Dancing on the moon

What would it be like to dance on the moon? There, things weigh six times less than they do on Earth. Imagine how far you could go with every jump and leap ― and how light your body would feel. The latest volume of Azalea, an American, English-language journal featuring Korean literature and culture published by Harvard University’s Korea Institute, features contemporary Korean author Bae Myung-hoon’s (“Tower” “Concealing”) science fiction “Art and the Acceleration of Gravity” ― a story of a Seo

April 25, 2013

Seoul to celebrate World Book Day

Seoulites were offered free children’s books and brochures a day before Tuesday’s World Book Day.In celebration of World Book Day on April 23, the state-run Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea gave out free roses, a total of 100 children’s books, and 50,000 brochures on book recommendations in central Seoul near Gwanghwamun. The day, organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing, and copyright, was chosen as it is the anniversary of the death of many renowned writers, including W

April 22, 2013

Korean novel published in Argentina

Korean author Han Kang’s 2007 novel “Vegetarian” has been translated into Spanish and published in Argentina, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea said.The sensual novel tells the story of a video artist who finds himself obsessed with his sister-in-law after she suddenly stops eating meat. He asks her to be a model for his art project, which requires painting her naked body with flowers. The book deals with human desire and violence, as well as conflicted dynamics between social norms

April 18, 2013

‘Hopper’ bio sketches troubled rebel

Like a stoned Forrest Gump, Dennis Hopper always managed to be where the action was in American pop culture history.When James Dean was inventing the Angry Young Man in “Rebel Without a Cause,” Hopper was on the set (and in the movie).When Andy Warhol was turning the art world on its ear, Hopper was buying one of his early soup cans (and went on to scoop up Rauschenbergs and Ruschas). When the old movie studio system was dying, Hopper used the success of “Easy Rider” to help drive a nail in the

April 18, 2013

Self-published book hits best-seller lists

SULPHUR SPRINGS, Texas (AP) ― After a feverish month of inspiration, Colleen Hoover had finally fulfilled her dream of writing a book.With family and friends asking to read the emotional tale of first love, the married mother of three young boys living in rural East Texas and working 11-hour days as a social worker decided to digitally self-publish on Amazon, where they could download it for free for a week.“I had no intentions of ever getting the book published. I was just writing it for fun,’’

April 18, 2013

Complicated nature of relationships

A Cold and Lonely PlaceBy Sara J. Henry (Crown)Most of us thrive on human contact ― spouses, friends, family. But for others who have been wounded by the people they love most, isolation in a cold and lonely place may seem like paradise.That sense of severing all previous ties and never truly getting close to people permeate Sara J. Henry’s second insightful second novel. As she did in her 2012 Agatha-winning debut, “Learning to Swim,” Henry explores the complicated nature of relationships while

April 18, 2013

The effect of political cartoons

The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring PowerBy Victor S. Navasky (Knopf)Few people afflict the comfortable more savagely and effectively than political cartoonists. In “The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power,” veteran magazine editor Victor S. Navasky investigates how they work and celebrates some of the greats, from pioneering artist William Hogarth to contemporary caricaturist David Levine.His book features 76 black-and-white illustrations pl

April 18, 2013

Fiction Pulitzer returns and Adam Johnson wins it

NEW YORK (AP) ― Adam Johnson’s “The Orphan Master’s Son,’’ a labyrinthine story of a man’s travails in North Korea, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, restoring a high literary honor a year after no fiction award was given.Pulitzer judges on Monday praised Johnson’s book as “an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.’’ It was the third book by the 45-year-o

April 16, 2013

Novelist goes deep into heart of Texas

Scratchgravel RoadBy Tricia Fields (Minotaur)“ScratchgravelRoad”has a gritty heroine, a rugged border landscape and extreme Texas weather ― pretty much everything you’d expect in a mystery from an author based in ... Indiana?This is the second novel featuring Josie Gray, police chief in the economically strapped West Texas town of Artemis. She battled Mexican drug cartels in Tricia Fields’ debut mystery “The Territory,” which won the Tony Hillerman Prize.In “Scratchgravel Road,” Chief Gray must

April 11, 2013

Book reveals all that we miss in our lives

All That IsBy James Salter(Knopf)Before becoming a full-time writer, 87-year-old James Salter was a fighter pilot, and he has written often and well about flying.“All That Is,” Salter’s first full-length novel in more than 30 years, isn’t ostensibly about flying at all, even if its protagonist does a brief stint in a plane toward the end of World War II. But the experience of reading this book is akin to one’s panoramic view, when aloft and moving fast. You can see a lot, albeit briefly and ofte

April 11, 2013

Caroline Kennedy becomes ambassador to world of poetry

Poetry doesn’t get enough credit as a social activity, Caroline Kennedy says.“More and more kids are memorizing poems together or participating in poetry slam teams,” she says. “For kids, if you do something with your friends, it makes it a lot more fun.”Her own experience has run the gamut from reciting four-liners as a child living in the White House to receiving classic lines translated from “Metamorphoses” as a Christmas present from her Latin-loving daughter.So does Kennedy even have specia

April 11, 2013

Lev Dodin shares passion for Chekhov

It’s been more than a century since Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) died, but his works dominate the life of Russian theater director Lev Dodin. “I don’t think of Chekhov as a dead man,” said the Russian director at a press conference on Tuesday, promoting Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” he brought to Seoul. “I always talk to Chekhov. His works are what give me the joy of creating art. I feel like he is still very much present in the contemporary world.”This is Dodin’s second time staging Chekhov’s work in

April 11, 2013

Ancient Rome’s influence on America

A growing number of Koreans learn English, consume fast food and watch Hollywood movies regularly as in other places of the world, but the idea of what America really is still evokes, if anything, fuzziness.In "Rome, the Stolen Gem of America," author Choi Yong-sik attempts to draw up a clearer picture of America by identifying its cultural and historical link with ancient Rome.Choi shows how the present-day U.S. evolved from the Roman Republic since the Declaration of Independence in the 18th c

April 11, 2013

Book builds on masterful world

AngelopolisBy Danielle Trussoni(Viking)John Milton, the 17th-century writer and poet, is perhaps most responsible for giving Satan and his rebel angels celebrity status. In “Paradise Lost,” Milton imagines the fallen angels as “all monstrous, all prodigious things,” presenting them as the heroes of his epic work explaining humanity’s fall from grace and justifying “the ways of God to man.” From the novels in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series to films like “The Matrix,” Milton’s masterp

April 4, 2013

Missing woman shakes up Southern town

The Next Time You See MeBy Holly Goddard Jones (Touchstone Book)The small-town setting of “The Next Time You See Me,” Holly Goddard Jones’ debut novel, is no place for the faint of heart. The more we see of the people who live here, the easier it is to understand what one character means when he says it’s best to lay low and live “a small life, a sad life.”Especially if you’re different. Because Roma, Kentucky, circa 1993, is a place where cruelty is “the way of the world” and kindness “an anoma

April 4, 2013

Americans caught in Great Recession undertow

In the official estimation of government economists, the Great Recession ended in 2009. But in Barbara Garson’s new book, it lives on. And for the people whose stories she tells, the Great Recession may never die.“They didn’t retire, and they didn’t find jobs,” Garson writes, describing the four New York professionals whose stories open “Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession.” They call themselves “The Pink Slip Club.” It’s a group that never loses any members, because n

April 4, 2013