books

For me, one of the hardest things about being in Korea is all the excellent reading I feel I’m missing out on.  Back at Hibriten, we were so lucky to have access to a great school library (and great school librarians), so I had almost anything I wanted to read for free.  It was a luxury whose full value I did not realize until we moved here to Korea.

Obviously, two years’ worth of reading material is not one of those things you can justify packing in the two suitcases allotted for Trans-Pacific travel.  Ric and I did what most expats do and sprung for e-readers (we chose Kindles), hoping they would provide a smaller, lighter way to meet our literary needs.  

By Emma O’Flynn

Nestled in the narrow little streets just beyond Gukje Markets, is the cute and quaint, and adeptly named Book Street.  This place is all about the books.  Tiny little stores are stacked from floor to ceiling with books and magazines of every shape and size. Though the selection of English books available is pretty limited, it’s more about the ambience, then any serious book shopping!   The odd coffee shop and vintage store are also thrown in the mix.

People love creating metaphors about life, especially involving books. Those metaphors are really misleading.

I’ve been referring to my upcoming sojourn in Korea as “a new chapter” in my life. With that comes the expectation of a blank page, a clean slate.  A lot of expectation, actually. And I’ve fallen through this rabbithole before.

“Heem!” the nurse screamed, climbing back on top of my wife’s belly and pounding it for all she was worth. “Heem!” Like a punching bag. “Heem!” As though giving CPR. “Heem!”

Ian James never thought he would come to South Korea. Fleeing the economic collapse in the West, he arrived weeks after graduating from college and discovered a country of infinite strangeness, where strippers dance on the street in front of electronics’ stores and children shove their fingers inside the rectums of terrified English teachers. In the beginning he despised the place, but before the end of his first year he was not only in love with Korea, but crazy about a woman named Gold Silver Jade, the Calypso who tore him away from his native New England and planted him so firmly into the soil of his adopted homeland that he was both unable—and unwilling—to escape.

Buy this book on amazon.com here.