Most Popular
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Contentious grain bill put directly to plenary meeting for vote
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Yoon's approval rating plunges to all-time low
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Will tug-of-war between doctors, government end soon?
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Climate impacts set to cut 2050 global GDP by nearly a fifth
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Trilateral talks acknowledge ‘serious’ slumps of won, yen
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[Graphic News] More Koreans say they plan long-distance trips this year
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[KH Explains] Hyundai's full hybrid edge to pay off amid slow transition to pure EVs
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North Korea removes streetlights along cross-border roads with South
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Russia's denial of entry of S. Korean national unrelated to bilateral ties: Seoul official
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Farming households dip below 1m for first time in 2023
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Dickens Museum in London reopens after makeover
LONDON (AP) ― Charles Dickens’ London home has gone from “Bleak House’’ to “Great Expectations.’’For years, the four-story brick row house where the author lived with his young family was a dusty and slightly neglected museum, a mecca for Dickens scholars but overlooked by most visitors to London.Now, after a 3 million pound ($4.8 million) makeover, it has been restored to bring the writer’s world to life. The house reopens next week, and its director says it aims to look “as if Dickens had just
Dec. 6, 2012
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Britain celebrates 20 years of literary bad sex
LONDON (AFP) ― Canadian author Nancy Huston was on Tuesday awarded what has been dubbed Britain’s “most dreaded literary prize” for penning the most cringeworthy erotic description of 2012.After the so-called “mummy porn” phenomenon gripped the literary world ― with erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” topping international best seller lists ― eight writers were on the shortlist in the not-so-prestigious Bad Sex in Fiction Award’s 20th year.Paris-based Huston claimed the dubious honour with her b
Dec. 5, 2012
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JK Rowling’s novel for adults to be adapted for TV
LONDON (AFP) ― The first book for “grown-ups” by Harry Potter author JK Rowling is to be adapted into a television series, the BBC announced Monday.“The Casual Vacancy,” Rowling’s darkly comic novel set in a seemingly idyllic English village, was published in September and the TV version is set to air on the BBC’s flagship BBC One channel in 2014.The 47-year-old’s series about the young wizard was adapted into eight blockbuster movies, but Rowling insisted that television was the best medium for
Dec. 4, 2012
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JK Rowling's novel for adults to be adapted for TV
The first book for "grown-ups" by Harry Potter author JK Rowling is to be adapted into a television series, the BBC announced Monday."The Casual Vacancy", Rowling's darkly comic novel set in a seemingly idyllic English village, was published in September and the TV version is set to air on the BBC's flagship BBC One channel in 2014.The 47-year-old's series about the young wizard was adapted into eight blockbuster movies, but Rowling insisted that television was the best medium for an adaptation
Dec. 4, 2012
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Teen detective with Asperger’s, and heart
Colin FischerBy Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz(Razorbill)Every high school student could use a friend like Colin Fischer, the protagonist in a new teen mystery novel called, as it happens, “Colin Fischer.” Not that having Colin for a friend is easy. Quite the opposite.He has a quality unusual in a high school student: He’ll tell you the truth, even when that means telling the girl he’s sweet on not only that her “breasts got bigger” over the summer but that that “is a perfectly normal reac
Nov. 29, 2012
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Telling good generals from mediocre
The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to TodayBy Thomas E. Ricks(Penguin Press) Post-Vietnam U.S. military forces have acquired an unrivaled reputation for their ability to swiftly kick enemy butt. The shock and awe factor in the opening days of the past four major U.S. war deployments ― Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq ― sent an unmistakable message to would-be enemies around the world: Don’t mess with us.But a common thread runs through these deployments and their less-
Nov. 29, 2012
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‘Leonardo and The Last Supper,’ the times behind Da Vinci
Inventor, painter, designer ― Leonardo Da Vinci was a brilliant man. This undeniable fact is borne out by his drawings, his notebooks, his paintings, and one fresco in particular ― The Last Supper in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.But, according to Ross King, it wasn’t a job Da Vinci wanted.In “Leonardo and The Last Supper,” King gives you a portrait of the times behind Da Vinci, and the politics and decisions that went into the creation of the painting.Renais
Nov. 29, 2012
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Writer’s belief in promise of Kenya flows through memoir
“In the House of the Interpreter,” the new memoir by the celebrated African writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, takes us to the hopeful and turbulent world of 1950s Kenya. And it begins with a startling image.Ngugi is a teenager, returning home from his prestigious boarding school. He’s finished his first term at the top of his class and is still wearing his khaki school uniform and blue tie. Carrying his belongings in a wooden box, he reaches the ridge where his village should come into view. But it’s n
Nov. 29, 2012
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Fellow laureate excoriates Nobel literature winner
STOCKHOLM (AFP) ― A past winner of the Nobel Prize in literature has called this year’s choice for the award, China’s Mo Yan, a “catastrophe” and accused him of “celebrating censorship,” a Swedish newspaper said Saturday.Herta Mueller, who won the prize in 2009, told the daily Dagens Nyheter that she wanted to cry when she heard Mo Yan had been given the prestigious award.“The Chinese themselves say that Mo Yan is an official of the same rung as a (government) minister,” the Romanian-born writer
Nov. 25, 2012
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Lesson on how fashion affected history
Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and StyleConsultant Editor Susan Brown with the Smithsonian, Institution (DK Publishing, New York)It’s always fun to find a book that is one-stop holiday shopping for both newcomer and expert, especially when the book is full of history and photographs.Susan Brown, a consultant with the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, edited the coffee-table book “Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style.” For anyone with a casual intere
Nov. 22, 2012
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Alice Munro explores deep ground
Dear LifeBy Alice Munro (Knopf)She is regularly paired with Chekhov. In 2004, Jonathan Franzen suggested she might be “the best fiction writer now working in North America.” In his introduction to the 2012 edition of “The Best American Short Stories,” Tom Perrotta states that she “looms over this year’s collection” as the “master” who has “expanded our sense of what stories can do.”All true, and all reinforced by the just-published “Dear Life,” Alice Munro’s 13th collection of short stories.But
Nov. 22, 2012
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A revisionist history of Michael Jackson
In the exhaustive and at times exhausting new biography “Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson,” journalist Randall Sullivan presents a radical new theory concerning one of the most heavily scrutinized public figures of the last half a century. Namely, that the man revered worldwide as the “King of Pop” could not possibly have been a child molester. The book posits that Jackson resisted sex for all his days and died in 2009 a 50-year-old virgin.To support that tough-t
Nov. 22, 2012
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When a Seoulite becomes a tourist in own city
Seoul is developing into a charming destination for foreign visitors, from scenic Bukchon Hanok Village to vibrant Hongdae and Myeong-dong. For those who live in Seoul, however, spending time in the city can be a different experience. A lot of Seoul professionals spend nearly all of their time in offices and apartment complexes. Not many manage to take the time to visit Gyeongbok Palace or experience the joy of trying on hanbok in a hanok. It’s like how many New Yorkers never visit the Statue of
Nov. 22, 2012
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Publisher cracks whip over ‘Fifty Shades’ spin-offs
PARIS (AFP) ― Copy us at your own risk. That is the message sent by the French publisher of “Fifty Shades of Grey” which is cracking the whip at spin-offs of the erotic romance.Publisher Lattes has trademarked the title of the book, which has sold a quarter of a million copies in France since it hit shelves a month ago, and told AFP it has sent warning letters to two publishers it accuses of infringement.One of them, Les Editions First, has released “Decoding Fifty Shades of Grey” by Ana de Lis
Nov. 22, 2012
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‘Kurt Vonnegut: Letters’: Lit and laughs
Kurt Vonnegut: LettersEdited by Dan Wakefield (Delacorte Press)True story: I once made Kurt Vonnegut laugh by telling him a joke. It wasn’t an original or especially noteworthy joke. It was a riddle prompted by what, in 2001, was one of the New York Mets’ more-error-ridden-than-usual losing streaks.“What,” I asked him (and, to repeat, this was some time ago), “do Michael Jackson and this year’s Mets have in common?” Beat, beat, then the answer: “They all wear one glove for no explicable reason.”
Nov. 15, 2012
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Janzen writes about a new path to faith
Does this Church Make Me Look FatBy Rhoda Janzen (Grand Central)The transformation of Rhoda Janzen ― the Mennonite-turned-worldly-academic whose book about returning home made the bestseller list ― continues. Which is a delight for fans of her warm, wisecracking style.In “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress,” Janzen wrote of a series of devastating forces that sent her to heal in the peace-loving, hardworking community of her youth: complications from surgery, divorce due to husband meeting a man
Nov. 15, 2012
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Becoming Barbra Streisand
Among the more startling revelations in William J. Mann’s engrossing chronicle of Barbra Streisand’s ascent to superstardom emerges in one of the book’s photos. It’s a childhood picture showing Streisand, as its caption notes, “with friends outside their Brooklyn tenements.” It doesn’t say how old she is, but it doesn’t matter. She’s already carrying the face that millions would soon recognize as belonging to no one but her. And her expression, as she leans on a bicycle, is a mesmerizing blend o
Nov. 15, 2012
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Beautiful and horrifying: ‘The Yellow Birds’ takes the reader to an Iraqi battlefield
Pvt. John Bartle, the narrator of Kevin Powers’ sorrowful war novel “The Yellow Birds,” is a man of reason caught between the uncontrolled emotions of two men.The first is his sergeant, a severe gunslinger and molder of warriors named Sterling. Sgt. Sterling’s discipline and his rage against the enemy are keeping his squad of men alive as they patrol an eerie, death-filled Iraqi landscape. Pvt. Bartle loves and hates him for this.“I hated the way he excelled in death and brutality and domination
Nov. 15, 2012
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T.S. Eliot’s widow Valerie Eliot dies
LONDON (AP) ― Valerie Eliot, the widow of T.S. Eliot and zealous guardian of the poet’s literary legacy for almost half a century, has died. She was 86.In a statement Sunday, the Eliot estate said Valerie Eliot died two days before at her London home after a short illness.Born Valerie Fletcher in Leeds, northern England, on Aug. 17, 1926, Eliot was the second wife of the U.S.-born Nobel literature laureate. She met him at London publisher Faber & Faber, where he was a director and she a star-str
Nov. 12, 2012
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People go ‘Astray’ in historical fiction
AstrayBy Emma Donoghue(Little, Brown and Co)In her novel “Room,” Emma Donoghue let us see the world from the vantage point of a little boy in an 11-by-11-foot room. In the stories gathered in “Astray,” Donoghue busts loose, returning to her roots in historical fiction by going forth into the wider world.Donoghue’s fellow travelers are voyagers who, between 1639 and 1968, left the world they knew for undiscovered countries from which they never returned. Each of their stories is introduced by a d
Nov. 8, 2012