I really enjoyed this book! The original is in Korean, but the version I read was impeccably translated by someone with a masterful command of idiomatic English.
The book charts the life of a burnt-out Korean worker, Yeongju, as she embarks on a new venture by opening a bookshop. Seeing the stereotypes of Korean working culture explored through the interactions of Yeongju with her customers was both concerning and illuminating.
I came across a short alliterative poem about Rorschach I wrote a good while back after reading The Watchmen:
Manic milieu meets maimed mien,
moralising meandering misanthropic menace,
metes most morbid measures masked,
macabre murmurs marry much moribund musings,
massacring measly men mirthlessly
I don’t know why I decided to pick ’m’ here for the alliteration, but I often enjoy writing such whimsical snippets. I’m not sure what you’d call this, but I suppose ’extreme alliteration’ or reverse lipogram would suffice. I quite like the whole field of constrained writing, it’s quite fun thinking about how to slot words into constraints just-so. Apparently there was (is?) a group of French mathematicians and writers who similarly delighted in such pursuits… the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle).
I picked up a beautiful copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in a cute bookstore in Korea (Chiltern Publishing, translated by A.S.L Farquharson).
I purchased it mostly on a whim - it’d been a while since I’d read any true classics, and the bind was truly delightful (it’s this beautifully embossed, textured cover with a gilt silver coating across the paper edges).
The book overall? It’s filled with Stoic aphorisms and pithy existential ruminations. How ‘meditative’ that is to modern sensibilities is up to the individual. Though you do get the occasional good nugget of advice like:
Just finished The Outsider by Albert Camus (also known as The Stranger). Reading it felt like walking through an impressionist painting. Finishing it, one is left with a slightly blurred picture of a life — bleak yet nostalgic, emotionally distant yet resoundingly poignant.
One feels as much an Outsider to the book as the protagonist himself.
Some highlights:
Despite the surrealism, everything feels strangely real - detached, yet vivid. The first-person voice and inner monologue makes everything feel in equal parts clear and blurry. I don’t know how much the various English translations differ, but this edition felt super crisp and readable. I was expecting it to be a more ponderous read, but the langauge was fresh and crisp.