Most Popular
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1 in 3 Koreans live alone, family types becoming diverse
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Korea, Japan finance chiefs vow to tame rampant FX market volatility
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US 'incredibly concerned' about suspected NK-Iran military ties
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K-pop group's manager dismissed for setting up spycam in theater dressing room
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K-pop singer lost consciousness after being hit by foul ball, cancels show
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Korean Muslim YouTuber's plan to build mosque in Incheon goes viral
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[Kim Seong-kon] Democracy and the future of South Korea
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Why is Apple Pay struggling to get purchase in Korea?
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Yoon's office denies considering liberal figures for key posts
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Seoul says Fu Bao loan 'not going to happen'
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An intricate novella of the mundane, the otherwordly
“Springtime: A Ghost Story” By Michelle de Kretser Catapult (85 pages, $11.95) Disturbing ripples run through this novella from an award-winning Sri Lankan author who grew up in Australia. We join the life of lead character Frances as she moves to modern-day Sydney to pursue her studies of elements of composition in 18th-century art. She’s a keen observer of details, researching the significance not only of what’s in a painting, but what’s not. Her story is both simple and intricate. Our first
April 20, 2016
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Understated novel observes family dynamics
“Miller’s Valley” By Anna Quindlen Random House (257 pages, $28) When society’s volume seems cranked to 11, there’s something to be said about a quiet book. Understated almost to a fault, Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel pulls together themes of rural life, Vietnam, mental illness, eminent domain, abortion and ambition in prose that never shouts, yet still explores a family’s depths. We meet Mimi Miller as a child growing up in Miller Valley, the family history flowing across the land as surely as
April 20, 2016
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Novelist Han Kang shortlisted for Man Booker Prize
Korean writer Han Kang has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian,” becoming the first Korean writer to be considered for the prestigious literary accolade. The award body announced the six final nominees for this year’s prize on its website on Thursday. The five other nominated works are “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; “A General Theory of Oblivion” by Angola’s Jose Eduardo Angualusa; “The Story of th
April 14, 2016
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New book offers comprehensive study of Dokdo sovereignty
The territorial dispute between Korea and Japan over Dokdo Islets in the East Sea, dates back to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, explains Park Hyun-jin in his new book, “A Study of Dokdo Sovereignty,” which is by Kyungin Publishing and cost 59,000 won. Although records show that Korea obtained the original right to the Dokdo Islets during the Silla Kingdom period (57 BC-935 AD), Japan has been attempting to claim sovereignty over the Dokdo Islets after using it as a naval base during the war aga
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Pervading sense of passivity dominates ‘The Hole’
“The Hole” By Pyun Hye-young Moonji Publishing (210 pages, 13,000 won, $11) After a devastating car accident, 40-something university professor Oh-gi wakes up to find his wife dead and his own body completely paralyzed in a hospital bed, capable of no other movement than blinking. His whole existence seems to have collapsed and disappeared into nothing, he says in a monologue. He is recognizable to himself only through a nametag that a nurse placed at the foot of his bed. “The Hole,” the f
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Veteran TV reporter releases coverage of his own life
“And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East” By Richard Engel Simon & Schuster (241 pages, $27) In his 20 years of reporting from some of the most volatile hot spots in the Middle East, Richard Engel has survived bombings and uprisings, been kidnapped and spent many nights sleeping on the floor, a mattress shoved against the window in case of an explosion. Engel’s accounting of his two-decade rise from young freelancer to NBC’s chief foreign correspondent is often as exhausti
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Essays on the endings of well-known writers
“Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died” By Jim Bernhard Skyhorse Publishing (296 pages, $14.99 paperback) A person’s life is always more important than his or her death -- but no one reads an obituary or biography without wanting to know how the subject died. British-educated Texas writer Jim Bernhard gives a respectful nod to the understandable fascination most of us have with death in this collection of essays about the ends authors have come to. To his credit, he includes in each essay some
April 13, 2016
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Michael Mann inks three-book deal with William Morrow
NEW YORK (AP) -- A book project founded by director-writer Michael Mann has found a home with HarperCollins Publishers. The Harper imprint William Morrow told the Associated Press on Tuesday that it had acquired three novels to be released through Michael Mann books. The novels, all coauthored by Mann and currently untitled, will include a collaboration with “The Cartel” author Don Winslow on a story based on the lives of crime bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana and a prequel to Mann’s origina
April 13, 2016
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Padma Lakshmi reveals much more than ‘Top Chef’ in new memoir
If you ever happen to interview Padma Lakshmi, do yourself a favor and let her pick the location. That way, you might just find yourself enjoying a piping hot plate of spicy orecchiette at an unassuming East Village trattoria while the former model converses in fluent Italian with the restaurant’s owner. To anyone who’s watched “Top Chef,” the popular Bravo competition series that has introduced a generation of American TV viewers to phrases like sous-vide and mise en place, it should come as no
April 13, 2016
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France bewitched by ‘Bojangles,’ a book full of joy and tears
PARIS (AFP) -- It is the literary sensation of the year in France. A first novel by a dyslexic author that has had readers crying -- and laughing out loud -- on the Paris metro. Before he wrote “Waiting for Bojangles” in seven weeks at his parents' home, 35-year-old Olivier Bourdeaut had “failed at just about everything else in my life,” he told AFP. “I wish I was joking,” said the failed estate agent whose last job was a switchboard operator for an educational publishing company, “surrounded by
April 12, 2016
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Ta-Nehisi Coates wins PEN award
NEW YORK (AP) -- National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates has received another honor, an essay award from PEN. Coates' “Between the World and Me” is an open letter to his son about race and police violence. It’s the winner of the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. It won the National Book Award last fall. Mia Alvar has won a PEN prize for best debut fiction. Alvar received the $20,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for “In the Country,” a story collection about F
April 12, 2016
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Holy Bible on list of 'challenged' books at libraries
NEW YORK (AP) -- On the latest list of books most objected to at public schools and libraries, one title has been targeted nationwide, at times for the sex and violence it contains, but mostly for the legal issues it raises. The Bible "You have people who feel that if a school library buys a copy of the Bible, it's a violation of church and state," says James LaRue, who directs the Office for Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, which released its annual 10 top snapshot of
April 12, 2016
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Spain in Our Hearts’ tells the American story of the Spanish civil war
“Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939” By Adam Hochschild Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (464 pages, $30) The Spanish civil war, which ran from 1936 to 1939, is most notable to historians for how it foreshadowed the horrors of World War II. Yet few distant conflicts are so burned into our culture and consciousness. Ernest Hemingway, who covered the war, made it the setting of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “the best goddamn book” he ever wrote. George Orwell, who fought in i
April 6, 2016
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What’s on the ‘manuscript wishlist’ of literary agents?
The other day, a friend sent me a link to something called “manuscript wishlist” -- a Twitter thread (#MSWL) from literary agents who are looking for that next best-selling blockbuster manuscript by an unknown writer. (Also online at mswishlist.com) It’s fascinating to troll the posts and see what they’re hoping to find. (And poets, I’m sorry, but you can all stop reading right now. They’re not looking for poetry.) One agent wrote: “I’d really love a hot contemporary romance about women (and men
April 6, 2016
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American children’s author wins Astrid Lindgren prize
STOCKHOLM (AFP) -- American children’s author Meg Rosoff on Tuesday won the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for young people’s literature, the organization announced. “Meg Rosoff’s young adult novels speak to the emotions as well as the intellect. In sparkling prose, she writes about the search for meaning and identity in a peculiar and bizarre world,” the jury said in its statement. Rosoff was born in Boston in 1956, attended Harvard University and later published her first book “How I Liv
April 6, 2016
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Tina Fey talks ‘Bossypants’ and other books, zings Talese
NEW YORK (AP) -- Even for someone as loved as Tina Fey, a reported $6 million advance seemed like a lot of money for a book of essays. But five years after its publication, “Bossypants” has sold 3.75 million copies, according to Little, Brown and Co. And it confirmed a market for smart, funny nonfiction such as Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please” and Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” In an email interview Tuesday with the Associated Press, Fey discussed “Bossypants” and some books she
April 6, 2016
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Intimate memoir of life in a southern coal town
“Dimestore: A Writer’s Life” By Lee Smith Algonquin Books (202 pages, $24.95) Lee Smith’s parents raised her to leave the Appalachian town of Grundy, Virginia, where they “were closed in entirely, cut off from the outside world by our ring of mountains.” They taught her proper grammar, sent her to school with delicate lunches instead of the cornbread and buttermilk she wanted, packed her off every summer to Birmingham, Alabama, for “lady lessons.” None of this really worked. Smith adored her ho
April 6, 2016
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Dive into ordinary but well-crafted lives in ‘High Dive’
“High Dive” By Jonathan Lee Knopf (336 pages, $25.95) Jonathan Lee’s new novel “High Dive” reimagines the weeks leading up to the Grand Hotel bombing on Oct. 12, 1984. Splitting time between Brighton, England, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, Lee focuses the attention not on Margaret Thatcher, the intended target of the attack, nor other political figures at the Conservative Party Conference, but on the lives of three individuals. The narrative opens with Dan’s initiation into the Irish Republi
April 6, 2016
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‘The Caped Crusade’ details the cultural history of Batman
“The Caped Crusade” by Glen Weldon Simon & Schuster (325 pages, $26) Batman has been a lot of things during the past 77 years: a gun-toting vigilante, an object of panic at the height of American homophobia, a campy ’60s television icon, a grumbly middle-aged antihero and a mass media star. But through all of these iterations, what has given Batman his longevity? The answer lies in the pages of “The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture” by Glen Weldon, a sharp, deeply knowledgeable
April 6, 2016
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Western tale by a teenage Thurber published
NEW YORK (AP) -- Before becoming one of the great wits of the 20th century, James Thurber was a teenager hooked on Westerns. The Columbus, Ohio, native would remember fondly such “nickel novels” as “Jed, the Trapper” and “The Liberty Boys of '76,” and was so caught up in the gun duel of Owen Wister’s “The Virginian,” he became physically ill. Inevitably, Thurber sketched out a couple of tales himself, including “How Law and Order Came to Aramie,” completed when he was around 18 and unpublished f
April 4, 2016