Telling stories of ‘incomplete lives’

Webtoon writer Yoon Tae-ho says he barely enjoys his work. But it is his everything. “I never really got to do anything for pure enjoyment or for myself,” he said in an interview with The Korea Herald in his office in Seoul. “I’ve never played StarCraft. I’ve never played billiards. I don’t enjoy work, either. What I want to do is to do it well, do better.”The 44-year-old is best known for his webtoon “Misaeng,” which means “an incomplete life.” The iconic series, which ran from 2012 to 2013 onl

March 28, 2014

‘Twitter President’ publishes latest collection of short stories

Lee Oi-soo is one of the most active writers online, dubbed “Twitter President” with more than 1.7 million followers. And it is not surprising to hear “Wanjeon Byeontae (Complete Metamorphosis),” his latest collection of short stories, is a result of his “writing exercises” on Twitter.“People often said to me, ‘You are spending so much time online. When do you actually write your novels?” the 68-year-old author told reporters during a press conference in Seoul on Tuesday. “But I actually thought

March 27, 2014

A look at Chinese bridges

China Bridges: Living Architecture from China’s PastBy Ronald G. Knapp (Tuttle Publishing)Budding bridge engineers should look to Asia for inspiration.For thousands of years, China has built bridges for commerce, convenience and sometimes, to mark the “material achievements of emperors down through the ages,” says Ronald K. Knapp, writer of “China Bridges,” an oversized paperback coffee-table book.“Born of necessity to span streams, valleys and gorges, bridges are literally underfoot and often i

March 27, 2014

A legal story set inside the newsroom

Providence RagBy Bruce DeSilva(Forge)The difference between justice and the truth can be miles apart as well as diametrically opposed to journalism ethics as Bruce DeSilva succinctly shows in his third solid novel featuring Liam Mulligan, a Providence, R.I., reporter.“Providence Rag” is an unflinching look at how doing right thing can have dire reverberations. DeSilva’s other novels, including the Edgar-winning “Rogue Island,” have shown Mulligan secure in his career as an investigative reporter

March 27, 2014

Two books examine Lance Armstrong’s character and the industry around him

The cycling section of Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, is vast. And as you stand before it, as I did recently, it’s easy to split the volumes into distinct categories: before doping and after.In the first realm rest the hagiographies and how-to tomes mostly about or inspired by Lance Armstrong, including “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” “Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion” and the now painfully ironic “The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect

March 27, 2014

Myths of alcohol, writers exposed

Our culture has a way of romanticizing the booze-addled scribe, the rakish writer quick with a quip ― Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver.These were masters of American letters. These were also incorrigible drunks who left a trail of human wreckage and misery along with their novels, plays and poems.The myth of the rakish drunk writer dashing off bon mots between martinis starts to teeter once you peel away the illusions and delusions of alcoho

March 27, 2014

Introducing Shakespearean language to new generation

William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh BackBy Ian Doescher (Quirk Books)A long time ago in a galaxy far, far ― well, really about a year ago, William Shakespeare (died 1616) teamed up with Oregon author Ian Doescher to adapt filmmaker George Lucas’ “Star Wars” into a peerless 16th-century play.Now there’s a sequel, “William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back,” and it’s just as much fun.As the original film, “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” was darker and romantic than its predecessor,

March 20, 2014

Insightful storytelling by Martha Grimes

The Way of All FishBy Martha Grimes (Scribner)Martha Grimes is best known for her novels about British police detective Richard Jury, his aristocratic friend Melrose Plant and other residents of the postcard town of Long Piddleton. Those 22 novels meld the traditional village mystery with the police procedural, giving the plots a hard edge balanced by satire and humor.Jury and friends are absent in “The Way of All Fish,” Grimes’ 31st novel, but they won’t be missed in this witty satire on the pu

March 20, 2014

‘Life Is a Wheel,’ across America on two-wheels

Bruce Weber claims that traveling by bicycle isn’t “the contemplative, mind-meandering activity that it is generally presumed to be.”And the New York Times writer, whose “Life Is a Wheel” chronicles his 79-day, 6,600-kilometer pedal from Astoria, Oregon, back to his apartment in Lower Manhattan, has a point: riding 70, 80, 90 kilometers a day, sometimes on busy blacktops with tractor trailers rocketing alongside, on county roads that suddenly dissolve to gravel, through endless prairies wonderin

March 20, 2014

Moore’s ‘Bark’: Mishaps of love

If you adore Lorrie Moore, as so many of us do, you’ll find much to enjoy in her new collection of eight stories, “Bark.” All the sparkly balls are in play ― puns, politics, pop culture details, sometimes all at once, as when a character confuses an unnamed torture prison with a line from Jabberwocky, “the mome raths outgrabe.” (Abu Ghraib for $500, please.)Every story delivers the classic Moore club sandwich of melancholia and humor, and if none is the equal of the best stories in “Birds of Ame

March 20, 2014

Characters boost ‘Black Horizon’

Black HorizonBy James Grippando (Harper) Through his 21 novels, James Grippando has found new ways of telling stories about the intricacies of Florida, drawing inspiration from real events.In “Black Horizon,” Grippando explores a disaster that has affected Florida in the past ― a devastating oil spill ― and creates an intriguing political spin by showing how this could affect relations between the United States and Cuba. But Grippando also ladles a love story and the ever-reliable theme of greed

March 13, 2014

Yiyun Li’s ‘Kinder Than Solitude’: Complexities under the calm

Kinder Than SolitudeBy Yiyun Li (Random House)Across two story collections and two novels, each stellar, Yiyun Li has mapped out the cultural clashes between her native China and her current home in the United States. Her raw materials are big splits: political restraint versus cultural freedom, childhood innocence versus careworn maturity. Yet her understated writing also excels at revealing our more intimate internal anxieties. She’s a master at capturing emotional disconnection, and how obliv

March 13, 2014

David Grand conjuring early LA from afar in ‘Mount Terminus’

“I developed a phobia of Los Angeles,” says David Grand.That could have been a problem for the 45-year-old author, whose novel “Mount Terminus” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26) is set in early 20th century LA. But it was the book ― which he spent more than a decade writing ― that estranged Grand from the city where he grew up.“I couldn’t deal with the sensory overload I experience when I’m there,” he says from the safety of his Brooklyn walk-up. “Whether it’s the light or the landscape or transiti

March 13, 2014

At 66, Dave Barry still hasn’t figured out women

Still a funny, that Dave Barry.A phone conversation with him is like sitting in the audience in a comedy club. In Florida.Because while Barry may have mined the weirdness of the Sunshine State for his syndicated Miami Herald column and some of his 30-odd books, he is starting to write like a short-fused retiree.The cover of his new book depicts Barry with one finger pointed, standing behind the title, “You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty.”Think he’s joking? Don’t be so sure.Consider this passage

March 13, 2014

Plot against U.S. had roots in Dallas

Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in AmericaBy Howard Blum (HarperCollins)History is all about retelling tales that need telling. In “Dark Invasion,” Howard Blum has rescued a batch of compelling ones and woven them into grim, fascinating remembrance.How many recall Frank Holt, aka Erich Muenter? This adoptive son of Dallas was a bird as strange as Lee Harvey Oswald.Outwardly, he was a professor of German, married to the daughter of a Dallas Meth

March 6, 2014

Matthew Quick back with wacky novel

The Good Luck of Right NowBy Matthew Quick (Harper)Matthew Quick, the author of “The Silver Linings Playbook” and several YA novels, has written another book for adults, “The Good Luck of Right Now.” Fortunately it is already optioned by DreamWorks, and you can wait for the movie ― because the last thing you should ever do is read this deeply wacky book.Written as a series of letters to Richard Gere after the protagonist’s mother dies and he finds one of Gere’s “Free Tibet” fundraising letters i

March 6, 2014

Earth confronts man-made sixth extinction: Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert started her journalism career as a stringer for the New York Times and worked in the trenches there as a political reporter, but once she took a job at the New Yorker and made the environment her specialty, she became an exemplar of explanatory journalism. Her books and articles have won every conceivable journalism and science-writing award.Good thing she has her bona fides lined up, because her new book, “The Sixth Extinction” (Henry Holt, 319 pp.) is sure to cause a big-time

March 6, 2014

Anna Quindlen explores new chapters in the life of a 60-year-old woman

The only thing that might have made “Still Life With Bread Crumbs” more enjoyable would have been a summer’s day so I could have read it outside, instead of huddled near a space heater.It’s the seventh novel from Anna Quindlen, the former New York Times columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize, wrote regularly for Newsweek and published the slender “A Short Guide to a Happy Life,” which has sold more than 1 million copies, many to moms, aunts, grandmothers, family friends and others looking for a li

March 6, 2014

B.J. Novak is writing for you, kid

One More Thing: Stories and Other StoriesBy B.J. Novak(Alfred A. Knopf)The guy from “The Office,” as most people think of B.J. Novak, has written a book ― a fun and unusual one. Though “One More Thing” is subtitled “Stories and Other Stories,” only a few of the 63 pieces are stories in the usual sense. Many are fables, some are comedy monologues, others are nearly prose poems. A few are two-line koans. Almost all 63 of them are smart, quick and funny.Many revolve around taking a common phrase an

Feb. 27, 2014

Engaging thriller about perfume heir

North of BostonBy Elisabeth Elo (Pamela Dorman Books)Scent pervades Elisabeth Elo’s debut outing: expensive perfumes, the tang of fishing boats and the coppery smell of blood.The thriller stars Pirio Kasparov. She’s a descendant of Russian parents who bought their Beacon Hill bona fides, but who feels more at home among Boston’s dockworkers and fishermen.Pirio is heir to a perfume house founded by her parents. Her mother, who died when Pirio was only 10, took the secret of her signature scent to

Feb. 27, 2014