Most Popular
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South Korea confirms North Korea’s latest spy satellite launch failed
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Financially active women bear fewer children, report finds
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Leaders agree to revive 3-way cooperation, reaffirm security efforts
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[Feature] Ignorance about Africa still rampant in Korea
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S. Korea's exports set to maintain growth in May: trade minister
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Aespa breaks silence on Hybe chairman’s remark to ‘crush’ them
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Special counsel bill on death of Marine fails to pass in Assembly revote
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Korea ushers in new space era with KASA launch
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South Korea flies fighters near border over North Korean spy satellite alarm
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S. Korean biz leaders meet with UAE president
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‘All Our Names’ tells tale of exile, loss
All Our NamesBy Dinaw Mengestu (Knopf)At first glance, “All Our Names” seems to be a straightforward immigrant story. A young man, carrying the name of Isaac on his passport, has come from Uganda to Laurel, a small Midwestern town, on a one-year student visa. His case is assigned to Helen, with Lutheran Relief Services. Chapters segue between those in Uganda narrated by Isaac, and those in America, narrated by Helen.The novel partially takes place in Uganda in the early 1970s, after it has won i
Aug. 21, 2014
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‘Remember Me Like This’ evokes powerful sense of place, family
Remember Me Like ThisBy Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House) A page-turner of a plot alone usually is not enough to keep me reading long into the night, abandoning my dreams for a writer’s creative imaginings. Bret Anthony Johnston delivers the special something that makes a book worth losing sleep over: a masterfully designed architecture of psychological truths and observations that build ironclad believability.Just a couple of chapters into “Remember Me Like This,” I cared enough about the fa
Aug. 21, 2014
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Amy Bloom’s ‘Lucky Us’ leaves little to care about
“There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar,” Amy Bloom wrote in her 1999 short story “The Story,” which remains my favorite of all her work. It’s a vivid bit of double vision, Bloom commenting on the process of storytelling even as she engages in it, and it suggests an edge, a brittle humor that I associate with her. In “The Story,” Bloom describes a widow, coming to terms with new neighbors she calls the Golddust Twins ― until, halfway through, she changes direction, bringing her n
Aug. 14, 2014
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Book artist probes act, art of reading
Peter Mendelsund’s “What We See When We Read” may be the liveliest, most entertaining and best illustrated work of phenomenology you’ll pick up this year.An acclaimed book-jacket designer and art director, Mendelsund investigates, through words and pictures, what we see when we read text and where those images come from.His breakdown of the reading and visualizing processes yields many insights.For example, readers of Tolstoy may feel intimately acquainted with Anna Karenina, but that doesn’t me
Aug. 14, 2014
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Ted Hope tells of indie filmmaking
Hope for Film: From the Frontlines of the Independent Cinema RevolutionsBy Ted Hope with Anthony Kaufman (Soft Skull)Ted Hope’s new book “Hope for Film” is part memoir, part manual, part manifesto as it traces his long career in independent filmmaking, mostly and most notably as a producer but more recently with a brief excursion into the nonprofit world and then onto the evolving interface of technology, creation and distribution.Eagle-eyed readers will spot the plurals in the subtitle, “From t
Aug. 14, 2014
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Murakami recounts pilgrim’s progress
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of PilgrimageBy Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf)When the bottom falls out of your life, you can’t always figure out what the hell happened. You just have to get through it.But getting through it and getting past it can be the difference between surviving and living.“Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” Haruki Murakami’s accessible and often moving new novel, underscores that difference, and the personal journey necessary to bridge that ga
Aug. 14, 2014
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Jo Jung-rae wins first Simhun Literary Award
Jo Jung-rae, the author of popular history saga “Taebaek Mountain Range,” has been chosen as the recipient of the first Simhun Literary Award, the organizers of the award said Tuesday. The 70-years-old writer edged out six final contenders, including four Koreans, a Japanese and a Vietnamese, to take the 20 million won ($19,500) in prize money. Korean novelist Jo Jung-rae. (Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald)The organizers, the Simhun Sangnok Cultural Festival Committee, praised Jo for his “continu
Aug. 12, 2014
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Startling novel urges Abe to apologize
With Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushing agendas of nationalism and historical revisionism, Japan and South Korea’s ties are at their lowest ebb in decades with no immediate signs of a thaw. Kim Jung-hyun, author of the 1996 bestseller “The Father” that sold over 2 million copies, wrote a new historical fantasy, “Ahn Jung-geun Shot Abe,” in hopes of getting a strong message across to Japan. “I did not write this novel to warn Abe, but to give him a chance to examine himself and feel some
Aug. 7, 2014
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‘Nixon Defense’ by John Dean takes a fresh look at Watergate
“My voice on the Nixon tapes is really very clear and very good,” says John Dean, adjusting the microphone recording him on a summer day. Aug. 9 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from office, and Dean is publishing a new book, “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” a day-by-day chronicle of the Watergate scandal.Although Watergate has been explored in books and film, some of the story has not yet been told, Dean says.“I knew enough to know tha
Aug. 7, 2014
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Brando biography goes below the surface
Susan L. Mizruchi was 12 and living in upstate New York when she turned on the TV one day and watched Marlon Brando playing Fletcher Christian in the 1962 version of the seafaring tale “Mutiny on the Bounty.”She was as she described it “struck by the Brando lightning.”Even to this day, his performance affects her. “It’s still very powerful,” said the Boston University English professor, who has written a new biography, “Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work” which was published by W.W. Nor
Aug. 7, 2014
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‘The Magician’s Land’ an enchanting end to fantasy series
The Magician’s LandBy Lev Grossman (Viking)All lovers of Lev Grossman’s first two books of The Magicians trilogy: This is the end, beautiful friend. So remember which pocket the magic button’s in, and make sure you have your passport, because we have a lot of ground to cover. Several lands, in fact. From Hackensack to uncharted territory.We last saw our glum hero, Quentin Coldwater, getting booted out of the magical land of Fillory, learning the very hard lesson that being the hero doesn’t mean
Aug. 7, 2014
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‘The String Diaries’ is a psychologically rich horror
The String DiariesBy Stephen Lloyd Jones (Mulholland Books)If there’s one thing I hate as a critic, it’s dancing around the possibility of giving too much away in a review. Spoilers are called that for a reason, and critics despise them every bit as much as readers do.Writers, though ― crafty little devils ― seem determined to concoct spoiler-bait books, titles that are just nigh on impossible to discuss. Which is precisely why this review is so short. Like recent favorites “Gone Girl” and “The
Aug. 7, 2014
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Children’s musical rethinks disabilities
Giraffes capture the imagination as majestic creatures towering over the African savannah with elongated necks suitable for reaching high branches. But what would life be like for a giraffe born with a short neck? Were such an anomaly to exist in nature, a rough guess based on the notion “the survival of the fittest” would be that it would face many kinds of adversity, all pointing to an early exit from nature’s stage. An inspiring story premised on the same thought experiment questions this gri
Aug. 3, 2014
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‘Excavation’ digs up memories of child-teacher affair
When she was just 13, Wendy Ortiz began to learn important lessons about love, honesty and human depravity. She was a precocious eighth-grader, and she was about to fall under the spell of her 28-year-old English teacher.“Jeff Ivers,” as the teacher is known in Ortiz’s new memoir (it’s not his real name), was at once charming and manipulative. Almost immediately, he seized on his student’s desire to be a writer ― she’d already produced a handwritten novel ― to get closer to her.“Mr. Ivers wants
July 31, 2014
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‘Land of Love, Drowning’ evokes Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Nowadays people think historians are stuffy types, but history is a kind of magic I doing here.”So says Anette, the most compelling of the characters populating “Land of Love and Drowning” by Virgin Islands native Tiphanie Yanique. A multigenerational novel set in Yanique’s native land, “Love and Drowning” opens just before the U.S. arrives, after purchasing several of the islands from Denmark in 1917. It concludes in the 1970s.The coming of the Americans ― and the ensuing arrival of the touris
July 31, 2014
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Single mom, tech millionaire in trouble hit the road in ‘One Plus One’
One Plus OneBy Jojo Moyes (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking)If you are the sort of reader who talks derisively of “chick lit” in that superior tone ― you know which one I mean ― then you may not be swayed by the charms of Jojo Moyes’ latest novel. But the delightful, comic “One Plus One” is as likable a book as you will come across this summer, light and funny, with surprisingly subtle commentary on how the income gap separates people emotionally as well as financially.Also the author of the novels “M
July 31, 2014
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‘Among Friends’ tells Cold War tale
A Spy Among FriendsBy Ben Macintyre(Crown)A lot of spy novels would have you believe that espionage involves elite globe-trotting adventures laced with good booze and cool toys, and certainly there are elements of all those things in Ben Macintyre’s vivid and fascinating new “A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.” But this nonfiction book’s most intense scene is prosaic ― two old friends, middle-aged English gentlemen who came up as spies through British intelligence, share a c
July 31, 2014
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‘The Novel: A Biography’ captures life, history, connections of literature
Michael Schmidt’s massive new book, “The Novel: A Biography,” covers nearly 700 years of prose and hundreds of writers. At 1,200 pages, it is much longer than “Moby-Dick” and nearly as long as “War and Peace.” Although it’s not necessarily the last word on any given novel, as a resource, reference and stimulator, it’s a bargain and a worthy addition to your home library.While Schmidt, born in Mexico, has long been a professor in the United Kingdom, his approach is not academic. He writes for com
July 24, 2014
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‘All I Love and Know’ tackles social issues
The considerable power of Judith Frank’s second novel, “All I Love and Know,” comes from two sources not always found in combination: first, the seriousness of the social issues it takes on, and second, its psychological, nearly Jamesian style, following its characters tick by tick through their emotions and thoughts. The merger is a success, providing a nuanced and profound approach to politically volatile subject matter, like an upmarket Jodi Picoult.“All I Love and Know” opens on a flight to
July 24, 2014
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‘World of Trouble’ shows planet before impending destruction
World of TroubleBen H. Winters (Quirk Books)How would you behave if it were the end of the world?In “World of Trouble,” Detective Hank Palace has only 14 days to live and a mystery to solve ― what happened to his younger sister, Nico?Palace is not the only one with 14 days remaining. Everyone on earth has just two weeks to live since an asteroid, 2011GV, or Maia, is going to strike the planet, causing mass devastation.“Because these auburn Midwestern trees are going to burst into flames in the f
July 24, 2014