Most Popular
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Samsung under pressure after Intel's foundry spin-off: analysts
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Yoon leaves for Prague to cement nuclear energy push
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Heavy rain to fall nationwide over weekend, but warmer fall expected
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Seoul chastises predatory pricing claims over Czech nuclear export deal
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YouTuber under fire for consoling former singer accused of bullying
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NK newspaper 'unusually' silent on new missile tests: Seoul
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Samsung CEO introduces ‘bold growth’ as new target
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Bank of Korea eyes rate cut after US Fed's historic pivot
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3 suspects apprehended for selling celebrity deepfake porn: police
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Hyundai Motor officially becomes KT’s largest shareholder
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Miami author bakes her way through life
“Life without a Recipe” By Diana Abu-Jaber Norton (272 pages, $26.95) Diana Abu-Jaber has spent years carving out a life as a successful writer, struggling to reconcile the competing voices in her head, one from a tough-minded German grandmother and the other from her exuberant Arab father. Through it all, she baked. Cookies and cakes, tarts and scones, a blizzard of confectioners’ sugar blanketing all difficulties, smoothing out rough edges, sweetening the bitter. In the kitchen and in life, s
April 27, 2016
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Millennium sequel to be written in American detective fiction style
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish author David Lagercrantz, who took over the Millennium crime series from the late Stieg Larsson, said the fifth book will be written in a straight-talking style popularized by Raymond Chandler. But in an interview with the Swedish daily newspaper DN published Tuesday, Lagercrantz admitted that finding his voice in this new style was tough. “It's so much harder to write hard-boiled fiction than I thought. Good hard-boiled prose needs rhythm. You have to vary the sentence
April 21, 2016
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Beverly Cleary at 100: A salute
When we first meet Ramona Quimby, she’s only 4 years old and already showing signs of greatness. She can secretly summon 15 friends to her house without her mother suspecting a thing -- at least until the children start arriving on the doorstep, expecting a party. She can ruin two birthday cakes in a single day, turn the house upside down with only a box of apples, and make herself the center of attention anywhere, any time -- with or without the paper Easter bunny ears she proudly dons for, say
April 20, 2016
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‘Love will always win,’ says Syrian artist whose graphic novel tells of war’s hell
PARIS (AFP) - Two nights after the Paris attacks in November, a young couple stripped to their waists and kissed in the rain on the Place de la Republique as crowds gathered to grieve and share their shock at the killings. She was French and he Syrian, and the photo of them holding a handwritten placard saying “Love will always win” went viral. “I knew it was bad when my friends began calling me from Syria asking if I was OK,” said artist Hamid Sulaiman, of the jihadist attacks in which 130 peop
April 20, 2016
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An intricate novella of the mundane, the otherwordly
“Springtime: A Ghost Story” By Michelle de Kretser Catapult (85 pages, $11.95) Disturbing ripples run through this novella from an award-winning Sri Lankan author who grew up in Australia. We join the life of lead character Frances as she moves to modern-day Sydney to pursue her studies of elements of composition in 18th-century art. She’s a keen observer of details, researching the significance not only of what’s in a painting, but what’s not. Her story is both simple and intricate. Our first
April 20, 2016
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Understated novel observes family dynamics
“Miller’s Valley” By Anna Quindlen Random House (257 pages, $28) When society’s volume seems cranked to 11, there’s something to be said about a quiet book. Understated almost to a fault, Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel pulls together themes of rural life, Vietnam, mental illness, eminent domain, abortion and ambition in prose that never shouts, yet still explores a family’s depths. We meet Mimi Miller as a child growing up in Miller Valley, the family history flowing across the land as surely as
April 20, 2016
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Novelist Han Kang shortlisted for Man Booker Prize
Korean writer Han Kang has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian,” becoming the first Korean writer to be considered for the prestigious literary accolade. The award body announced the six final nominees for this year’s prize on its website on Thursday. The five other nominated works are “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; “A General Theory of Oblivion” by Angola’s Jose Eduardo Angualusa; “The Story of th
April 14, 2016
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New book offers comprehensive study of Dokdo sovereignty
The territorial dispute between Korea and Japan over Dokdo Islets in the East Sea, dates back to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, explains Park Hyun-jin in his new book, “A Study of Dokdo Sovereignty,” which is by Kyungin Publishing and cost 59,000 won. Although records show that Korea obtained the original right to the Dokdo Islets during the Silla Kingdom period (57 BC-935 AD), Japan has been attempting to claim sovereignty over the Dokdo Islets after using it as a naval base during the war aga
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Pervading sense of passivity dominates ‘The Hole’
“The Hole” By Pyun Hye-young Moonji Publishing (210 pages, 13,000 won, $11) After a devastating car accident, 40-something university professor Oh-gi wakes up to find his wife dead and his own body completely paralyzed in a hospital bed, capable of no other movement than blinking. His whole existence seems to have collapsed and disappeared into nothing, he says in a monologue. He is recognizable to himself only through a nametag that a nurse placed at the foot of his bed. “The Hole,” the f
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Veteran TV reporter releases coverage of his own life
“And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East” By Richard Engel Simon & Schuster (241 pages, $27) In his 20 years of reporting from some of the most volatile hot spots in the Middle East, Richard Engel has survived bombings and uprisings, been kidnapped and spent many nights sleeping on the floor, a mattress shoved against the window in case of an explosion. Engel’s accounting of his two-decade rise from young freelancer to NBC’s chief foreign correspondent is often as exhausti
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Essays on the endings of well-known writers
“Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died” By Jim Bernhard Skyhorse Publishing (296 pages, $14.99 paperback) A person’s life is always more important than his or her death -- but no one reads an obituary or biography without wanting to know how the subject died. British-educated Texas writer Jim Bernhard gives a respectful nod to the understandable fascination most of us have with death in this collection of essays about the ends authors have come to. To his credit, he includes in each essay some
April 13, 2016
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Michael Mann inks three-book deal with William Morrow
NEW YORK (AP) -- A book project founded by director-writer Michael Mann has found a home with HarperCollins Publishers. The Harper imprint William Morrow told the Associated Press on Tuesday that it had acquired three novels to be released through Michael Mann books. The novels, all coauthored by Mann and currently untitled, will include a collaboration with “The Cartel” author Don Winslow on a story based on the lives of crime bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana and a prequel to Mann’s origina
April 13, 2016
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Padma Lakshmi reveals much more than ‘Top Chef’ in new memoir
If you ever happen to interview Padma Lakshmi, do yourself a favor and let her pick the location. That way, you might just find yourself enjoying a piping hot plate of spicy orecchiette at an unassuming East Village trattoria while the former model converses in fluent Italian with the restaurant’s owner. To anyone who’s watched “Top Chef,” the popular Bravo competition series that has introduced a generation of American TV viewers to phrases like sous-vide and mise en place, it should come as no
April 13, 2016
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France bewitched by ‘Bojangles,’ a book full of joy and tears
PARIS (AFP) -- It is the literary sensation of the year in France. A first novel by a dyslexic author that has had readers crying -- and laughing out loud -- on the Paris metro. Before he wrote “Waiting for Bojangles” in seven weeks at his parents' home, 35-year-old Olivier Bourdeaut had “failed at just about everything else in my life,” he told AFP. “I wish I was joking,” said the failed estate agent whose last job was a switchboard operator for an educational publishing company, “surrounded by
April 12, 2016
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Ta-Nehisi Coates wins PEN award
NEW YORK (AP) -- National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates has received another honor, an essay award from PEN. Coates' “Between the World and Me” is an open letter to his son about race and police violence. It’s the winner of the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. It won the National Book Award last fall. Mia Alvar has won a PEN prize for best debut fiction. Alvar received the $20,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for “In the Country,” a story collection about F
April 12, 2016
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Holy Bible on list of 'challenged' books at libraries
NEW YORK (AP) -- On the latest list of books most objected to at public schools and libraries, one title has been targeted nationwide, at times for the sex and violence it contains, but mostly for the legal issues it raises. The Bible "You have people who feel that if a school library buys a copy of the Bible, it's a violation of church and state," says James LaRue, who directs the Office for Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, which released its annual 10 top snapshot of
April 12, 2016
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Spain in Our Hearts’ tells the American story of the Spanish civil war
“Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939” By Adam Hochschild Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (464 pages, $30) The Spanish civil war, which ran from 1936 to 1939, is most notable to historians for how it foreshadowed the horrors of World War II. Yet few distant conflicts are so burned into our culture and consciousness. Ernest Hemingway, who covered the war, made it the setting of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “the best goddamn book” he ever wrote. George Orwell, who fought in i
April 6, 2016
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What’s on the ‘manuscript wishlist’ of literary agents?
The other day, a friend sent me a link to something called “manuscript wishlist” -- a Twitter thread (#MSWL) from literary agents who are looking for that next best-selling blockbuster manuscript by an unknown writer. (Also online at mswishlist.com) It’s fascinating to troll the posts and see what they’re hoping to find. (And poets, I’m sorry, but you can all stop reading right now. They’re not looking for poetry.) One agent wrote: “I’d really love a hot contemporary romance about women (and men
April 6, 2016
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American children’s author wins Astrid Lindgren prize
STOCKHOLM (AFP) -- American children’s author Meg Rosoff on Tuesday won the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for young people’s literature, the organization announced. “Meg Rosoff’s young adult novels speak to the emotions as well as the intellect. In sparkling prose, she writes about the search for meaning and identity in a peculiar and bizarre world,” the jury said in its statement. Rosoff was born in Boston in 1956, attended Harvard University and later published her first book “How I Liv
April 6, 2016
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Tina Fey talks ‘Bossypants’ and other books, zings Talese
NEW YORK (AP) -- Even for someone as loved as Tina Fey, a reported $6 million advance seemed like a lot of money for a book of essays. But five years after its publication, “Bossypants” has sold 3.75 million copies, according to Little, Brown and Co. And it confirmed a market for smart, funny nonfiction such as Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please” and Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” In an email interview Tuesday with the Associated Press, Fey discussed “Bossypants” and some books she
April 6, 2016