If you came here from the mothership and you read it regularly, you know that Korean film can be … interesting. The Vegetarian is like that but a book and I wanted so hard to NOPE right out of there but it was short and I was as intrigued as I was horrified which is I guess another way to describe Korean film. I don’t really recommend this book unless you enjoy staring wide-eyed at the world and saying on repeat, “What the FUCK did I […]
Episode 1-21: Wither, Blister, Burn, and Peel
https://killingmykindle.com/2018/06/04/episode-1-21-wither-blister-burn-and-peel/ Wherein I review: 77. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 78. Think of a Number (Dave Gurney #1) by John Verdon 79. Weaveworld by Clive Barker 80. Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney #2) by John Verdon 81. In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware 82. Mean Business on North Ganson Street by S. Craig Zahler 83. Human Acts by Han Kang 84. Let The Devil Sleep (Dave Gurney #3) by John Verdon That’ll teach me to take a week off. […]
After you died I could not hold a funeral, And so my life became a funeral.
This one won’t cheer you up. I learned about a kind of hidden history I had no idea about from this book. For one, this book does give voice to a set of experiences that are by their very nature voiceless. But two, this story involves a set of events that do not get discussed pretty much ever in the West and especially not right now during the winter Olympics. I found out that South Korea experienced a series of coups in the 60s and […]
Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance
In spite of this having been on a number of “best of 2016” lists, I walked into this book completely blind, and was fully shocked, disturbed, and yet driven by it. It’s a really tough read, not just psychologically, but because it’s brutally graphic in a way that doesn’t exactly require a warning, but is unusual for a Western reader used to a vaseline’d lens covering sex and violence. I really loved this, and it continues to haunt me a little bit. I can’t imagine […]
Bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “veg out.”
This is a sticky book. It’s kind of stuck in my imagination. I keep turning it over in my head, feeling a little closer to picking up what Kang was putting down. It’s clever but unassuming, sharp, subtle, violent and serene. I don’t really know what to do with it, and that makes me like it more. (I’ll include a few tiny spoilers in this review, but it might be best to go in cold.) Set in South Korea (this is a translation of what was […]