Most Popular
-
1
Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
-
2
Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
-
3
New celebrity-endorsed therapy for face contouring requires only a pair of rubber bands
-
4
Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
-
5
[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
-
6
Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
-
7
Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
-
8
Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
-
9
Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
-
10
KT launches new mobile plans for foreign residents
-
Ulysses celebration blooms in Seoul
Bloomsday, a commemoration to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce that also relives events from his novel Ulysses, is to be held in Seoul.“The evening will be a convivial mix of drama, readings and music,” said Ireland’s Ambassador Eamonn McKee.“It is a world-wide phenomenon which reflects the admiration and love for Joycean literature, specifically the greatest novel yet written, ‘Ulys
June 8, 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
-
Napoleon used years on St Helena to learn English
June 1, 2011
-
People at Harvard, MIT read a lot
Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of the world's prestigious universities -- Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) -- topped the list of the most well-read U.S. cities, an online report by CNN said Friday quoting Amazon.comAmazon compiled its sales data for books, magazines and newspapers -- both in print and for its Kindle e-reader -- from Jan. 1, this year. The bookseller used pop
May 30, 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
-
Go the bleep to sleep, dad writes in best-seller
NEW YORK (AP) ― Playing dress up or running around the park, kids can be so darn cute. Until it’s 3 a.m. and they won’t go the (bleep) to sleep.The F-bomb plea on the minds of every parent at one point or another is the title of a buzz magnet of a book parody written in kid-friendly rhyme. Beware, parents, it’s decidedly unworthy of a bedtime readaloud.Not yet out, the 32-pager from a tiny Brookly
May 23, 2011
-
Exhibit finds sci-fi themes in unexpected places
LONDON (AP) ― The genre that brought us “The Matrix” has roots reaching back nearly two millennia. The literary tradition often associated with “Star Trek”-loving fanboys has a militant feminist streak. Oh, and science fiction also invented cyberspace.The British Library’s new exhibit, “Out of this World,” wants visitors to know that there’s more to sci-fi than “The War of the Worlds” or “20,000 L
May 22, 2011
-
[New Books] Bangalore the new India
Bangalore the new IndiaMiss New IndiaBy Bharati Mukherjee(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)Anjali Bose has a dazzling smile, near-fluency in American-accented English, and a gnawing hunger for life outside her rural Indian town of Gauripur, where the dilapidated Pinky Mahal bears witness to stalled progress and her stolidly middle-class parents are forcing her into an arranged marriage.Anjali, who prefer
May 20, 2011
-
Healing and transcendence in war
Healing and transcendence in warThe Rainy SpellBy Yun Heung-gil(Jimoondang, 5,000 won)First published in 1978, Yun Heung-gil’s “The Rainy Spell” is still regarded as one of the finest short stories dealing with the Korean War (1950-1953) experience. The novel tells a story of a Korean family that has two of its members placed in the opposing camps during the war. It is told from the perspective of
May 20, 2011