my new university. Finally getting a library in Korea, even if it turns out to be a little haphazard, is one of the best Christmas gifts I could have received, even if I can't open it until March 1st (start date).

5. Complete the Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge. I've chosen 3 books for this: Consider The Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher, Fried Eggs With Chopsticks by Polly Evans and Let's Eat Korean Food by Betsy O'Brien.

6. Study Korean. Not formally, but learning a few more nouns and verbs would be helpful.

7. Keep challenges manageable. Yeah, I know. How long will that resolution last? That "books about presidents" challenge looks so tempting.

8. Be less of a slob about writing reviews. The amount of catch-up on my plate is incredible. I won't run out of things to blog about.

9. Read more internationally. Always worth striving for, even though I always fall short.

10. Let non-fiction rule this year. Or at least break even.

I can hear a faint scratching from the closet. Tuffi must be taking notes.

Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm

Hello Book Bloggers:

Well, Bybee's at it again...or NOT at it, as the case may be. More precisely, she's fallen asleep with a fresh copy of Middlemarch across her face. Trust me -- you don't know her like I do -- it could just as easily be a copy of People magazine that she's polluting with her slumber breath.

Shudder. What do I care? Bybee's newest exhibition of sloth gives me a chance to get at this keyboard and give you the skinny on what this girl decidedly did not accomplish this year. Call me a Tough & Cool Inner BookSNOB, will you? I have impeccable taste and a an ironclad sense of literary purpose! Plus, sleeping and eating don't always have to be be so firmly on the front burner, now do they?

Let's look at Bybee's challenges for 2008: She somehow muscled her way to 100 books. She did well on her Pulitzer reading, but she's hobbling through the Canadian challenge, and someone did not eat her Wheaties for the Orbis Terrarum and In Their Shoes Challenges. And the Graphic Novels Challenge? Please. It was like she slept her way through that whole affair.

I'm seriously wondering if Miz B is really just a pretender to the shelves. Here's a choice bit of gossip: She forgot (she says) to admit to yet another DNF: She was reading What Maisie Knew by Henry James at Project Gutenberg, and got bogged down and quit right about the time Maisie's father and her former governess got hitched. She said defensively that the combination of reading James and reading him online was too much -- it gave her the headache from Hell. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but after Poor Widdle Susan DNF'd Mr. James, she hid out in the bathroom with a Taylor Caldwell novel for a while. Not tough! Not cool! Wussy!

Bybee also made some resolutions last year. Let us re-examine some of her rash statements as she rounded the bend into a New Book Year all those months ago:

"I want to complete all my challenges and if I don't, then I want to do a conspicuous amount of heavy lifting on them." I've probably already said enough, but entre nous, I didn't see any major eyestrain or sweat stains going on this past year.

"This is the year I'd like to get serious about building up my Don Robertson collection." She did buy The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, but nothing else by the great Mr. Robertson. To be 100% fair, her credit card company went belly-up a couple of months ago, which put a severe crimp in her Internet shopping, but still...by abebooks.com, I sat down and wept.

"Read more books from other countries." You can take the bookworm out of her native country, but you can't take the native country out of the bookworm. I beseeched Bybee to read Balzac, to read Things Fall Apart, to crack open that Murakami novel she was supposed to read for book group, but she just turned up Abba's Greatest Hits even louder and buried herself in her damn Pulitzers. Yes, I realize that Abba's Swedish, but don't think I didn't notice what she was really doing.

"Read more Korean literature." I'm not a complete Bookbitch. Good on Bybee for spotting that article in The Korea Herald about Park Kyung-ni, who, Bybee subsequently discovered, wrote The Great Korean Novel -- Toji. I'll admit that copies of this book are expensive, but think of the bragging rights! Think of being able to strut your cultural sensitivity towards those who might style her (us) as unrefined, unwashed waegooks (foreigners). Talya offered to lend Bybee volume one of this work, but Bybee's been less than aggressive about taking Talya up on her offer. If I were running this sorry show, I'd be camped on Talya's damn doorstep till I had Toji in my hot little hands.

"Delve into more books written before the 20th century, or at least try to go back 100 years to 1908." Would you be so good to pass me that bottle of witch hazel? I find that if I dab it on my temples, the pain recedes slightly. Three books! Only three! I saw what was happening all year -- there was good old Bybee, blithely kicking up her slightly meaty heels in the 21st century, then she tried to mollify me last fall with back-to-back readings of Great Expectations and Persuasion! Then she threw me some weak-assed shit at the very end of December with The Oregon Trail! Who's sorry now? January 1st found Bybee skulking into Kyobo bookstore, buying the only available copy of Middlemarch for our tenth-anniversary reread, then over to Youngpyoong bookstore, where she found a copy of The Octopus (1901) by Frank Norris. How long will this show of repentance last? I'd like to drop the Bronte canon on her pointy little head while she's asleep.

"Keep chipping away at the Pulitzer fiction list." Bybee read 8 of these in 2008, which is respectable. She's a quirky bookworm; she likes what she likes. I just wish she were both quirky and lofty. Maybe with a little push she can be.