Most Popular
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Medical profs at top hospitals suspend surgeries, clinics
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Exports to US reach all-time high, widen gap with China
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Trump rekindles criticism: US forces defending 'wealthy' S. Korea 'free of charge'
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Samsung chip business back on track, logs W1.9tr operating profit in Q1
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Shinsegae faces showdown with investors over SSG.com's delayed IPO
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Hopes rise for possible Gaza truce deal
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Ex-pro baseball player who killed debtor appeals sentence
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S. Korea discussed possible participation in AUKUS Pillar 2 with Australia: defense minister
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[Music in drama] Rekindle a love that slipped through your fingers
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[New faces of Assembly] Architect behind ‘audacious initiative’ believes in denuclearized North Korea
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Designer with no boundaries
With the recent release of his book “Fashion is Passion,” veteran designer Lie Sang-bong can now add “author” to his long list of job titles ― which currently includes fashion designer, nude model and goodwill ambassador for several institutions that range from Goodwill Seoul Design Olympics, the Hangul Association, Korean Green Organization, Esmod and more. Commemorating 33 years as a fashion designer, Lie looked dapper at his press conference held at the Press Center in Seoul on Monday. Rockin
March 28, 2013
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Hemon’s short stories as remarkable as his literature
Aleksandar Hemon landed in the United States two decades ago, January 1992. He was 27, a young Bosnian journalist from Sarajevo arriving on a one-month visa, arranged through a cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department. Just after he arrived, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Hemon was stranded. In the years since, as he settled into this country and became an acclaimed writer ― one of Chicago’s finest contemporary writers and arguably its most important literary talent since Saul B
March 28, 2013
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Writer covers lots of territory
Middle CBy William H. Gass (Knopf)There’s an amusing and apt anecdote about William H. Gass, whose exhausting but also exhilarating new novel, “Middle C,” has just been published.During a 1978 debate, novelist John Gardner explained how he and Gass were different by stating that “my 707 will fly and his is too encrusted with gold to get off the ground.”Gass ― who loves metaphor and surely enjoyed this one ― was quick with his reply: “There is always that danger. But what I really want is to have
March 28, 2013
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Moral quandaries, lost love
The StorytellerBy Jodi Picoult (Atria/Emily Bestler Books)Jodi Picoult is a familiar name to those of us who race through the Hudson News stores at the airport just before we board a plane. We are smug in our certainty ― we know what we’re getting when we pluck one of her novels from the pile. Her prose goes down easy, and she fills her stories with characters confronted by moral quandaries and life-changing decisions.That’s certainly the case in “The Storyteller,” which opens with the narration
March 28, 2013
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Publisher speeds up e-book access for libraries
NEW YORK (AP) ― The publisher of Khaled Hosseini, Harlan Coben and other popular authors has decided that it’s comfortable with letting libraries offer e-book editions of brand new releases.Starting Tuesday, libraries can offer e-books from Penguin Group (USA) at the same time that the hardcover comes out, a switch from the previous policy of delaying downloads for six months, the publisher told the Associated Press. While vastly more e-books are available to libraries compared with a few years
March 28, 2013
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Kim Fowley talks trash in memoir
Kim Fowley came out of a Hollywood that doesn’t exist anymore, the Hollywood of Kenneth Anger and Ed Wood. Best known for cooking up the Runaways, he began working in the music business in the late 1950s and since then has turned up in more places than Woody Allen’s Zelig, producing for Gene Vincent, writing with Warren Zevon and introducing John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band when they played Toronto in 1969.Fowley is now 73 and reportedly has been fighting bladder cancer, so it’s no surprise
March 21, 2013
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The plane truth about ‘Unsolved Crime’
The Annals of Unsolved CrimeBy Edward Jay Epstein (Melville House)There’s a saying in newspaper publishing: If it bleeds, it leads. The only thing that captures the attention of the public better than a bloody crime scene is a bloody crime scene that raises more questions than it answers.In “The Annals of Unsolved Crime,” Edward Jay Epstein looks at 35 cases that were never satisfactorily resolved. He takes as his subjects not John or Jane Doe but rather some of the most famous people to ever di
March 21, 2013
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Return of an old-school Scots cop
Standing in Another Man’s GraveBy Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)Welcome back to the Lothian & Borders Police force, John Rebus.On second thought, hold on a moment. You’re actually not so welcome back after all, you crusty, IPA-quaffing, single malt-drinking, doggedly old-school investigative iconoclast. At least not to your Scottish colleagues in the Edinburgh cop shop, who don’t approve of your rule-breaking, not-familiar-with-the-Internet, consorting-with-known-criminals ways.Those bureaucratic ty
March 21, 2013
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Marisa Silver’s ‘Mary Coin’ imagines the life of a photographic icon
The starting point for Marisa Silver’s new novel, “Mary Coin,” was a moment of genius that unfolded on a California roadside more than 70 years ago.Just outside the coastal valley town of Nipomo in 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange spotted a migrant farmworker family sitting in a tent off U.S. Highway 101. After a few minutes of conversation, Lange snapped six shots of a mother and her children. The sixth became the defining American photograph of the Great Depression.Silver, a writer with a sha
March 21, 2013
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‘I hope to bring a smile to your face’
Author of famous novel “Please Look After Mom” Shin Kyung-sook said her new book “Moonlight Tales” came to her while on a break from writing long novels. “Walking around at night alone I looked up in the sky, and there it was, a beautiful round moon. The look of it left a strong impression, and this is how the book was created,” Shin said at a press conference at Caf Comma 2 Page on Thursday.In her new book the writer tried different approaches, moving away from long, often heavy stories she is
March 21, 2013
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Former coach turns advise guru
The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive ResultsmBy Bob Knight, with Bob Hammel (Amazon Publishing / New Harvest)Behind his choleric countenance, chair-hurling antics and disturbing incidents of laying hands on people in anger, Bob Knight clearly knows something about coaching college basketball. He won more than 900 games at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech, often defeating opponents with superior athletic talent.In “The Power of Negative Thinking,” Knight an
March 14, 2013
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Easy to relate to ‘Kind of Kin’
Kind of KinBy Rilla Askew (HarperCollins)I first encountered the absorbing, beautifully written work of Oklahoma native Rilla Askew in her 2007 novel, “Harpsong.” I’ve since read her three earlier books and have eagerly anticipated a new one. Whatever topic she tackles, I have faith that Askew will gently yet forcefully knead it into something unforgettable.“Kind of Kin” does not disappoint. In fact, it is so good, so cogent and poignant and dead-on perceptive, I would very much like to make it
March 14, 2013
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In ‘A Wild Surmise,’ L.A. is written about in poems
Just a few months ago, Eloise Klein Healy was chosen as L.A.’s first poet laureate. Now a new anthology of Healy’s work offers ample proof, if any were needed, what an inspired choice she was.“A Wild Surmise” is a vivid record of one woman’s artistic and emotional quest, a journey that unfolds, for the most part, in the streets, gardens and homes of Los Angeles. The City of Angels appears again and again in the work of Healy, a native of El Paso who grew up in Iowa but who has made Los Angeles h
March 14, 2013
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Community gathers at Last Bookstore
The staircase is narrow and creaky, with a bookshelf made from a 100-year-old harp case teetering on the precipice of collapse at the top of the landing. Overflowing with open books, pages wildly askew and dangling from uneven shelves, the bookcase looks as if it’s escaped from a vintage cartoon.Rolls of yellowed, turn-of-the-century sheet music waft through the air, unfurling from a manual typewriter suspended from the ceiling.A black-clad young woman, with a prominent pierced dimple and a phil
March 14, 2013
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New Folio Prize to reward English-language fiction
LONDON (AP) ― A new literary prize is hoping to beat the Booker to the title of Britain’s most prestigious fiction award ― in part by including Americans.Unlike the Booker Prize, which is open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers, organizers said Wednesday the new Folio Prize will be open to any English-language writer whose work has been published in Britain.The Folio Prize will hand out its inaugural 40,000 pound ($60,000) purse in March 2014.The award was set up by a group of writers, p
March 14, 2013
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Japan firm prints needle-eye sized book
A book with pages the size of the eye of a needle has been printed in Japan, the publishing company said Wednesday, with each tiny page showing a microscopic flower.The 22-page micro-book, entitled “Shiki no Kusabana” (flowers of seasons), contains names and monochrome illustrations of Japanese flowers such as the cherry and the plum, it said, adding the 0.75 millimeter (0.03 inch) pages were impossible to read with the naked eye.Toppan Printing said letters just 0.01 mm wide were created using
March 14, 2013
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Woongjin ThinkBig nominated for Bologna Prize
Local publishing company Woongjin ThinkBig has been nominated for a prestigious prize by the annual Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy. The company has been nominated for the BOP Bologna Prize for Best Children’s Publishers of the Year, according to the festival’s website. The prize has been newly launched for the upcoming edition as the event celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. A total of 29 publishers have been nominated for the prize in six continental categories: Asia, Africa, Euro
March 12, 2013
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CICI head writes on communication
From Interpretation to Communication: Dreaming of Becoming a Global LeaderBy Choi Jung-wha (HUEBOOKs)Choi Jung-wha, president of Corea Image Communication Institute, has written a new book “From Interpretation to Communication: Dreaming of Becoming a Global Leader.”The book presents life and career tips for aspiring interpreters and professionals. The professor-interpreter also teaches at the Korean-French department of the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University o
March 7, 2013
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Author takes on the Holocaust
The StorytellerBy Jodi Picoult (Emily Bestler Books/Atria)Sage Singer, the protagonist of Jodi Picoult’s ambitious 20th novel, “The Storyteller,” is a physically and emotionally scarred young woman working as a baker in a small New Hampshire town. She avoids human contact, interacting only with the wise former nun who owns the bakery and a married undertaker with whom she is having an affair.Her quiet existence is shaken, though, when she befriends Josef Weber, an elderly German who frequents th
March 7, 2013
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‘The Romanov Cross’ is a gripping read
“The Romanov Cross’’By Robert Masello (Bantam)Army epidemiologist Frank Slater does the right thing ― and is court-martialed for his actions ― in Robert Masello’s latest novel, “The Romanov Cross.’’ During sentencing, Slater is stripped of his military credentials and pay. Surprisingly, he’s given no jail time, but he soon learns why.His expertise is needed in Alaska, where a burial site containing victims of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic has begun to erode. The exposed bodies might contain the
March 7, 2013