This weekend I took a trip up to Seoul to visit Josh. No more buses for me though: I rode in style aboard the KTX. At 300 km/h, it took only an hour to get into Seoul. At that point, I took the Metro to Itaewon, where most of Seoul's foreigners congregate. It was very strange seeing so many white faces; in fact Seoul in general has a much higher population of foreigners than Daejeon.
After stopping into a foreign food market to hunt for Tabasco (no luck), I dropped by a little bookstore called "What the Book?" I'm sure this name was very funny to whoever came up with it, but it is a rather unfortunate example of Konglish. Inside however, I was blown away by the selection of new and used books. Well, I should say I was blown away by the selection of new books. I would have thought that the people who move to Korea to teach English would be an extremely literate bunch, but the used book section was loaded with the usual crap you would see at an airport bookstore. No Thomas Pynchon, but plenty of James Patterson.
Thus, I stuck to the new books section. I grabbed copies of Gravity's Rainbow (as it may last me the rest of the trip), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (as I believe Brenda thinks less of me for not having read it), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (on the recommendation of Maureen, although Brenda assures me I will hate it), Angela's Ashes (on the recommendation of Max), and About a Boy (because I like Nick Hornby, and I figured it would be good to get a book I might actually understand). I also picked up Slaughterhouse Five, my second-favorite book, for Josh and his wife. I would have gotten him my favorite book, but Catch-22 is 450 pages long. So it goes.
All in all, I dropped around 100,000 won ($100) at What the Book?, but given the paucity of the English book selection in Daejeon, it was worth the money.
More to come on the rest of my trip.
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3 comments:
A heavyweight assortment! I remember reading Pynchon's V. while at Gonzaga and thinking 1. This is some brilliant writer and 2. Do you pronounce it Vee or Five?
I'm afraid my view of British desserts has been irrevocably tainted by G's R and the Disgusting English Candy Drill, but it's one of my favorite passages:
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrup's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned . . ." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone," advises Mrs. Quoad.
I haven't read several of your other choices--looking forward to your recommendations.
But DO tell me you read Hornby's Fever Pitch.
In fact, I was just reading it again a few days ago, and was struck (I can't think why) by this particular passage:
. . . I would like to be one of those people who treat their local team like their local restaurant, and thus withdraw their patronage if they are being served up noxious rubbish.
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