I did this viral exercise from Facebook:
Name 15 books that have made a strong impression on you. List them in 15 minutes. It doesn’t have to be books you love, just ones that you can’t shake.
I enjoyed doing this but as usual I couldn’t follow the instructions and instead listed 16. 15 [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘books’
June 22, 2009
15 (+1) Great Books
June 14, 2009
The Aquariums of Pyongyang
The Aquariums of Pyongyang (2001) is an autobiographical account of a boy who spent 10 years in a North Korean labor prison camp, his subsequent release, and how he defected to South Korea.
The book is especially timely since two American journalists were sentenced to a similar fate this past week. The survival rate at [...]
June 7, 2009
Angels and Demons: Decrypting Dan Brown’s Formula
Underwhelming But Entertaining
I recently watched Angels and Demons, the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel. Like The Da Vinci Code, I was a bit underwhelmed, but only because I had thoroughly enjoyed the novels. And invariably, what your imagination invokes from words is a much more personally compelling endeavor than what someone else [...]
October 21, 2008
The Penelopiad
I wrote a series about my US trip with many references to Homer’s Odyssey, called the Windiad. The story of Odysseus is from the perspective of Odysseus. Penelope, his wife, is largely presented as a symbolic figure of a long-suffering and faithful wife.
The Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, wrote a sardonic novel from Penelope’s [...]
September 25, 2008
Zits, the Time Traveler (and Powell’s)
The Longest Preface Ever to a Book Review
When we went through Portland, we spent some time at the biggest new and used bookstore in the world. I’m not even sure if that’s a true statement, but when you wander around Powell’s City of Books, it sure feels like it’s the biggest.
Whenever I visit, I’m [...]
