38 in 2015!

i went to 38 book events this year and did a lot of hearing authors twice.  i heard kazuo ishiguro twice, jenny zhang twice, jonathan galassi twice, patricia park twice, marie mutsuki mockett twice, meghan daum twice, jonathan franzen twice (and i’m still kind of kicking myself about that because i should’ve just gone to the b&n event, too), and the anomaly to that is that i heard lauren groff three times because she was on two of the panels i attended at the brooklyn book festival* before i went to hear her at bookcourt.

(* i counted the brooklyn book festival as one event for my tally of events attended.  i did count the two talks [toni morrison and patti smith] i attended at the new yorker festival as two events, though.)

mcnally jackson and bookcourt are tied with 7 events attended at each, followed by greenlight and housing works with 4, then the 92Y with 3 and AAWW with 2.  11 events were attended at other locations.

not too shabby, i say.  in 2016, i shall endeavor to attend more!  :3

about korean literature

i am pretty indiscriminately buying korean literature these days.  mcnally jackson does a lovely job of stocking titles from the library of korean literature (published by dalkey archive press with LIT korea), and i dare say i'm doing a lovely job of buying them, not even bothering to talk myself out of another purchase of another book because i'm starving for korean literature, as much of it as i can get my hands on, even if i'm accumulating books faster than i'm reading them.

the way i see it, there should always be more within reach to read; that's how reading works.

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one of the things i've learned about myself since i moved to new york city three-and-a-half years ago is that i'm fiendishly proud of being korean.  i was born in queens and raised outside los angeles; i've never lived in korea; and the longest period of time i've ever been in korea has been two weeks.  i've never been outside of seoul (except to visit the DMZ once, but does that even count?  i doubt it), and i don't call it the motherland or would never consider moving there, and yet --?  i speak, read, and write korean; i'm more attuned to the goings-on of chungmuro and the korean music industry; and i crave korean food, cook korean food, try to feed all my friends korean food.

literature is the one area where i "fell behind."  for so long, it's been (or it's felt) so hard to find korean literature-in-translation stateside, and, for a while, there were only a tiny handful of authors to be readily found, like kim young-ha or shin kyung-sook, maybe even hwang sok-young.  recently, though, it's gotten easier; dalkey archive press has done a brilliant job with its library of korean literature (published with LTI korea) in introducing more unknown korean authors to the english-speaking world; and i love that i can sit at a book reading and hear buzz about han kang's the vegetarian.

i want more, though -- a lot more.  i want there to be a section for korea in bookstores, not just japan or china, and i want there to be a wider range of authors represented, a wider range of stories told, more more more, a lot more.  that makes me wonder what i can do to help this along, if there's anything i can do because i feel like a small insignificant human in a sea of people, but i'm a reader, and i don't know -- if i'm out there wanting this, there must be someone else out there wanting it, too, because i'm not that unique or special a person, and maybe there's another and another, and we can all make this happen.

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i read a headline somewhere recently that the major publishing houses stateside have published significantly less in translation this year, and that makes me sad.  i'm guilty of having read the headline but not the article, but it makes me wonder if that's because americans are less likely to read books-in-translation or because editors simply aren't interested in books-in-translation or --?  either way, whatever the reason, what a tremendous loss that is for readers.

october reads!

it was a pretty great month for almost everything else, though, particularly in the soup-making department.  this month, i made a korean seaweed soup, a baked potato soup, and a cream of tomato with chicken and radiatori.  i also made a double-crusted chicken pot pie and matcha madeleines.  in november, i'm tackling more ambitious projects because my big purchase of october was a dutch oven (finally) -- next week, i plan on making kalbi-jjim (braised short ribs, i think is what they're called in english), and, at some point, i'm going to develop a starter to bake bread.  food is as much a love of my life as literature is.

returning to book talk, though:  i didn't finish a single book in october.  i started many brilliant books, though, but couldn't commit to any, and the truth is that, as with most other things in my life, i go through lulls in my reading.  i've found that i tend to read most voraciously in the beginning of the year, the end of summer/early autumn, and the end of the year -- i don't necessarily know why that's the case, but it's the general trend i've noticed in the last few years, when i actually started to document my reading.

that said, i haven't gone a whole month without completing a single book in a while.  it's not that i haven't been reading; i simply haven't had the mental capacity to focus and sit down with a book and complete it.  it happens.  it means november is going to be an excellent reading month. (:

*thérèse raquin and mrs. dalloway pictured above because i dropped both books.  there will be a year-end post about the books i actively dropped this year.

philip johnson's glass house

this isn't book related, but what's a blog for, if not to share things you want?

i took the afternoon off (not really; i did work on the train) to take the metro north up to new canaan, connecticut, and visit philip johnson's glass house.  it was the perfect autumn day with vibrant colors, clear skies, and just enough chill, and i went a little photograph-happy, but can you blame me?

on most days, they offer tours in small groups (maximum 13 people), and i opted for the most popular:  the two-hour tour of the glass house and galleries.  johnson was quite an art enthusiast, it turns out (i went into this tour knowing nothing about him), and he actually had his roots as a classicist, not as an architect.  he approached his acres in connecticut as a diary of sorts, and you could see how his sensibilities changed over the years -- the tour started with the oldest building (the glass house) and ended with the newest (da monsta).  (it's a good tour; i recommend it.)

this is definitely a place i'd love to visit over the seasons.  i really wish they opened for tours during the winter; our guide told us that johnson would refer to the glass house (he actually lived in it for fifty years!  it was his weekend home, not his primary residence) as a "celestial elevator" because, if you sat inside and concentrated on the falling snow, it felt like you were ascending.  also, i imagine the silence of snow adds a very different aura to the place.

unfortunately, because of neighborhood restrictions, tours are only allowed from may to november, but the driver (you have to take a van from the visitor center to the property) was telling me after that, now that i've done the guided tour, i can come back on the self-guided tour dates and meander at will.  which i will probably do, especially because it's so easy to get to new canaan from nyc!

anyway, that's enough text!  on to the photos!  (reminder:  all photos are mine; please don't take or use without permission.)

thoughts.

01.  i think i will do a big post of all the books i've dropped this year because i've dropped quite a few books this year.  i'm wondering if i want to get going on that post now or if i ought to wait until the end of the year because it's only the beginning of october -- i still have three months to drop more books.

02.  over the weekend, i attended two events at the new yorker festival -- toni morrison with hilton als and patti smith with david remnick -- and i was planning on writing them up as usual, but i don't think i will because, one, there's no need and, two, i'm rethinking event write-ups in general and whether or not i will continue doing them at all.  (i probably will not.)  (not that i've been very good about doing them, anyway.  there are many more events i've attended that i haven't written up here, even though i have notes.)

the guardian did a write-up of morrison's talk -- you can find it here if you're interested.  lithub also transcribed the franzen event with wyatt mason from september 26 if you're interested in that, too.  the new yorker should be posting videos of its festival events soon, so you should be able to watch the patti smith talk -- and you most definitely should if you can.  she had a great conversation with david remnick, read from m train, and did a little surprise at the end.

03.  i'm going to see keira knightley in her broadway debut in the stage adaptation of thérèse raquin tomorrow and hearing margaret atwood on friday!  yey!