Eventually, The New Will Wear Off

I really didn't mean to go to my library today, but I lost my attendance book and had to find it. Turns out I left it in the Administration building the day I got my faculty card. I was so giddy I walked out without it.

Relieved but still a little on edge, I decided to soothe my nerves with a trip to the building next door. Once I was in the stacks, I felt a little better. And if standing there looking at the shelves made me feel a little better, wouldn't taking some of what was on the shelves home with me get me all the way back to good?

Here's today's haul:

The Classic Era Of Crime Fiction - Peter Haining. Isn't it gorgeous? I couldn't resist. Damn, I miss coffee-table books!

Dr. Seuss: American Icon - Philip Nel. I would read it in a box/I would read it wearing socks.

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The Moon And Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham. I've been circling this novel for several years now. I'm under the impression I'll like it even better than I liked Of Human Bondage.

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Dodsworth - Sinclair Lewis. He's a little out of style right now, but I'm just wild about Harry (his first name). When Jeopardy! periodically does a "Sinclair Lewis" category, I rule and the contestants drool. I was hoping to find It Can't Happen Here, but my library has only 3 copies of Dodsworth. That's okay; I haven't read it yet. After that, I'll check the DVD section and see if they have the 1936 movie version starring Walter Huston as the title character.

Rainbow Valley

I liked Rainbow Valley a lot better than I thought I would. At first, I objected to it because there was too much of the Meredith family and the Blythe children (except Shirley...why is he always so markedly absent?) and not enough Anne. She seems to be slowly fading from the series. Her children are cute, but they're no Anne.

I got caught up in the Meredith storyline, however, and their efforts to "raise themselves". The Huck Finn-ish Mary Vance was an amusing new character. I was happy that she didn't get sent back to the orphanage, but was sad that she was relegated to the background when Miss Cornelia took over her upbringing. The signs of the times in which this book were written (1919) are obvious. The Blythe and Meredith children quail and lecture over every little "darn" and mild profanity that Mary utters, but no one turns a hair when she drops the n-bomb. I thought they might at least reprove her for being "common", as Atticus does Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Things usually turn out well in Anne-land, and Rainbow Valley was no exception, with little Una Meredith "proposing" to Rosemary West, Nan and Di's lovely piano teacher. Happily, Rosemary was just the woman that Rev. Meredith would agree to marry him. The novel ends with everyone pleased about the wedding and the children are having one of their out-of-the-mouths-of-babes conversations, when L.M. Montgomery suddenly does a "flash-forward" indicating that World War I is on its way and will cast its shadow over everyone and everything. Although Montgomery leaves her readers stranded on a gloomy note, it's a good set up for the beginning of Rilla of Ingleside, which I'm reading now.

My library has lots and lots of Anne, but it's all in Korean.

Finally, Library Loot!

I finally got my faculty ID card and away I went to my library.

MY LIBRARY. I'll never get tired of saying that.

Because I'm a faculty member, I can take books out for one month. Students have to turn their books back in after one week.

Anyway, here's what I checked out on my maiden voyage:

Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays - edited by Janice M. Alberghene and Beverly Lyon Clark

Fiction, Film and Faulkner: The Art of Adaptation - Gene D. Phillips

Whoo! You can't find stuff like this in the bookstore too often.

Nonfiction Mojo

The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan. Egan explores the hardships of the Dust Bowl, which ravaged the plains states for nearly the entire 1930s and looks into the reasons behind its severity. The final nail in the coffin seems to have been World War I, during which time the government pressed farmers to plant and harvest as much wheat as possible. This resulted in the tearing-up of miles and miles of sod that was never really meant to be more than grazing land for cattle. When several seasons of drought came, along with some high winds, all of that topsoil became airborne for years and years. The dust storms nearly killed some of the towns on the plains, and did kill many of their inhabitants. Men, women and children contracted "dust lung", something akin to the "black lung" coal miners are prey to. Dust lung seems as if it was the more insidious of the two, felling its victims in a small span of years, and in the case of babies, months. According to Egan, one storm was so horrible that Americans as far away as New York were plagued by the black dust and Woody Guthrie was sure that it was the end of the world and got the inspiration for his song "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You".

Since my father was stationed in Oklahoma quite a bit during my childhood, I encountered the occasional dust storm (they always seemed to hit while I was walking home from school or the bus stop). Even after all this time, I still remember the choking feeling, the sting of the flying dirt against the unprotected parts of my body and face, and the gritty feeling in my teeth and the black snot that lingered well into the next day. To a lesser extent, there is a yellow dust here in Korea that blows down from China during the spring months. The air turns a sickly yellow and there's an unpleasant powdery dust that clings to everything. These scattered occurrences are memorable, but hardly more than annoyances when weighed against what those in the Dust Bowl went through. I can't imagine going through the same thing all day, every day, year after year.

Timothy Egan got out there and interviewed some of the old-timers that lived through this ordeal. The interviews, combined with his excellent research and his clear reporting style make for compelling reading. His prose is so evocative, I felt thirsty for days, no matter how much water I drank.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer - James L. Swanson. Tautly written account of the assassination, which begins with Lincoln's second inauguration and Lee's surrender and the subsequent celebrations that broke out in Washington, D.C. All of these things seemed to push John Wilkes Booth (who had already plotted an unsuccessful kidnapping attempt) to grab his knife and Derringer and head to Ford's Theatre that fateful night. Before doing so, he dispatched two of his friends to assassinate Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. The attempt on Seward's life was nearly successful but the third conspirator lost his nerve and fled, never confronting Johnson. Both of these conspirators, including a third, David Herold, who traveled with Booth through the whole manhunt but finally gave himself up at Garrett's Farm, were executed by hanging a short time later.

Swanson expertly cuts back and forth in this series of events, giving the reader a sense of immediacy. I was so engrossed that I began talking to the people in the narrative. When Booth complained during his time on the run that he was forced to live outside in the cold and that all doors were closed to him, I exclaimed aloud, "You brought it on yourself!" Dr. Mudd's continued aid to Booth and his subsequent weak lies to try and save his skin made me groan repeatedly. Swanson examines Mudd in the harshest light and is emphatic that the legend that has grown up around Mudd is wrong -- Mudd wasn't just a poor guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, as his family has been trying to establish for over a century. Thomas Cook, a shrewd former blockade runner who was the most responsible for confounding those who were searching for Booth was to be somewhat grudgingly admired for his resourcefulness, but I was half-scared, half-hoping that Cook would end up being the main guest at his own necktie party.

Manhunt is as engrossing as a novel. I recommend it without reservation, and also encourage you to consider it as a possible upcoming Father's Day gift. Will this book be made into a movie? I hope so -- I think it would be an excellent one.

March Mojo: Book Reviews

Middlemarch - George Eliot. I love this novel even more than I loved it back in 1999. Where to start?

• I'd forgotten how kind and good Caleb Garth is. The speech he makes to Mary about the nature of marriage is the kind of thing all daughters should hear from their fathers. My heart swelled as I read it. Eliot gives us to understand that Fred Vincy grows up a lot and is finally worthy of Mary, but it seems a lot more good luck than good management.
  


• Speaking of the Vincys, they absolutely did not give their children any proper tools for negotiating the real world. Their type seems so prevalent in modern life -- spoiling their children rotten during childhood then being unsympathetic and annoyed (especially Mr. Vincy)when they have problems coping with adult life. What seemed to irritate the Vincys the most was that both children failed to "marry up".
  
  
• I remember feeling a lot sorrier for Lydgate back in 1999. I remembered Rosamond being a piece of work, but forgot specifics. This time, I recognized that Lydgate came to the marriage with a buttload of self-interest and expected Rosamond to be just a pretty cipher. It was a pretty rude awakening for him when he realized that Rosamond was just as self-absorbed and there was a steadily ticking mind behind that face. I shuddered at his last words in the novel, when he referred to Rosamond as his basil plant, "a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains."

• I wasn't exactly sorry that Bulstrode wasn't able to outrun his past, but I agonized for him that he was hounded, blackmailed and exposed by such an extreme douchebag like Raffles.
  
  
• As for Dorothea, I'm still turning her situation over in my mind, wondering if she did indeed marry foolishly both times.

• Did I mention that I love this book? When it ended, I felt as if I'd been wrenched from that world. It's so rich; there's so much to chew on! I don't know if I can wait until 2019 to read it again.
  
  
  

Ned Kelly (Originally published as Our Sunshine) - Robert Drewe. An impressionistic look at Australia's version of Jesse James. He couldn't have been the prankish, lighthearted and misunderstood lad that captivated popular imagination, but he also couldn't have been the fiendish monster the media and police portrayed him as being. I first heard of Ned Kelly when I was about 10 years old from the song of the same name on Johnny Cash's 1971 Man In Black album, and it haunted my imagination:

Ned Kelly was a wild young bushranger

Out of Victoria he rode with his brother Dan

He loved his people and he loved his freedom

And he loved to ride the wide, open land

Ned Kelly was a victim of the changes

That came when his land was a sprout and seed -

And the wrongs he did were multiplied in legend

With young Australia growing like a weed.

Ned Kelly took the blame

Ned Kelly won the fame

Ned Kelly brought the shame

And then Ned Kelly hanged

Well, he hid out in the bush and in the forest

And he loved to hear the wind blow in the trees

While the men behind the badge were coming for him

Ned said, "They'll never bring me to my knees."

But everything was changed and run in cycles

And Ned knew that his day was at an end

He made a suit of armor out of ploughshares

But Ned was brought down by the trooper's men.

Ned Kelly took the blame

Ned Kelly won the fame

Ned Kelly brought the shame

And then Ned Kelly hanged.

Bookworm Quandary

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon has been set for April 18th. As you know, April 18th to most of you is April 19th to me -- and April 19th is book group. We're discussing The Time Traveler's Wife.

Aaarrrghh...I want to do both, but I can't. The Readathon comes but once every 6 months and I enjoy the hell out of pushing myself to read and blog, to stay up the whole 24 hours. Last time, I really got a kick out of my cheerleading duties. I had plans to cheerlead again.

On the other hand: I don't feel like I can neglect my real-life friends for my virtual ones. Would the real-life ones understand? Oh, probably. They know me and even understand me, a little. Also, I'm a little superstitious: I feel as if I start skipping book group, it might just up and disappear. I would hate that, because it took me forever (2.5 years) to find this one.

You might be thinking that the problems of one little bookworm don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday I'll understand.

I've got about a month to work it out. Meanwhile, any suggestions?

Reading In Canadian

I'm so pleased with (and TC&IB is shocked by) myself! I resumed the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge, Eh? this week and quickly polished off Anne's House of Dreams and Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. Finally, I can "leave" New Brunswick after so many months and get into the Northwest Territories. (Manitoba, I knew you for only a day.) I probably won't linger long in The Northwest Territories because I just finished the first chapter of Rainbow Valley, also by Montgomery. British Columbia, here I come! Damn, all this reading is making me hungry and thirsty! Poutine washed down with Moosehead? Tim Horton's? Both?

I'll have to take a break from all this Anne-love to read The Zahir by Paulo Coelho for book group. After The Witch of Portabello, I'm not really looking forward to it. No expectations -- I just want it to not to suck copious amounts.

Faulkner Guy loaned me Go Down, Moses. I appreciate William Faulkner and I'm reading the first story, "Was", but I'm going to need to get my bookmind right before heading back south. Tuffi is breathing impatiently through her nose. She's already threatened to march downhill and go live with Faulkner Guy. He's racing through my copy of Middlemarch like pigs through the corn.

This has been my best reading month in ages. I'm going to start working on my review roundup this week.

Dreaming In Literature: Philip Roth Comes Calling

As soon as I opened my door and saw that it was Philip Roth, the first thought that flashed across my brain wasn't OMG! It's Philip Roth! or Did he do a book tour of Korea and I somehow missed reading about it? No, what came to mind was a panicky: Oh shit...I haven't read American Pastoral yet!

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I let him in -- him and his little dog, too-- for he was carrying a yappy little white dog. I think it was a Maltese. He said that its name was Daphne. I told him that I once had a dog named Daphne, too. I didn't. I was lying to Philip Roth.

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Preparing a cup of honey lemon tea and a plate of little dessert cookies for Roth and a dish of water and a plate of canned tuna for Daphne, I really felt the sweat coming on. I've read three or four of Roth's novels, but I've also given up on a couple. I tried to read Portnoy's Complaint back when I was in high school. I was bored by it, and quit. I suspect that some of Portnoy's uh, preoccupations went over my head. In any case, I couldn't relate at 15 or 16. Then, somewhere around 20, I tried to read The Breast, which is a novella about a guy named David -- I think he was a professor, but I'm not sure -- who completely turns into a breast. I hadn't read any Kafka yet, and I thought it was the stupidest and grossest thing I'd ever read in my life. That put me off Roth for years. Even later, I never really could warm up to his writing. But now that he was sitting in my apartment, I couldn't tell him that.

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I was hoping that Roth would enjoy looking at my shelves, (Larry McMurtry would have!) but no, he wanted to get right to the point. How many of his books had I read and how did I feel about them? Deep breaths. I suddenly had a flash of insight: Everyone wanted to talk to him about Portnoy's Complaint, right? He was probably bored to death by that! Okay, then. I wouldn't mention Portnoy.

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Pablo...I had to get my bookish buddy Pablo from Gumi on the phone. Last year, he'd been asking me about Roth, and I told him that for me, Roth was like the little girl with the curl, so he asked to borrow what I had, and returned those novels raving with delight. Somehow, Pablo needed to get a train and get here in a hurry. He'd read American Pastoral. After that, he went out and bought Everyman, and was delighted by it. Best of all, Pablo had an English accent. Philip Roth would be impressed.

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I tried to slip off to the bathroom to call Pablo, but Philip Roth kept talking to me, his dark eyes boring into me over his tea mug and I couldn't manage to politely excuse myself for a couple of seconds. Maybe I could offer to take Daphne for a walk? Philip Roth brusquely told me to sit down. I was screwed. If I dared to bring up Claire Bloom, would he storm out?

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I stammered out that I had completed four of his books: Goodbye, Columbus, When She Was Good, The Human Stain and The Plot Against America. I decided to dwell on When She Was Good, since hardly anyone ever mentioned that book. But I couldn't remember the details! I couldn't talk about Goodbye, Columbus, either. I hated it; I couldn't imagine how it helped make his literary reputation. Feeling desperate, I was about to ask him if The Plot Against America was going to be made into a movie. My mouth was utterly dry. Then I noticed that Philip Roth was glaring at my copy of American Pastoral. Then he glared at me. Then I woke up.

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In case this is a recurring dream, I've got to go ahead and read American Pastoral.

Book Score!

Now that I've Bookmooched and some fellow teachers have borrowed books, it hasn't taken long to come to the happy realization that I have some room on my shelves again. My inner Biblio-Barbarian (like Nature) hates a void, so...

Making a return trip to the Bandi & Luni at Jonggak station, I unexpectedly scored another one for my Pulitzer shelf: The Stories of John Cheever, which was the 1979 winner -- really nice trade paperback that was still encased in plastic. It was pretty expensive, too -- almost as much as a new hardcover book, but I had to have it. For the collection.

I hadn't been to What The Book? in a while, so my heart beat with anticipation as I climbed Hooker Hill. As always, I saw several things I wanted, but walked out with Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I've been looking for off and on for a couple of years and a beautiful dark-green Virago paperback of a 1931 Sheila Kaye-Smith novel called Susan Spray. I'd never heard of the author or the title before, but loved the title for obvious reasons. I'm also intrigued by the Virago imprint -- they're starting to show up in Korea, and that's good news -- it gives me yet another category of books to obsess about. After about 90 minutes of browsing, I paid for my two finds as well as the new issue of Bookmarks, pinned a note on the bulletin board encouraging people to join the book group: Are you a bookworm? Do you prefer the term Bookzilla?...and went in search of Quizno's. (I'm sorry, Barbara Kingsolver! It was delicious!)

In other news, I've been trying to uncover who the bookworms are and aren't among my new colleagues. So far I've found some Christopher Moore fans and a Faulkner devotee. The former are brandishing copies of You Suck and the latter has promised to lend me his copy of Go Down, Moses. Faulkner Guy and I are both on the lookout for A Fable -- him because well, it's Faulkner and me, because well, it's a Pulitzer fiction winner. During the same conversation, Faulkner Guy expressed an interest in Middlemarch, so I lent him my copy with an enthusiastic recommendation. He's young but he's wormy, and his Inner Book Snob ain't all that inner. I'm pleased that I found him. Surely there's more bookworms to discover here. I have high hopes.

Blob Turns 5!

Today's my blogiversary..."Blob" (as my mother refers to Naked Without Books!) is five years old. I was living a very different life back on March 11, 2004. When I started this blog, I wanted to have a single theme: Books and reading. Over the years, I think I've stuck to that pretty well, but it's amusing how much of my "real life" has crept into these posts.

It's so strange that this extreme love of reading has brought me so many friends, both real and real-virtual. I'm thankful, and I'll never cease to be amazed at the warm community I've found among booklovers around the world.

Happy birthday, Blob. Back when you were born, I was broke, unemployed and frustrated with nearly every aspect of my existence. I've always felt that you helped to save me. I was pleased that we were able to continue together when I took my show on the road and lit out for Asia in those last weeks of 2004.

Pass your plates for a slice of cake.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year Of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver

A few years ago, Barbara Kingsolver and her family decided to leave Arizona, where Kingsolver had been based for about 25 years, and move to her husband's farm in southern Appalachia. They also determined at that time that they would eat locally -- either grow/raise their own produce/livestock or buy it from neighboring farmers right in their own county. This decision came from their growing concern that a staggering amount of oil goes into bringing food to consumers --all the way from the tractors in the farms to the trucks and airplanes that get the food to the grocery stores.

When you read Barbara Kingsolver, you're in for a good scolding; she tends to be a little preachy. In this case, I'm using good in the conventional sense as well as a synonym for "thorough". About 99% of what she says is nothing but truth and sensible to boot. Plus, she put her money where her mouth is by embarking on a year-long journey of living off the land. Her account of this time makes for captivating reading -- good solid reportage combined with memoir.

Kingsolver's co-authors are also rich with insights. Her husband, Steven L. Hopp, an environmental studies professor provides succinct and informative sidebars pertaining to Kingsolver's narrative in each chapter. Kingsolver's college-age daughter, Camille, who plans to study nutrition in graduate school, gives her take on the experiment (very positive and encouraging) and includes dozens of recipes, many of which she created in her family's kitchen. They all scan deliciously as well as healthfully.

Kingsolver's younger daughter Lily, an elementary-schooler, was "too young to sign a book contract", but her contribution to the year of food life was significant. She raised chickens organically, helping to provide her family with extra sustenance via poultry and eggs ("about 50 dozen", notes Kingsolver) as well as generating some income for herself by selling eggs to the neighbors. Those are also Lily's hands on the cover of the book, holding those gorgeous Christmas lima beans, an heirloom variety.

In the middle of their food year, Barbara and Steven visit Italy for about a month. Kingsolver's account of the trip focuses on restaurants and farms throughout the country. Not surprisingly, eating locally is a way of life there rather than something that one must consciously decide to do. Readers should find the Italians' passion for food -- growing, gathering, preparing and eating -- wonderfully compelling reading.

The family also decides to raise turkeys, so Kingsolver has a hilarious chapter about turkey sex and the subsequent results. She can come off as a little holier-than-thou, but she's equally adept at telling a good story on herself, which is an admirable quality. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle also includes an excellent bibliography and a long list of resources regarding eating locally and the "Slow Food" movement.

I often find myself missing certain western foods like crazy, but AVM brought me up short. I'm ashamed to admit that I've helped to contribute to the huge cost of food transportation and the squandering of vital resources. In AVM, a large part of Kingsolver's ire is focuses on, of all things, the importing of bananas. To her credit, I've only eaten one banana since reading her book and I didn't enjoy it!

Although I finished this book in January, AVM still has me thinking about the parallels between Korean and Italian food. Koreans take great pride in their distinctive cuisine and many, if not all cities and/or provinces are famed for a particular food which is celebrated with its own festival when it's in season.

In addition, much of Korean food preparation is labor-intensive and there is especial care taken with the look and presentation that would seem like Martha Stewart-like fussiness to most Americans, but it shows a deep connection and appreciation for where the food came from and the traditions that accompany it.

I haven't done a complete 180 since reading AVM (there are still those stubborn dark longings for Quizno's) but my eyes have been somewhat opened and now when I eat Korean food, I'm curious. I long to have a conversation about the origins of my meal. If the Koreans and I could communicate fluently, I'm almost positive that they'd be happy and proud to inform and educate me. My sincere appreciate for their cuisine may be the very thing that springboards me into getting serious about learning Korean.

Bybee's Library

I pinch-hit for one of the teachers today who had to take that same visa run to Japan that I took last week. Happily, her class was on the 5th floor of the library. Just one floor down were the 800 and 900 books. I could barely keep the whiteboard marker between my trembling fingers. When class was over, there was a mad dash to the staircase. I won.

Combing through the stacks was fun, a veritable treasure hunt. The English titles are mixed in with the Korean titles, so each shelf had to be scanned with the extra-loving care that I've bottled up these past four years while living with a library whose Dewey Decimal system stops at 799. Since I don't have my faculty ID card yet, I didn't check anything out, but I found a few tantalizing possibilities:

1. A critical study of the "Little House" books.
2. Howard's End - E. M. Forster
3. The Forsythe Saga - John(?) Galsworthy
4. Dusty Answer - Rosamond Lehmann (I'd never heard of this 1927 novel before.)
5. A biography of Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee
6. A biography of Zola
7. A buttload of books about the American Civil War
8. A couple of novels by Pearl S. Buck
9. A collection of Robert Benchley's humorous essays

There's more, but I wasn't taking notes. I'm still in shock: Finally, finally, finally finally, FINALLY I've got a library again. I'm looking forward to doing my first "Library Loot" post soon!!!

Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge Completed!

Today I finished Let's Eat Korean Food by Betsy O'Brien and also finished The Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge. This is so unlike me. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm looked up bewilderedly and said, "Bybee?" "Tuffi," I replied, just as taken aback as she was.

Still on the culinary high that M.F.K. Fisher induced with her little slice of perfection, Consider The Oyster, I was pleased to see oyster dishes (kul in Korean) mentioned twice in Let's Eat Korean Food:

"Raw oysters with kimchi are the filling for salted cabbage leaves in kul possam (fresh oysters in cabbage roll) which is like a quick kimchi sandwich."

"Orikul Chot (Salted and spiced oysters): Oysters are salted for three days then seasoned with red pepper powder, sugar, garlic and ginger.They are stored in a jar in a cool place until required."

I can't help but wonder which of those two recipes M.F.K. Fisher would have liked better.

Let's Eat Korean Food starts out with a historical look at Korean cuisine, some helpful information about dining in a Korean restaurant, an explanation of the more popular seasonings that go into Korean food, then a comprehensive overview of some of the most popular dishes here. Each chapter has a "Connoisseur's Choice" section, and I was pleased to see some of my favorites described in mouth-watering detail. The book ends with a look at what is usually served on big feast days. Let's Eat Korean Food is illustrated with excellent pen-and-ink drawings that help you recognize a certain dish at first glance. O'Brien is no M.F.K. Fisher, but her descriptions are clear and precise. A tasty read, highly recommended!