I’ve spent a lot of time in Daegu prior to this trip, so I don’t feel that pressing need to go out and explore that I have whenever I’m somewhere new for the first time. Plus it’s so unbearably hot out, and as I don’t have a car, going places means going by foot. As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently (reading being something which can be done in my air-conditioned living room and all). This may change soon: check out what wonderful news I received on Google Weather this morning:
I hope it's accurate!
But until that happens, I’m going to be enjoying quality time indoors. Today (Wednesday) is my last day off - I go back to work tomorrow. (Although only for two days, and then it’s the weekend!) I feel a little guilty about wasting my vacation time lounging around my apartment like a bum, but I’m enjoying myself, so it shouldn’t matter. Anyway, I’ve done a lot of reading in the week and a half I’ve been here.
The most recent book I’ve read is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This book was recommended to me by my conversation class at the American Home. Nearly all of my students (all adults) had read it, and they all said it was wonderful. I checked out the plot - the quest of a Spanish shepherd to discover a treasure located near the Egyptian Pyramids - and it definitely seemed like something I might be interested in. I looked at the various reviews on Amazon, and they were overwhelmingly positive. Sadly, I have to admit that I feel like I wasted my money on this book. The plot is fine, although it seems more like a plot outline than an actual story. If the plot and the characters had actually been developed, it could have made an amazing novel. As it was, the book was less of a novel and more of a pseudo-religious parable. The message of the parable, follow your dreams, is a great message, but I felt as though I were being preached to for 167 pages. I simply cannot recommend this book.
On a more positive note, four of the books which accompanied me on this journey to Korea have turned out to be excellent. All four books are mysteries, from two different series. The first two, The Moor and A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie King are part of an excellent series starring Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes. Okay, so Doyle’s Holmes was certainly not married to a woman more than half his age, but if he had been, he would have most certainly been wed to King’s Mary Russell. They make an excellent partnership, and the mysteries are fantastic reads. These aren’t the first books of this series that I’ve read; in fact, as of I only have two more books to go in the series! (The first book in the series is The Beekeeper's Apprentice, if you're interested.) The other two books, Fire and Fog and The Bohemian Murders were written by Dianne Day. They star a young woman named Fremont Jones who lives in California in the early 1900s. She’s a spunky, independent nonconformist, who inevitably embroils herself in fascinating mysteries. I found the first book of this series, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, when I was home last Christmas, and fell in love with the characters. I simply couldn’t wait to read more! Now I have to get my hands on the next book in the series...
I plan to spend today reading The Foreign Student by Susan Choi. Gwen lent me this book, and I was quite surprised that I hadn’t heard of it before. Read this review excerpt:
The year is 1955 and a young Korean man has just arrived at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Chang Ahn has been dropped off at night in the middle of nowhere and left to make his way to the campus on his own: "This was the petrified figure that Mrs. Reston, the vice vice chancellor's housekeeper, found at the door to the vice vice chancellor's house.... You would not have known that the motionless person had just walked two miles straight uphill with a steady and terrified step." It soon becomes apparent that Chang, called Chuck, suffers from more than just fear of the dark. During the Korean War, he was first a translator for the United States and later a prisoner in a Communist internment camp. Even in the U.S. "he could not accept the lack of precaution as a sign that he was safe." On his first day in Sewanee, Chuck meets Katherine, a young woman who lives in town and is the secret lover of a professor who was once a classmate of her father's--and the man who first seduced her when she was 14.
Who knew there was a novel set in Sewanee? You'd think every former Sewanee student would be aware of such a thing. I’ll let you know what I think of it!
2 comments:
Hi Jane. I'm from Chattanooga and I think there's another book set partly in Sewanee and partly in Tuscany- It's called "Hill Towns" by Anne Rivers Siddons.
I've read it and figured that was Sewanee.
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