North Station: 4/5 Stars This is an interesting collection of longish short fiction by the Korean writer Bae Suah. It’s a recent translation (actually maybe brand new) from the University of Rochester imprint “Open Letter” and I received a subscription to their press as a gift from my old colleagues. This book presents a really interesting set of questions for me. I have read a few different books by Korean authors, but not many at all. In fact, I think it would be true that […]
Finally finished this damn series!
I started the first book in Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy – The Fall of Giants — in mid-October of last year. A combination of the books’ long lengths, the fact that I was listening to them on CDs borrowed from the library (which meant they took longer to get through, and I spent a good amount of time on a waiting list) all added up to my spending about six months with these characters, and their children, and their childrens’ children. And while I enjoyed […]
More Ken Follet, More WWII
Okay, yes, it’s another World War II book by Ken Follett. That makes my third this year? This one has much more in common with Jackdaws than Winter of the World: smaller cast of characters, tighter timeline, and I read the whole thing on a two hour plane ride (as opposed to Winter of the World, which took several weeks all told). Hornet Flight takes place in 1941, primarily in Denmark. A resistance movement there has been compromised, and their leader needs desperately to get information about the radar […]
Coincidences Abound!
“Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?” Winter of the World, the second of Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy, picks up just before the start of World War II. Our cast of characters consists mainly of the offspring of the first book’s characters: Carla and Erik von Ulrich, Woody and Chuck Dewar, Lloyd Williams (a personal favorite), Daisy Peshkov (give her a chance, she’ll grow on you), along with her illegitimate […]