Lovely Books and Things - 4.13.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

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HAPPY THINGS:

1. Catching up with a friend at tea time

2. Home made lunch (for workday) - that someone else prepared ;-)

3. Spotting a Louis Vuitton Wizard of Oz themed sweater on display

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Bought:

The Plotters
by Un-su Kim
-Thriller, Mystery, South Korea | Goodreads
CURRENTLY drawn to things Korean.


Author event:

Bookshop of West Portal hosted a jam-packed event with Lisa See and her new novel. Interesting to learn about the dangers of this diving profession.

The Island of Sea Women
by Lisa See
-Historical, South Korea | Goodreads
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

SF Public Library and Booksmith hosted an Author Talk with Nebula Award winners Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz. Fun readings from their latest which included some singing ;-)

The Future of Another Timeline
by Annalee Newitz
-SciFi | Goodreads
Release date: September 24, 2019
A mind-bending and thought-provoking speculative thriller about a group of time-traveling geologists who are trying to prevent a dark future from coming to pass.

The City in the Middle of the Night
by Charlie Jane Anders
-SciFi | Goodreads
"If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives."

Set on a planet that has fully definitive, never-changing zones of day and night, with ensuing extreme climates of endless, frigid darkness and blinding, relentless light, humankind has somehow continued apace -- though the perils outside the built cities are rife with danger as much as the streets below.

But in a world where time means only what the ruling government proclaims, and the levels of light available are artificially imposed to great consequence, lost souls and disappeared bodies are shadow-bound and savage, and as common as grains of sand. And one such pariah, sacrificed to the night, but borne up by time and a mysterious bond with an enigmatic beast, will rise to take on the entire planet--before it can crumble beneath the weight of human existence.


Freebies: Green Apple Books free bin

99 Nights in Logar
by Jamil Jan Kochai
-Magical Realism, Afghanistan | Goodreads
THE dog character got me curious.


AND watched: in theatre

An Elephant Sitting Still (2019)
Da xiang xi di er zuo (original title)
Director/Writer: Bo Hu
Stars: Yu Zhang, Yuchang Peng, Uvin Wang
-Drama, China | imdb | my rating: 5
Four people in a Chinese city live through a complicated day as their lives intersect.

WOW. This film felt an epic film that takes place in a span of a day. I thought I might leave this one with a heavy heart. But, not. Loved the filming style and how everything came together.


AND watched: in theatre - SFFilm Festival

Winter's Night (2018)
Gyeo-wul-ba-me (original title)
Director: Woo-jin Jang
Stars: Yang Heung-ju, Sang-hee Lee, Young-hwa Seo
-Drama, South Korea | imdb | my rating: 4
Winter's Night, the third film of Jang Woo-jin, is a tapestry containing of two stories: one is about a man and his wife wandering around Chuncheon and the other is about a soldier and a woman visiting him in the army.

STARTING the SFFILM festival with this one. This had a magical realism aura that blends the past and present in a beautiful way. It initially left me with a "huh?" which got me thinking.


AND watched: on DVD - nominated for the Oscar's 2019

Eternity's Gate (2018)
Director/Writer: Julian Schnabel
Writers: Jean-Claude Carrière, Louise Kugelberg
Stars: Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac
-Biography, Drama, France | imdb | my rating: 4
A look at the life of painter Vincent van Gogh during the time he lived in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

LOVED the cinematography with the colors and presentation. But found Van Gogh's story sad. Made me wonder, do all great artists have tortured souls?

~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

The White Book by Han Kang

The White Book
by Han Kang

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
BookExcerpt

Published: 2019
Publisher: Hogarth
Genre: Literary, Korea
Hardback: 160
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
In the spring, when I decided to write about white things, the first thing I did was make a list.

While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. THE WHITE BOOK becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white--breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin--and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes.

As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. THE WHITE BOOK--ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister--offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

My two-bits:

I felt enveloped in white when I read this. There are different iterations of snow in several forms as well as a theme of loss.

There There by Tommy Orange

There There
by Tommy Orange

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
BookExcerpt
Twitter

Published: 2018
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Literary, Native American
Hardback: 294
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out.

Zombie sighting:
"You must think I'm pretty despicable, what with me turning into a zombie out here on the couch, killing myself with the drink, is that what she told you?" Lucas said.
-chapter Dene Oxendene, page 36

Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking—Tommy Orange’s first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen, and it introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career.

There There is a relentlessly paced multigenerational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. It tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and unspeakable loss.

Here is a voice we have never heard—a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with stunning urgency and force. Tommy Orange writes of the urban Native American, the Native American in the city, in a stunning novel that grapples with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide. An unforgettable debut, destined to become required reading in schools and universities across the country.

My two-bits:

Whoa! Totally engrossing that packs a punch at the end.

This is a contemporary tale of the realities of Native Americans who do not live on a reservation.

~*~
* part of the Tournament of Books 2019 (here)

Lovely Books and Things - 4.6.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

~*~
HAPPY THINGS:

1. Finding clarity after being in a dream haze

2. Bringing out the spring clothes

3. Spotting something red and fuzzy at the bus stop

~*~
Author event:

Booksmith hosted an event featuring Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance with co-editor Edie Meidav and local contributors Carolyn Cooke, Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Melinda Misuraca.

Strange Attractors:
Lives Changed by Chance
edited by Edie Meidav and Emmalie Dropkin
-short stories | Goodreads
Has a stunning surprise or lucky encounter ever propelled you in an unanticipated direction? Are you doing what you always thought you would be doing with your life or has some unseen magnetism changed your course? And has that redirection come to seem inevitable? Edie Meidav and Emmalie Dropkin asked leading contemporary writers to consider these questions, which they characterize through the metaphor of "the strange attractor," a scientific theory describing an inevitable occurrence that arises out of chaos. Meidav's introduction and the thirty-five pieces collected here offer imaginative, arresting, and memorable replies to this query, including guidance from a yellow fish, a typewriter repairman, a cat, a moose, a bicycle, and a stranger on a train. Absorbing and provocative, this is nonfiction to be read in batches and bursts and returned to again and again.


Freebies: ARC and review copies from local book shop :-)

An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good
by Helene Tursten
translated by Marlaine Delargy
-Mystery, Short Stories, Sweden | Goodreads
COULD not resist a scandinavian mystery.

The Stationery Shop
by Marjan Kamali
-Literary, Iran | Goodreads
LOVE the setting - book and stationery shop.

The Need
by Helen Phillips
-Horror, Thriller | Goodreads
CURIOUS about this horror and motherhood theme.

The Lager Queen of Minnesota
by J. Ryan Stradal
-Contemporary Fiction, Food | Goodreads
FOODIE in me is drawn to this one.

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
by Juliet Grames
-Historical, Italy | Goodreads
THAT title.

Vox
by Christina Dalcher
-Dystopia, Feminism | Goodreads
PREMISE grabs in regards to women not allowed to speak.


AND watched: in theatre

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)
Director: Morgan Neville
Stars: Fred Rogers
-Documentary, Biography | imdb | my rating: 5
An exploration of the life, lessons, and legacy of iconic children's television host, Fred Rogers.

WHAT a kind, gentle and wonderful person who touched so many lives.

The Invisibles (2017)
Die Unsichtbaren (original title)
Director/Screenplay: Claus Räfle
Screenplay: Alejandra López
Stars: Max Mauff, Alice Dwyer, Ruby O. Fee, Aaron Altaras, Victoria Schulz
-Biography, Drama, History, Germany | imdb | my rating: 5
While Joseph Goebbels infamously declared Berlin "free of Jews" in 1943, 1,700 managed to survive in the Nazi capital through the end of WWII. The Invisibles traces the stories of four young people who learned to hide in plain sight.

WOW, interesting bit of history.


AND watched: on DVD

Meru (2015)
Directors: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Stars: Conrad Anker, Grace Chin, Jimmy Chin
-Documentary, Action, Adventure | imdb | my rating: 5
Three elite climbers struggle to find their way through obsession and loss as they attempt to climb Mount Meru, one of the most coveted prizes in the high stakes game of Himalayan big wall climbing.

WANTED to see this after watching Free Solo as I like the directors work. The film footage was just as breathtaking and nail biting ;-)


~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Washington Black
by Esi Edugyan

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
BookExcerpt

Published: 2018
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Genre: Historical, Barbados, Canada
Hardback: 339
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
Faith Plantation, Barbados, 1830
I might have been ten, eleven years old – I cannot say for certain – when my first master died.

Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born.

When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist.

He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him.

What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic, where Wash, left on his own, must invent another new life, one which will propel him further across the globe.

From the sultry cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, Washington Black tells a story of friendship and betrayal, love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again--and asks the question, what is true freedom?

My two-bits:

Loved this tale of a black experience set in the 1830's which included some steampunk, sea creatures and art.

~*~
* part of the Tournament of Books 2019 (here)