Seoul Book Fair to spotlight French, Italian writers

This year’s Seoul International Book Fair, set to take place next week at Coex Convention & Exhibition Center in Seoul will highlight French and Italian books, the annual book fair organizers said at a press conference Wednesday.　France, invited as the “Culture Focus” country, will introduce a new generation of French writers, said Anthony Chaumuzeau, director of the French Institute in Seoul. From left: French writer Antoine Laurain (Philippe Matsas/Seoul International Book Fair), French cook a

June 8, 2016

Ivanka Trump book ‘Women Who Work’ coming next spring

NEW YORK (AP) -- Another Trump book is in the works -- this time by daughter Ivanka.The publisher Portfolio told the Associated Press on Monday that it had acquired Ivanka Trump’s “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules of Success.” Financial details weren’t disclosed for the book, scheduled for next spring.According to Portfolio, a business imprint of Penguin Random House, the book will advocate an “inclusive and celebratory” vision for working women and help them “create the lives they want to li

June 8, 2016

Online resource for books launches aggregator for reviews

NEW YORK (AP) -- An online resource for literary content is hoping to create the publishing equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes.Literary Hub (lithub.com) announced Tuesday the launch of Book Marks, compiling reviews from more than 70 outlets ranging from the New York Times to the Las Vegas Weekly. Reviews will include links to the original publications, and individual books will be assigned composite letter grades by Lit Hub editors. Any work that has been reviewed three or more times will be listed i

June 8, 2016

‘Ink and Bone’ takes a frightening turn to the supernatural

“Ink and Bone” 　By Lisa Unger　Touchstone (352 pages, $24.99)　The Hollows, an idyllic sounding town in upstate New York, keeps calling to author Lisa Unger. This fictional town that attracts those seeing a respite from New York City or want a smaller community to call home also has a dark side that rears its head and takes residents on emotional roller-coasters that test their mettle and moral compass.　Each of Unger’s novels set in The Hollows follows a different set of characters with the town a

June 8, 2016

Exploration of what it means to be human

“Becoming Wise” 　By Krista Tippett　The Penguin Press (288 pages, $28)　Most of us can only dream of the dinner parties Krista Tippett could put together. We’re lucky, then, that her new book is the next best thing to an invitation to sit down, make ourselves at home and prepare for a mind-expanding exploration of what it means to be human.　With “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living,” Tippett expands on interviews that became fascinating fodder for her award-winning NPR pro

June 8, 2016

Actress tells her life in love letters to men in her life

“Dear Mr. You” 　By Mary-Louise Parker　Scribner (228 pages, $25)　In the imaginative and evocative “Dear Mr. You,” sexy “Weeds” actress Mary-Louise Parker hints at her compelling life story through a series of love letters to key men in her life.　Each letter is a chapter, addressed to figures she mostly names only as Yacqui Indian Boy, Blue, Big Feet, Little Owl and the like. (You may find yourself googling her to try to suss out details.) As she explains in the titular first chapter, she’s writin

June 8, 2016

‘Korea, a culture of desires’: Le Clezio

According to Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, it is significant that the Korean word for “desire” -- “baram” -- is also a homonym of the word for “wind.” 　“Like the wind, desire is rough, intense and sudden, but it also provides useful inspiration. Isn’t this what all literature attempts to show?” posed the French-Mauritian writer and Nobel laureate at a lecture titled “Korea, a Culture of Desires” in Seoul on Wednesday. 　“Literature has traditionally depicted diverse forms of desire

June 2, 2016

Unnamed 'Oxygen Thief' becomes self-published success

NEW YORK (AP) -- The fair-skinned man with the hoodie and dark ski cap sits on a bench outside McNally Jackson Books in downtown Manhattan, where neither patrons nor employees seem aware that he's the author of a work so in demand at the store that it’s often out of stock.　Known to his growing fan base as “Anonymous,” he has given us one of the more unusual self-published successes: “Diary of an Oxygen Thief,” a 147-page fictionalized memoir, or autobiographical novel, depending on how much of t

June 1, 2016

Fat and happy: No one tells author Lindy West what to do

Lindy West is a defender of bodies: women’s bodies, fat bodies, every body’s right to exist in whatever way, shape or form, unjudged and unassailed. “Everyone has a body,” she says. “We haven’t developed brain-in-jar technology yet.” Her writing puts forth the unfortunately radical proposition that each person’s body is that person’s own business.“It is the thing that most belongs to them. It’s not yours,” she points out over sake bombs and edamame dip, pot stickers and ahi tacos. It’s the most

June 1, 2016

The worldwide war of keystrokes

“Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War”　By Fred Kaplan　Simon & Schuster (352 pages, $28)　You’ve heard the complaining, from the White House on down, about the cyberattacks on our country. Well, yes, you guessed it: We started it.　That’s one of the central thrusts of Fred Kaplan’s “Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.” Because it pioneered computing, the U.S. intelligence agencies enjoyed decades of dominance over rivals, and even learned how to remotely wreak havoc on, say,

June 1, 2016

Rare Shakespeare first edition sold for nearly 2m pounds

LONDON (AFP) - A rare first edition of British playwright William Shakespeare’s works from 1623 sold for 1.87 million pounds ($2.75 million) at Christie’s on Wednesday, the auction house said.A private U.S. collector bought the book as well as three subsequent Shakespeare collected works from 1632, 1664 and 1685 for a total of 2.48 million pounds.“The universality and timelessness of Shakespeare’s insight into human nature continues to engage and enthrall audiences the world over,” Margaret Ford

May 26, 2016

Helen Mirren to narrate audiobook for Beatrix Potter story

NEW YORK (AP) -- Helen Mirren’s latest role is audio only.　The award-winning British actress is narrating the recently rediscovered Beatrix Potter story “The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots,” Penguin Random House told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The hardcover and audio editions are scheduled for a Sept. 6 release. Actress Helen Mirren poses for photographers upon arrival at the screening of the film “La Fille Inconnue (The Unkown Girl)” at the 69th international film festival, Cannes, France, May 18

May 25, 2016

Oil riches help keep alive bedouin poetry

ABU DHABI (AFP) -- The Middle East’s poetry equivalent of “Pop Idol” is helping to keep alive an age-old tradition using bedouin dialect, which is barely understood outside the Arabian Gulf.　Apart from the glory, a Kuwaiti student took home five million dirhams ($1.4 million), the top prize in a television show followed by millions of poetry lovers across the region.　With his Nabati poem, Rajih al-Hamidani was crowned 2016 champion of “Million’s Poet,” staged in oil-rich Abu Dhabi for a seventh

May 25, 2016

With Booker win behind her, Han expands realm of expression

Novelist Han Kang is receiving a level of media attention that few in the literary profession have experienced.　Fellow writers and critics welcome the international breakthrough for Korean literature that her Man Booker International Award win is anticipated to bring. Local papers are analyzing her award-winning novel, “The Vegetarian,” first published in 2007, sentence by sentence. There is even newfound interest in the field of literary translation. 　Amid the frenzy, however, what Han wants to

May 25, 2016

World War II's endgame was also a beginning for Samuel Beckett

“A Country Road, A Tree: A Novel”　By Jo Baker　Knopf (304 pages, $26.95)　When war came to Europe in 1939, Samuel Beckett was a published but largely unknown and unread Irish writer working in the long shadow of James Joyce, for whom he’d served as a literary secretary in Paris while the great man was writing “Finnegans Wake.”　By war’s end six years later, Beckett was well on his way to becoming the markedly different writer who would shortly unveil “Waiting for Godot” and who is now justly rememb

May 25, 2016

‘The Gene’ captures scientific method in all its fumbling glory

“The Gene: An Intimate History” 　By Siddhartha Mukherjee　Scribner (592 pages, $30)　“Like Pythagoras’s triangle, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, like the Pyramids in Giza, like the image of a fragile blue planet seen from outer space, the double helix of DNA is an iconic image, etched permanently into human history and memory,” Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in “The Gene: An Intimate History,” a fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making

May 25, 2016

Lara Feigel’s book tours Germany in the wake of WWII defeat

“The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich” 　By Lara Feigel　Bloomsbury (443 pages, $32)　It wasn’t just grunts and generals who crossed into Germany at the end of the Second World War. Along with Allied forces, a who’s who of writers, journalists, poets and filmmakers came to observe, report and reconstruct a shattered world.　What they saw shocked and bewildered them. Major cities -- Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne -- had been heavily bombed. The plight of ordina

May 25, 2016