Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

I�ve been pretty lucky in my book purchases recently. Most of my choices have turned out good-to-great.

Here�s what I�ve been killing time with:

1. A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Victor Davis Hanson). A very well-done commentary on the methods of warfare in Ancient Greece. It�s surprisingly difficult to cut down an olive tree.

From page XVI: �No other struggle can provide such military lessons for the present as the Peloponnesian War. Of course, it was a Balkans-type mess�but also a conflict involving two great superpowers, as well as a war of terror, of dirty fighting in a Hellenic Third World, of forcing democracy down the throats of sometimes unwilling states, and of domestic and cultural upheavals at home brought on by frustrations of fighting abroad.�

2. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven (Sherman Alexie). Alexie�s first book of short stories. Alexie is a Spokane Indian and writes about that experience, but with a lot of humor.

3. Rice (Su Tong) Watch a Chinese family self-destruct because every single one of them deserve it. Interesting, but I think the writer will do better later. (WhattheBook)

4. The Yacoubian Building (Alaa Al Aswany). The people (Egyptian) who work or live in the Yacoubian Building in Cairo are not the kind of Moslems that pay all that much attention to the Koran, except for one. This is not a book bigverne would like. It doesn�t confirm his preconceptions of Moslems as a bunch of religious fanatics. It does however show them to be pretty human. A good read. A very good read. (WhattheBook)

5. Great Plains (Ian Frazier). Non-fiction stories about the Great Plains. I enjoyed it. I wish I�d bought a used copy instead of a new one, though. (WhattheBook)

6. Krakatoa (Simon Winchester). One of those books whose cover hype makes you want to hunt the writer down and get your money back at the point of a gun. I learned a lot about plate techtonics, but darn little about the Krakatoa eruption. (WhattheBook)

7. The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce. Some fun horror/ghost stories, but his Civil War stories (he was a veteran) are really great. See if you can find �Chickamagua� on the internet. It�s surreal.

8. Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (Annie Proulx). Every bit as good as her first collection of Wyoming stories (that included Brokeback Mountain). The lady knows how to write a short story.

9. The Tie That Binds (Kent Haruf). A heartbreaker. Haruf has written 4 novels about a tiny town out on the Great Plains. This one is his first. His third, Plainsong, was a National Book Award finalist. This one is every bit as good. He knows how to write both good and bad characters, but what I find exceptional is that his good characters are as interesting as any one�s bad characters. That�s unusual. This one is about a woman�s sense of duty to her family.

10. Where You Once Belonged (Kent Haruf). Sophomore effort. Not bad at all, but not as great as his other three.

11. Evensong (Kent Haruf). Some of the same characters as in Plainsong. Maybe even more emotionally moving. If you grew up in a small town, you know these people. It�s a lot like coming home, in the best sense.

12. Cry Me a River (T. R. Pearson). This boy is a Southern writer in the story-telling- on-the-front-porch tradition. He starts out telling his story but the side tracks are just as entertaining as the main story. Reminds me of Joseph Heller. A very strong personal voice. This one is a murder story, but his first 3 (A Short History of a Small Place, Off For the Sweet Hereafter; The Last of How It Was) was about life in a small North Carolina town. Here is a paragraph from Cry where the main character tells about his first murder case:

Apparently he�d been out whoring, was given to whoring as a hobby and a pursuit which that plump little woman ordinarily tolerated, allowed him the latitude to indulge his urges as long as he observed the unspoken stipulations and played by the implicit rules. He�d committed, however, a breach of etiquette, had transgressed beyond the scope of his rights and indulgences, had been inspired somehow to wear this night the shiny blue shirt his plump little wife had driven clean to Roanoke to buy for him as a gift on the occasion of their wedding anniversary. It seems she�d never instructed him not to *beep* in it but had simply assumed he�d have more sense than to wear that shirt out catting around, had figured even once he�d left the house in his gray poplin blazer and his blue shiny shirt and his yellow twill pants and his imitation lizard skin shoes with the gold chainlink adornments that he was not probably intending to scour the country dousing, as was his custom, with his agitated member like a man hunting a vein of water.

[flotsam]

Were these on the bookshelf at your seniors center?

[The Chewbacca Defense]

Anything by Nelson DeMille.

Re-read The Charm School recently......brilliant!

[Buff]

Currently reading Animals in Translation. Non-fiction written by an autistic animal behavior expert. She explores the links between autism and the animal mind. Good read.

[periwinkle]

Damn, OP- a lot of books on that list! I'll have to check out Evensong. Rice, too. I ordered several books from WTB recently, so I'll have to make my way through those first. Actually, I chose my books because they won Ernest Hemmingway awards, but the characters are pathetic and unmemorable (Dreams of Sleep or something). The other Hemmingway award winner (Grass Dancer or something) starts off with several tragic deaths... Honestly, my true crime books are less tragic than the fiction from these Hemmingway award winners...

E. Annie Proulx is awesome- I think she wrote The Shipping News, which I absolutely loved. You should check it out if you haven't already.

[Doogie]

I'm going to put in a plug here for my favorite writer.......Alistair Macleod. His stories are all based in the Cape Breton area. He has a book of short stories called Island and a novel called No Great Mischief. I can't recommend them enough. Trust me, the writing and the stories are breathtaking. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to order them. I've noticed that there isn't exactly a plethora of books by Canadian writers in the bookstores here (with the exception of Margaret Atwood).

[Milky Joe]

I've just finished another amazing novel from George Orwell - "Keep the Apidastra flying", this novel is so immensely readable and enlightening, I would highly recommend it to any fans of Orwell's work. In the same vein as "Down and out in Paris and London", this novel is highly autobiographical, telling the tale of a frustrated poet leading a ramshackle lifestyle spurning capitalism in favour of vague ideals, which put him at odds with the society that he inhabits. A voyage of self-flagellation and ultimately discovery ensues, with an inevitable, yet deeply satisfying closure.

Could anyone tell me if the selection of literature is of any worth in Seoul?? I am interested in Slavonic and English literature, would I be advised to take out a large collection of reading material if i plan on reading a lot?

[Ya-ta Boy]

peri: You will enjoy Evensong MUCH more if you read Plainsong first. And you're right, Shipping News was great.


I don't know for a fact, but my guess is Slavonic lit is pretty rare on the ground here. Bring your own. There are 5 or so bookstores in Seoul which carry English books, with an emphasis on the classics. Bookstores will order for you if you are patient. You can also order online.

[Milky Joe]

Cheers, I'll try and find some room in my luggage for a decent selection, maybe they'll be of some value exchange-wise when I'm done with them.

[socrates flitcraft]

Reading "1968- The year that shook the world" by Mark Kurlansky.
Quality for anybody interested in History. It weaves politics and culture with great artistry and is an exellent insight into the youth/inspirations of many of today's main players. Would recommend it for travel purposes generally, it touches on almost everywhere...gives places a great sense of character and atmosphere.

The sea by john Banville
If in delusional la la land , which I occupy alot of the time- dreaming of scoring the winner against England in the World Cup Final or writing a movie script and living of the fat ad infinitum, this shows you what a real writer can do.
It's a quite bleak trip back through the narrator's life and the terminal illness of his dead wife that eschews sentimentality. Memory and your life's worth weighed with an eerily detached brand of solitude by the author.

[ajgeddes]

Anybody wanting a good historical/fiction should try The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's about Dracula, but it isn't about him turning into a bat and flying around or anything like that. It's really, really good and I am sure somebody else on here has read it.

[captain kirk]

Riding the Iron Rooster, by Paul Theroux, 1988. Red cover paperback edition, 500 pages, picture of a steam locomotive pulling thru Chinese Canyon/desert country.

He takes the Trans Siberian Railway from Paris, thru Eastern Europe. Stops in Poland for a bit. Takes his time, very good writer. Once in China, Peking, he continues to travel only by train. For some places, distant destinations, the landscape is so alien, strange, and weird the liesurely pace of train travel acclimitizes him to the reality shift slowly.

All points of the compass within China. Down to near Vietnam, North to near Siberia, West to Tibet at the end and all points in between. Visualizing myself in China at some later date, perhaps, I was interested in an already highly engaging read.

[pastis]

[Ron Stevens]

brett easton-ellis lunar park - read it at the beginning of the year probably enjoyed it more than anything i've read since

[seoulshock]

Sic Itur Ad Astra: The Theory of Volition (Volume I) by Andrew J. Galambos