Korean fiction is only just now coming into vogue, with Kyung-Sook Shin and Han Kang making waves in lit circles and bestseller lists. Here are some Korean novels to get you started. 1. Your Republic Is Calling You (Young-Ha Kim) – Though I prefer his earlier novel, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, this …
If you’ve read the first two books in this series, you already know that there’s no way you can’t read the third. It’s impossible to resist these books, and impossible not to devour them once you have them. I’m pleased to report that book three is no different. It’s also no different in its take …
Book geeks and Geeklies who love books often want to branch out, so I’ll be doing a few lists of works in translation, starting with Japanese novels. Japanese fiction is fairly well established in English translation, so I’m going to avoid such obvious talents as the Murakamis—Haruki and Ryu—who have achieved international fame, or Kawabata …
All right, Sailor Moon Crystal, here we go again. Time for the Infinity Arc, the third season that will introduce the Outer Senshi and bring us the Witches 5. But first…the opening credits! You know, I like this song. Do I think it fits with the season? No. The music box tinkling intro, the gentleness—it …
Sometimes children go to fairyland. Sometimes they fight monsters, and save kingdoms, and do a bit of growing on the way. And then sometimes, they come back. Eleanor West’s “school” is a place where they can go when their families think them deranged or badly in denial. It’s run by a reject of fairyland, and …
Hope’s brother is a meth addict. He once had a promising future as a hockey player, but now he’s a meth addict, and she’s leaving for boarding school to get away from him, even though all she really wants is to help him. All Eric, her brother, really wants is to stay high. That’s the …
Having survived his ordeals, Nathan is now trying to survive his own success: he found his father and received his Three Gifts, and found his special talent as a witch, but that power is not so easily controlled. Nathan is a shapeshifter, but he can barely control the creature within him, let alone what’s going …
Confession time: I resisted and disdained this book at first because the first chapter and a smattering of other sections are in the second person. And I hate that. There’s nothing more irritating than wanting a narrative and getting an experiment–it’s as if the author is dangling a story just out of reach and is instead …
At this point, everyone is probably sick of “Let It Go,” resultant jokes about letting “let it go” go, and anything to do with animated Norse princesses or their sentient snow sidekicks. Which is fine, because even though this is based on the same myth, “The Snow Queen,” it’s nothing like Frozen. Well, aside from …
Untwine is the kind of book that must be read in installments. Not because it has Dickensian chapters; it actually flows so naturally from page to page, story to story, that it really should be read in one long afternoon. But at least for me, that was impossible. It was too heartbreaking. Giselle and Isabelle are …