Rediscovering Joseon’s royal library

Kyujanggak By Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies(AcaNet, 30,000 won)Founded in 1776 during the reign of King Jeongjo, the Kyujanggak served as the Joseon Dynasty’s royal library. It housed countless royal books and documents that are now considered priceless Korean historical records. The Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies of Seoul National University ― where the library is now located ―

June 10, 2011

Hijuelos finds his Latin roots through writing

The last scene of Oscar Hijuelos’ new memoir, “Thoughts Without Cigarettes” (Gotham Books, $27.50), is a moment of contact with a ghost -- that of his father, Pascual.“I remember when that moment came to me,” says Hijuelos. “It was a mystical reaching of a different dimension. I don’t know what happens when you die, but there is a mystical presence in our lives that extends to people who are no lo

June 10, 2011

Award-winning author publishes new book inspired by life in Bali

Kim In-sook’s new novel talks of hope in extreme despairAuthor Kim In-sook started her writing career early. She made her literary debut when she was barely a university student, at the age of 20. Now 48, she has won Korea’s three major literary awards ― Yi Sang, Dong-in, and Daesan ― with more than 30 books published. But Kim says she still longs to write something different, something new.“It’s

June 10, 2011

New Koreana: more visual, story focused

Koreana, a quarterly on Korean culture and arts published by the Korea Foundation, has gone through a major editorial and design revamp this year, with a more visual and story-focused concept. Its 2011 summer edition, its first issue with the newly-designed layout and stories, was published in late May.The revamped edition is bigger in size so the all-color magazine can effectively mix photographs

June 9, 2011

Ancient documents to e-books: Seoul International Book Fair

Giant book event to feature exhibitions, seminars and meetings with authorsThe 17th Seoul International Book Fair, one of the biggest book events in Korea, opens June 15 at COEX in southern Seoul with a total of 572 publishers from 23 countries participating.The five-day event is filled with diverse special exhibitions, seminars, and events on a variety of themes in today’s international publishin

June 8, 2011

Smurf this! Scholar sees Stalin in comic-book realm

 PARIS (AFP) - Just in time for Global Smurfs Day and a Smurfs movie in 3-D comes a little blue book from a French academic that has some fans of the sock-topped comic book characters seeing red.Antoine Bueno, who lectures at the high-brow Paris Institute of Political Studies, thought he was just having fun when he penned his 177-page analysis of the politics of Smurfland that's just been publishe

June 8, 2011

The greatest all-sport athlete

Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson ZahariasBy Don Van Natta Jr.(Little, Brown)Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky ― they were all great athletes, some of the best the 20th century had to offer. But none excelled in as many sports as Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, the two-sport Hall of Famer who helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association and won mo

June 3, 2011

Heartbreaking youth, uncertainty

IndignationBy Philip RothTranslated by Jeong Young-mok(Munhakdongne Publishing Corp, 11,000 won)Nobody really “gets” adolescence. Not the kids themselves, not the parents and teachers who have left it behind. Not even us as we look back years later. It implies mystique. An alluring mix of whimsy and danger, when everything seemed more important than it was, but also more possible. How do we lose t

June 3, 2011

Judy Moody’s mentor is just a big kid herself

Years ago when Megan McDonald, the now-52-year-old author of the popular children’s series “Judy Moody,” was writing picture books for the 2- to 4-year-old set, a grandmother came through her signing line at an event in Florida.Clutched to the elderly woman’s chest was a waterlogged, tattered copy of McDonald’s debut, “Is This a House for Hermit Crab?” The woman proceeded to tell McDonald that bec

June 3, 2011

New book offers Blount talk about the Big Easy

Roy Blount Jr. is a man who loves to talk. And one of his favorite places to talk about ― and in ― is New Orleans.“People there are loose and unpretentious and tend to enjoy talking,” says Blount of the Big Easy, which he calculates he has visited 42 times in his 63 years. “I love to be around people who like to talk picturesquely, without getting too forced about it.”Blount (pronounced “Blunt”) i

June 3, 2011

Writing to put magic in the everyday

On first Asian trip, Michal Ajvaz talks about inspiration, nationalism in artAs with other literary traditions, Czech fiction’s accessibility to Korean readers has long suffered from a lack of translation into Korean. Even with towering literary figures such as Franz Kafka among the country’s authors, it was only this March that the first anthology Czech short stories in Korean translation, “Pragu

May 29, 2011

Bradley Cooper drinks in life after ‘Hangover’

Barring the end of the world (it didn’t happen Saturday, did it?), or the even less likely scenario in which no one bothers to go out next weekend to see three guys wake up completely blotto, there will be a “Hangover: Part III.”“Obviously, it will depend on the success of the second one,” says Bradley Cooper, whose participation in the inaugural “Hangover” had more than a little to do with his ro

May 27, 2011

New Books

Life of NYC’s most tribal borough The Devil She KnowsBy Bill Loehfelm(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Maureen Coughlin, a 29-year-old cocktail waitress at a seedy Staten Island bar, has dropped out of college and is lying to her mother about it. She tells herself she’s saving money so she can go back to school, but she knows that is also a lie.She pictures herself flirting for tips from drunks until she

May 27, 2011

Summer reading: Virginia Woolf’s transformative touch

In the picture, I am probably 10 years old. I’m wearing blue jeans and a bright red sweater, and I’m perched on the stump of a redwood tree, surrounded by a forest of the same. On my lap, I hold an open book. My head is bowed, long blond hair studiously tucked behind my ears. I wish I could remember the book I was reading, but I can’t.What I do remember is that I knew my mother was taking the pict

May 27, 2011

Talk-show maven’s Book Club spawned literary stars and controversy

For some, a book club means Chardonnay, gossip and some bookish conversation. For Oprah Winfrey, it’s meant making bestsellers and, as she said last week, “the biggest controversy in our 25 years.”As her broadcast television show comes to a close, Winfrey welcomed the reason for that controversy ― the not-truthful memoirist James Frey ― onto two full shows of her final 10, putting her once-vital B

May 27, 2011

Literature must be free from ideology, politics: Gao

Chinese-born Nobel Prize winner says modern literature must break away from 20th-century ideologies Gao Xingjian, the Chinese-born recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, said all forms of literature must be free from outside control, including ideologies, politics, and the free market.He was speaking at a press conference Tuesday at Kyobo Bookstore in downtown Seoul, on the first day of

May 24, 2011

Literature an effort to understand common experience: Le Clezio

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, one of the most acclaimed living French authors and the 2008 Nobel Prize winner, said literature is what connects people in today’s globalized world. He was speaking at a press conference Monday at Kyobo Bookstore in downtown Seoul, a day ahead of the opening of the third Seoul International Forum for Literature in Seoul.Le Clezio participated in the second forum in S

May 23, 2011