hello! i've written a short little machete fic, and i wanted to share it with you as thanks for all the incredible art and generous question-answering you've been doing these last few months. i hope that if you give it a look, you enjoy it. <3 keep up all your amazing work! archiveofourown [.] org / works / 50945128

✦ A Voi ✦

Best books of 2023

The best books I read in 2023

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson (Tor Nightfire, 2023)

Imagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. The always-thrilling plot takes in a life-changing accident, a love affair, and a sinister TV series; the storylines overlap and entwine perfectly, and there’s a lot of beautifully crafted character work. It’s a dark and eerie book, but full of life and love, too.

Black Mountain by Simon Bestwick (Independent Legions, 2021)

A mixed-media horror novel disguised as non-fiction about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed/haunted mountain. Unputdownable and genuinely unnerving at points – I had the time of my life reading this. I’m amazed it isn’t better-known among horror fans!

The Last Language by Jennifer duBois (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

A riveting, disturbing book about a language therapist’s relationship with the autistic man she’s helping to ‘speak’ using the controversial method of facilitated communication. I read it in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze duBois creates.

Hydra by Adriane Howell (Transit Lounge, 2022)

Just when you think the ‘unhinged woman’ trend has had its day, this excellent Australian debut offers a fresh spin on the whole idea. Anja’s dry, idiosyncratic voice rings out from the page, and the plot is never far away from intimations of something dark and weird. Read if you love Ottessa Moshfegh and Tár.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle (2004, reissued by NYRB Classics 2023)

A perfect novella about a widowed writer who becomes obsessed with her latest project, a biography of a little-known artist’s muse. Astonishingly clever, convincing and absorbing, it’s a revelation and turned me into an instant fan of Tuttle’s writing.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (Penguin, 2000)

A beautiful and eloquent coming-of-age tale dressed up as a crime novel. The plot has so many different strands that it’s difficult to describe concisely, but this is essentially a character-focused story about identity, aspiration and love. The rare book that actually made me cry.

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims (Putnam, 2023; UK ebook out in January 2024)

Explores the tense relationship between two women with secrets (some more dangerous than others) who both work at a public library. A sharp, nuanced character study that is also utterly propulsive. If you loved Death of a Bookseller, this should be next on your wishlist.

Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, translated by Michael Henry Heim (Picador, 1985)

1930s cult classic about a dissolute Russian teenager, his friendships, affairs and drug addiction. Think No Longer Human, but (in my opinion) way better. It’s philosophical, funny and stuffed with remarkable descriptive writing.

Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes (Titan, January 2024)

Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation must return to the Arctic in search of his former lieutenant. Immersive and enthralling at every level, this is a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat – I’ve been describing it as The Terror meets Heart of Darkness.

The Devil’s Playground by Craig Russell (Doubleday, 2023)

An elaborately plotted historical mystery about a legendary silent horror movie. Come for the lost film and its ghosts; stay for the well-researched portrait of old Hollywood, the world-weary heroine, and the fascinating detective story.

We Were Never Friends by Margaret Bearman (Brio Books, 2020)

A woman looks back at a strange period of her youth when her family became entangled with Kyla, a hated classmate of hers. Dazzling at the sentence level – Bearman illuminates Lotti and Kyla’s world with startling colour, vividly portraying the emotional landscape of adolescence.

Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister (Bloomsbury, 1991)

Four elderly – yet naive – siblings live in self-imposed imprisonment amid the squalid remains of their family home. How did they end up like this? We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in a dark tale that perfectly balances tender nostalgia, black humour and sinister threat.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (Virago, 1957)

We meet Angel as an impetuous 15-year-old convinced she will become a great novelist, and follow throughout her life as she first fails upwards, then eventually loses everything. It’s a tragic story that centres on a pathetic character, yet Taylor writes with a compassion that makes it almost romantic.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (Penguin, 2017)

A labyrinthine series of stories within stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft – but you definitely don’t need to like (or have read) Lovecraft to enjoy it. Deceptively complex, it excavates the lives of its characters while maintaining a subtle sense that the whole narrative is haunted.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward (Viper, 2023)

My favourite of Ward’s books since her debut Rawblood, this is a story about murder that deals with the long shadow it casts. It’s also about writing and witchcraft, unrequited love, and the death of the author, and is unexpectedly heartbreaking.

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt (Cipher Press, 2023)

This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of fearless writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and what – if anything – it means to be virtuous. While often disgusting (be warned), I wanted to reread it straight away.

Where Furnaces Burn by Joel Lane (2012, reissued by Influx Press 2023)

A sprawling map of linked stories; layered, moody and strange. Not the easiest book to recommend – Lane, one of my favourite writers, invariably creates very bleak worlds – but an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

Notable reread: Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador, 2013)

A grieving, lonely young woman finds solace on an online debate forum and ends up immersed in someone else’s life. Just as fast-paced, gripping and brilliantly voice-driven as it was when I first read it a decade ago.

Honourable mentions

So many good books came out in 2023 that I have to mention a few more. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman was the funniest, sharpest, most quotable novel I read this year. I loved the intriguing layers of Ben Tufnell’s The North Shore and Viola Di Grado’s poignant Blue Hunger, translated by Jamie Richards. Verity M. Holloway’s romantic, atmospheric The Others of Edenwell deserved way more attention. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill more than The Haunting of Hill House.

For thought-provoking plots: Service by Sarah Gilmartin and Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan, translated by Alison Anderson. For pure thrills: Nicholas Binge’s mind-bending Ascension and Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling Flux. For both, and great suspense: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates.

And not forgetting the brilliant 2023 books I read as review copies last year: Nina Allan’s masterpiece Conquest, Alice Slater’s ultra-compelling Death of a Bookseller, and Maria Dong’s loveable Liar, Dreamer, Thief.

SAMMYYYYYY😭😭 YOU TALENTED AND ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL JELLYBEAN😭 i say this every time you update mid but truly, this is my favorite chapter😭 it was absolutely so perfect and it felt like a puzzle bc everything just fit together so nicely and so beautifully?? it’s currently 2 am and i refused to get any sleep until i finished this chapter and i’m absolutely bawling. what a beautiful way to end their story omg😭

i think one of my favorite parts in this chapter that i’m so glad that you covered is the need to be fully ready to be a parent. for me personally, i take this so seriously bc it shatters my heart when i read stories or cases of kids facing neglect in their homes, cases of child abuse, or even parents disowning their own children. i fully believe that you should only have children if you want them, can provide for them, and if you’re truly ready to have them. i’m so glad that you approached the topic of parenthood and children the way that you did for mid. the pregnancy scare was awful, but i’m glad that it helped them realize what they truly wanted and be able to do everything together as a team. even though they were both so happy at first, i’m glad that they sat down together and talked about it were like “you want this?” you know?

I’m also so happy with oc’s suggestion of them doing whatever they want together for 3 months so that they have no regrets whatsoever and can live their life out freely before having a kid. i don’t know how to express it into words but i’m so fcking happy that you approached this the way that you did. giving them the time to fully live out their life on their terms and be fully satisfied before having a child that they want and will work on having together as a team just makes me heart so full and happy. i often hear parents be like “oh i couldn’t do this and that bc i had you” to their kids and it breaks my heart every damn time, so i’m beyond relieved and happy that oc brought up this idea bc no kid likes to be the punching bag and be thought of as a burden.

I fall more and more in love with mid tae, seriously. CAN THIS MAN BE REAL AND HOW TF DO I SNATCH A MID TAE FOR MYSELF??? this man never blamed oc for what she was going through and fully took responsibility for so many things and was so fcking attentive to everything (WHICH TAE IS ALSO SUPER FCKING ATTENTIVE IRL TOO) i’m SWOONING!! when oc told tae what she was feeling and thinking when she found out that she was pregnant and how scared she was that he would be mad, this man did not feel betrayed and didn’t make it about him at all. NO THIS MAN TOOK FULL RESPONSIBILITY AND APOLOGIZED AND WAS LIKE “i’m so sorry i made you feel that way” GOD SOMEONE PROTECT THIS MAN. and when he noticed oc was off and took her to have a picnic to help get her mind off of things?? CHEF’S FCKING KISS, SAMMY. CHEF’S KISS.

i always say that you’re talented and i mean it with my whole heart and soul, and there’s so many reasons why your talent just SHONE in this chapter but one aspect that just BLEW my mind away was your attention to details and description. MISS MA’AM, YOU WRITE SO ELOQUENTLY AND BEAUTIFULLY AND ARE SO DETAILED THAT I CAN LEGIT PICTURE THE WHOLE THING IN MY MIND?? HELLO?? During the picnic scene when you wrote about the sun shining in their eyes and described tae’s honey eyes and how he tucked a strand of hair behind oc’s hair, I PICTURED IT SO VIVIDLY THAT I JUST HAD TO TAKE A SECOND AND BE LIKE “WOAH.” UGH THIS IS TALENT. PURE TALENT RIGHT THERE. ARE YOU A WRITER OR A PAINTER SAMMY BC AT THIS POINT YOU ARE JUST PAINTING VIVID PICS IN MY MIND WITH THE WAY THAT YOU DESCRIBE EVERYTHING. YOU ARE A BLOOMING FIELD OF FLOWERS THAT NEVER STOPS BLOOMING, YOU HEAR ME.

this chapter was HOT obviously (the wax play are you fcking kidding???) but i’m so fcking soft and mushy rn. i was just shedding tears of joy from the fluffiness (i also listened to my universe while reading this chapter and it FIT SO PERFECTLY)🥺 this chapter was everything and was so cute :( ugh i live for this couple so much and you DELIVERED. UGH. if i could describe how i felt while reading this chapter, i would say that it felt like i was swimming in the clouds during golden hour. everything is bright but is just right, not too blinding and not too dim, and warm as well. as the sun sets from the horizon, a bunch of colorful hues are shown, from blues, pinks, orange, coral, and even some purple, theres bursts of color and then we’re met with a beautiful night sky with the moon fully visible and different stars and planets visible too. that was what it felt like reading this chapter; like a fantasy and a warm and soft feeling of comfort, and as though the planets are aligned. this chapter was so beautiful, and i’m so glad that they got the happy ending that they deserve, are even more solidified as a team (like how is that even possible??), and get to make decisions that they want.

thank you for making this beautiful story and for sharing with us!! i know that there were times were it was hard and draining for you and i’m truly in awe with how you still kept going and pushed yourself. truly, you’re magical and just thank you thank you thank you, sammy :) i oddly don’t feel sad that their story is done and like theres a hole in my heart. i feel super complete and satisfied, which is a first.

hehe this was super long but i hope you know how cool and amazing you are, and just how appreciated you are, my love 💜

-🪐

"UGH THIS IS TALENT. PURE TALENT RIGHT THERE. ARE YOU A WRITER OR A PAINTER SAMMY BC AT THIS POINT YOU ARE JUST PAINTING VIVID PICS IN MY MIND WITH THE WAY THAT YOU DESCRIBE EVERYTHING. YOU ARE A BLOOMING FIELD OF FLOWERS THAT NEVER STOPS BLOOMING, YOU HEAR ME."

NO SATURN ANON YOU CANNOT SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND EXPECT ME TO NOT CRY?? OMG??? This entire review genuinely made my cheeks from smiling and it makes me so happy I could make you feel all the emotions and scenes of this story. I'm so so glad you feel this way about my writing and I cannot thank you enough for such, warm words that truly leave me believing maybe I really can write when I usually doubt it. YOUR PRAISE MEANS THE WORLD AND I WILL KEEP IT IN A VERY SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART you are just so precious saturn anon. I always love hearing you and I'm very very glad the ending made you feel like this, thank you as always for appreciating me and for your loving, kind and comforting support 💓💓💓

Do you guys ever worry that your writing is like...accidentally plagiarized?

I mean, sometimes, when I’ve been working on a fic for just...so long. I’ve read it so many times. And then I decide I’m too close to it, so I wait a while, and then I go back and read it again to get a fresh perspective.

And there’s just these lines, and they’re so good??? So perfectly in character, or so damn eloquent, or beautifully awkward, or vividly descriptive. And I just... find it absolutely impossible that I thought of that all on my own. And I can’t stop worrying that I stole it?? That I read another fic with a similar premise, or even just with the same general setting, and I like internalized someone else’s words and just yoinked them for myself.

It’s ridiculous, because most of these lines are like, painfully specific to the fic I’m writing. They wouldn’t really fit in any other fics.

But I still just cannot believe that I wrote it.

Like, what kind of imposter syndrome bullshit is this???

oooh id love a golden trio era male ship! i’m a girl with shoulder length blonde hair and grey/blue eyes and of average height. i play piano and love to write, and if i were a student at hogwarts, i’d definitely be a slytherin (and if i wasn’t that, i’d be a ravenclaw). i love academia, photography, and classic literature. i sometimes come off as cold and uninterested at first but i’m actually very chatty and love dark humor when you get to know me. thank you so much xx

soo when i initially read this request, i instantly shipped you with draco, like, i literally got chills. i hope you enjoy… 

- you and draco met in the history of magic class you share together

- it’s the most boring class so you two would silently play games with each other like rock paper scissors from across the room to pass time

- draco didn’t know you very well, just as the fellow slytherin girl in history of magic until one day when you were assigned as partners to proof read each other’s essays on the goblin rebellion of 1612.

- upon reading your essay, draco was fascinated by the eloquence of your writing and how vividly your words were portrayed across the page 

- moving forward from that class period, draco developed a profound respect for you (after all you’re the only person who could possibly make something as dull as the goblin rebellion fun to read about)

- draco constantly hung around the library after he discovered your secret reading nook in the corner by the restricted section

- he sometimes followed you there and would occupy a table within optical distance of yours, just to secretly analyze your beautifully pensive features while you read your latest classic literature novel (he found that you had a certain fondness for the muggle author jane austen)

- on the odd chance that draco decided to check out a title called “sense and sensibility” he had seen you reading, you bumped into him in the hallway

- the book spilled out of his bag onto the floor, leaving it vulnerable to your half impressed-half curious gaze

- you two quickly hit it off after that encounter because you began to reciprocate the same level of interest in draco that he had in you for the past few months

- one evening while draco was on his way to the great hall for supper, he faintly heard the sound of a piano drifting from an abandoned choir classroom in the transfiguration hallway.

- being careful to remain silent, he tiptoed over to the classroom in which he discovered you, sat gracefully on the bench with your back to him. you quickly spun around and ceased your playing, however, when draco accidently shifted his weight on the creaky floorboards and made his presence known.

- enveloped by a sense of euphoria that your enchanting music incited in him, draco acted on impulse. it would have felt like a crime to witness you do something so magnificent and not ask you out.

- your brief pause of hesitation and contemplative expression before answering caused warning bells to go off in draco’s head, almost causing him to deny everything he just said and go hide in his dorm room for an eternity out of embarrassment. 

- thank god you quickly allowed a smile to surpass your features and an excited phrase of assent to emit from your mouth, or else draco wouldn’t have known what to do.

- your first date ended up being at flourish and blotts in diagon alley over the holidays. coming back from the break, you two were closer than ever and draco made sure your newfound relationship was known to everyone in hogwarts.

- especially the guys (and not just in your year- you heard rumors that he had even threatened a few frightened second years that you were tutoring in charms.)

- sarcasm was practically your second language and dark humor somehow found its way into every single conversation

- study sessions were key- you two sometimes even considered them dates and draco was always keen to help you with potions or arithmancy homework (as long as you were willing to help him with charms and history of magic)

- you adored taking pictures of draco with your polaroid camera- draco pretended to get annoyed by it but secretly loved when you two would be together and you just randomly placed a dandelion behind his ear or angled him in front of the sunset to capture the perfect photo.

eeeeeeee !!!! i think you know this already but i ADORE your writing! you are so eloquent with your words & really know how to set a scene vividly & beautifully. you bring all of your muses to life and give them such interesting headcanons i just. love you and your muses gina and im so happy we're writing again

PORTRAYAL MEME. 

MADDYYY you’re gonna make me cry !!!! i’m overjoyed to know that you think I set scenes nicely because that’s something i’ve always felt insecure about honestly. i love reading your headcanons too! your yusuke one about him being on the spectrum made me smile with the accuracy and thought you put into it. i love writing with you so much. you’re definitely one of my favorite writing partners. 💕💕💕💕

Ten Interesting North Korean Novels.

1). FREIND

Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists’ past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge’s own marital troubles.(Googlebooks)

2). THE KOREAN WAR: A HISTORY

For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America's relationship to the world. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its start as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan's occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America's post-World War II occupation of Korea, the untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and the powerful militaries organized and equipped by America and the Soviet Union in that divided land. He tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, and exposes as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides and the "oceans of napalm" dropped on the North by U.S. forces in a remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians. In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a U.S. home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade. Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential. (Googlebooks)

3). WITHOUT YOU THERE IS NO US.

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. (Googlebooks)

4). THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.” Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.(Amazon)

5). THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES.

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?

Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.(Googlebooks)

6). THE ACCUSATION

Authored by an anonymous writer and smuggled out of North Korea, The Accusation is the first work of fiction to come out of the country and a moving portrayal of life under a totalitarian regime.

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and published around the world, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window into this most secretive of countries.

Bandi’s profound, deeply moving, vividly characterized stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the theatre that is their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare.(Googlebooks)

7). A CORPSE IN KORYO.

Against the backdrop of a totalitarian North Korea, one man unwillingly uncovers the truth behind series of murders, and wagers his life in the process. Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decades-old kidnappings and murders---and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos. This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of the past haunt the present, and where even the shadows are real. A corpse in Pyongyang's main hotel---the Koryo---pulls Inspector O into a confrontation of bad choices between the devils he knows and those he doesn't want to meet. A blue button on the floor of a hotel closet, an ice blue Finnish lake, and desperate efforts by the North Korean leadership set Inspector O on a journey to the edge of a reality he almost can't survive. Like Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy and the Inspector Arkady Renko novels, A Corpse in the Koryo introduces another unfamiliar world, a perplexing universe seemingly so alien that the rules are an enigma to the reader and even, sometimes, to Inspector O. Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer. This is a chilling portrayal that, in the end, leaves us wondering if what at first seemed unknowable may simply be too familiar for comfort.(Googlebooks)

8). THE TWO KOREANS.

Ever since Korea was first divided at the end of World War II, the tension between its northern and southern halves has riveted—and threatened to embroil—the rest of the world. In this landmark history, now thoroughly revised and updated in conjunction with Korea expert Robert Carlin, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer grippingly describes how a historically homogenous people became locked in a perpetual struggle for supremacy—and how they might yet be reconciled.(Googlebooks)

9). ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA.

From the world’s most repressive state comes rare good news: the escape to freedom of a small number of its people. It is a crime to leave North Korea. Yet increasing numbers of North Koreans dare to flee. They go first to neighboring China, which rejects them as criminals, then on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia, and finally to South Korea, the United States, and other free countries. They travel along a secret route known as the new underground railroad. With a journalist’s grasp of events and a novelist’s ear for narrative, Melanie Kirkpatrick tells the story of the North Koreans’ quest for liberty. Travelers on the new underground railroad include women bound to Chinese men who purchased them as brides, defectors carrying state secrets, and POWs from the Korean War held captive in the North for more than half a century. Their conductors are brokers who are in it for the money as well as Christians who are in it to serve God. The Christians see their mission as the liberation of North Korea one person at a time. Just as escaped slaves from the American South educated Americans about the evils of slavery, the North Korean fugitives are informing the world about the secretive country they fled. Escape from North Korea describes how they also are sowing the seeds for change within North Korea itself. Once they reach sanctuary, the escapees channel news back to those they left behind. In doing so, they are helping to open their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual groundwork for the transformation of the totalitarian regime that keeps their fellow citizens in chains.(Googlebooks)

10). YOUR REPUBLIC IS CALLING YOU.

Your Republic is Calling You  is a Korean novel written by Kim Young-ha. Borrowing the title of René Magritte’s series of paintings, Empire of Light, Bichui jeguk is about a North Korean spy stationed in South Korea and the day he is summoned back to North Korea. The novel both overviews the societal changes that Korea went through from the 1980s to the 2000s and follows the fate of a man whose fate becomes wholly unknown to him.(Wikipedia)

Book Review: Burial Rites // Hannah Kent

“They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.”

This book. What can I say about this book? The whole thing was one great journey from start to finish. From the first page, you are gripped with the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a woman who has been sentenced to death for her part in the murder of two men.

Hannah Kent’s novel Burial Rites is set in 1829 Iceland and follows the story of a convicted murderess, Agnes Magnúsdóttir. In the months before her set execution, she is sent to a farm owned by a small family who is at first horrified at their new lodger. Agnes is then forced to seek the help of a priest named Tóti, her spiritual guardian who will do his best to save her soul before her execution. 

One thing that this book has for it (and trust me, this book is full of great things) is Hannah Kent’s beautifully descriptive writing. She captures Northern Iceland’s landscape so poetically that I can vividly see what she is describing in my head. Her characters are so deep and interesting and she is constantly adding new layers to them with every page that you read.  I myself, do not need a book to have a constantly action-pumped plot to be interested. This book didn’t constantly have an adrenaline-pumping event on every page but I was still so captivated. But please, don’t get me wrong. The plot of this book is fabulous. You are left on edge as you get little bits of Agnes’ story here and there until finally, you are able to piece it all together. 

A good thing to remember when reading is that this novel is based off a true story. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was a real person, who really was a convicted murderess in Iceland. I believe this story is a pretty famous one in Iceland, where the author, Hannah Kent, spent some time during her younger years. It was there she heard of the captivating story and then brought it to the rest of the world through this novel.

I do have some warnings if you are planning on picking up this book. You should have a strong stomach if you choose to read it. There are graphic descriptions of violence and it is a whole emotional whirlwind from start to finish. Keep a box of tissues near as this is not a funny book. I don’t think I laughed once while reading, but I really didn’t need to. This book was still a masterpiece. 

Burial Rites is a book that will stay with me forever, and I’m sure I will continue to come back to it for years to come. It deals so eloquently and emotionally with the topic of capital punishment, and shows the cruel truth of it. I urge anyone, whether you are already a fan of historical fiction or not, to pick up this book. You really won’t regret it. 

Check out the link in my bio for a masterlist to all my reviews. 

Grant & I by Robert Forster Illustration Rami Vierula Robert Forster’s memoir, based on his life in The Go-Betweens and his relationship with his former band mate, the late Grant McLennan, strikes a personal chord with Nick Triani. Includes bumper The Go-Betweens playlist. The Go-Betweens OQM playlist Your turn, my turn The Go-Betweens were an Australian band formed in 1977 in Brisbane. The constant and formative members of the band were Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. They released nine critically acclaimed albums up until the unexpected death of McLennan in 2006. Those are the basic facts, the story is so much richer. Luckily, Forster has written a book, Grant & I, which is not only beautifully realized, but offers insight to the duo’s friendship and the constant struggles the band faced throughout their career. I was (and still am) a Go-Betweens nut. I went to every gig I could get to, bought all the records. I even got to befriend their manager Bob Johnson who would kindly give me advice about my then band. The closest I got to actually meeting the band were a few handshakes with Lindsay Morrison and Robert Forster at an aftershow party. Bassist Robert Vickers was someone I would see regularly walking around at SXSW, Austin in the early noughties (still looking like a Beatle or a Byrd). The music of The Go-Betweens has been a constant in my life from an early age (15 onwards to be exact). It must have been John Peel who played ‘Cattle & Cane’ one evening and from then on I was hooked. I went back to the early singles and got the first album (the angular Send Me A Lullaby). An obsession with this band started and continues still.​ To me, Forster was the awkward yet eloquent one – angular with his songwriting. McLennan was the bohemian film buff who would master melody. So, when Robert Forster’s Grant & I was announced last year, I couldn’t wait to get a copy. Published by Penguin Australia, getting the book wasn’t easy. It arrived in the new year. I devoured it. Nowadays Robert Forster writes a lot (he’s a music critic) and occasionally releases a solo record (the excellent Songs To Play from 2015 being his latest). His previous book The 10 rules of rock and roll: collected music writings 2005–09 remains on my shelf unread. Grant & I has hastened my need to read that. Forster is a very good writer, the tone here is similar to Patti Smith’s Just Kids. Grant & I is often poetic in its descriptions of childhood life in Brisbane. McLennan, remains a distant, yet troubled presence throughout. But you always get a sense of brotherly affection between Forster and McLennan, even when their friendship has been strained or Forster spends a time living in Germany after the band’s initial split. The rise of The Go-Betweens on a barren Australian indie scene of the late 1970s (Nick Cave lurks around these pages) is well captured, and you get the feeling that The Go-Betweens got a lot of breaks just because they were so different. Influenced by the burgeoning New York punk scene, a shared love for The Monkees, classic movies and books, Forster and McLennan harboured thoughts of trying to make it abroad, something they initialized after a few single releases. Unable to afford their true destination New York, the band turned up in London in the early 1980s with little money and barely any contacts. So begins a pattern: Initially, Britain brings them associations with Postcard Records and Orange Juice. Forster’s first meeting with Edwyn Collins is vividly rendered; Collins in his Glasgow bedsit, with an ear to a speaker listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival. These are the first days of indie as we now know it, and Forster and McLennan were almost bemused participants. A recurring theme of the book is how The Go-Betweens struggled to build lasting relationships with record labels, from Postcard to Rough Trade to Warners and Beggars Banquet, momentum wasn’t ever easily acquired. There is no particular reason for why this transpires, other than bad luck and circumstance. The Go-Betweens you find out never really got the breaks. Dusty In Here Robert Forster’s then partner Lindsay Morrison joined the band for their second album Before Hollywood. For me, Morrison remains one of the great drummers, possibly only second to Moe Tucker. As the band grew, an unflattering contrast to being the critics’ darling but actually trying to survive and earn a living as musician in 1980s Britain emerges. Despite the plaudits, the band never really made any money, this is often a tale of living in crazy London squats and struggling to survive, severe poverty a constant state. Grant & I peels back the veneer on an industry that doesn’t really look after its own, even when the talent is obvious. I don’t think much has changed now to be honest. Interband relationships messily put and end to The Go-Betweens initial time at the end of the 1980s (they would reform at the start of the noughties, for three more great albums). You get a sense from Forster that McLennan never really recovered from former bandmate/lover Amanda Brown leaving him when Forster and McLennan announced they were going to play a duo only tour. Alcohol and drugs play their role here too – a shock as The Go-Betweens seemed more like hip librarians than rock n rollers – but rock n roll they did. Refreshingly, Forster never peddles any of those associated clichés with his stories. Crucially, Forster offers insight to the magical inner workings of how the songwriting process would go between himself and McLennan. His pride at his songwriting partner’s ease of creating melodic treasures is a highlight. Forster also gives rich detail to singles and albums and offers his own critique on the band’s work. This most definitely is the authoritative text on The Go-Betweens. Forster offers a view rarely written about, giving insight to life in a band hovering on the margins of success, but only remaining a cult to some. As a band that was loved by their peers and critics, but never quite embraced by the masses, Forster’s wish for The Go-Betweens legacy to be acknowledged in the greater pop lore is genuinely moving. Acknowledgement in some form finally arrived in Australia, with Brisbane’s Go-Betweens bridge – but that was too late for McLennan. At the heart of Grant & I is a sense of unfinished business and a last chance to cement the band’s legacy. When Forster loses his friend before time it is heartbreaking. Forster was in shock at McLennan’s sudden passing, but acknowledges that his friend had lost his way. While I was reading this book, a dear friend of mine passed away. I had to head back to England for the funeral. The Go-Betweens were somehow entwined in our own story, my friend had sold me his 7″ of that precious Go-Betweens Postcard single way back when I was 16 years old. Memories came flooding back, not only of The Go-Betweens, but of much of the era covered in this book and my friendship with my oh so special friend. Listening to McLennan’s song ‘Dusty In Here’ (about his late father) got so much harder. ​The lyrical context is different, but the meaning resounds with me more now.​ “like a ghost  a ghost of something old it’s cold and dusty in here it’s in your hand it sits just like a glove the finger traces the lines of love it’s cold and dusty in here someone you knew is watching you I’m someone you knew​”​​

That sense of loss and feeling for McLennan from Forster is rendered thoughtfully here. It strips away the excess, the day to day, the problems, the missed chances and the failures and leaves us that essence of true love – from one friend to another. The playlist I’ve compiled this Go-Betweens playlist from Youtube, which seems to be the best place to get an overview of their music (other streaming services have a very incomplete discography). The playlist runs in chronological order from early singles to tracks taken from all the band’s nine official albums. Enjoy. You can find a series of Robert Forster’s articles via his web page

via One Quart Magazine

Book Review: People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley

When asked why she never wrote her memoirs, Pauline Kael famously answered, “I think I have.”

My friend Jim Ridley—film critic and editor-in-chief of the Nashville Scene, who died in April of 2016 at the cruel young age of 50—never got a chance to write his memoirs. But then I doubt a guy as self-effacing as Jim would have any patience for such a project anyway. What we got instead turns out to be even better than the next best thing. People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley, is a hardcover collection of reviews and reported articles carefully culled from his almost thirty-year career. In vibrant, often uproarious prose, the book chronicles a lifelong love affair with the cinema. Reading Ridley’s reviews feels like having a jocular chat with a pal that takes an unexpectedly personal turn. His emotionally candid insights make Kael’s case for criticism as autobiography.

Expertly edited by former Scene staffer Steve Haruch, the book features 94 pieces, loosely grouped into 12 chapters according to genre or theme. It’s an inspired approach, giving the informal sensation of Ridley riffing on his favorite topics, whether the Nouvelle Vague or Westerns. Contemporaneous reviews of new releases sit alongside reconsiderations of classic films, the latter usually booked at Jim’s beloved Belcourt Theatre, the Nashville arthouse cinema he tirelessly championed over the years. (Also included here is the famous 1999 cover story in which Jim excoriated his readers for passing up the then-struggling cinema’s programming. “If it joins all those other ghosts in the civic boneyard, we should harbor no illusions about who put it there.”)

Enthusiasm can sometimes be a dirty word amongst professional film critics, many of whom pride themselves on keeping an objective distance from the work they’re evaluating. But reading Ridley you can’t help but think: here’s a guy who really loved his job. Whether discussing rotgut exploitation films or the French New Wave, Jim’s excitement was infectious. He proved you could be a fan without being fanboy-ish, a conversational tone often deftly camouflaging the intellectual rigor beneath his arguments. I adore this description of “Taxi Driver”: “Working from a serrated Paul Schrader script soaked in coke and flop sweat, Scorsese prowls the zone where the rugged individualism of such a man morphs into the I-stand-alone fury of America’s lunatic fringe.”    

There’s a palpable joy of discovery in Jim’s original, early ‘90s reviews of “The Piano” and “Pulp Fiction.” Of the former he wrote: “Where the year’s other period romances involve people who gradually dwindle under the weight of their inexpressible desires, Campion’s characters blossom like carnivorous plants under the influence of flesh.” And of Mr. Tarantino’s opus: “Hearing Samuel L. Jackson say ‘motherfucker’ is like listening to John Coltrane play ‘My Favorite Things.’” These reviews spread out for three pages apiece, taking us back to a time when alt-weeklies had the space to cover the arts in this kind of depth, and studios were still making movies that merited such scrutiny.

Ridley was one of the funniest writers in the business, and while there’s at least a chortle on every page of “People Only Die of Love in Movies,” the biggest laughs come, unsurprisingly, in the chapter Haruch devotes to his pans. Jim didn’t run all that many negative reviews in the “Scene,” his philosophy being why waste space on a bad movie when you could be celebrating a good one. But when he did, boy howdy: “The target audience for a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie, especially one with director Michael Bay at the helm, is a guy who became a cop to get even with everybody who picked on him in high school.”

Most surprising is Jim’s 1993 negative review of “Schindler’s List,” which should be studied by young writers as an example of how to buck the consensus without resorting to contrarian posturing. He took issue with the film’s largely faceless presentation of the victims: “The violence is detailed so much more vividly than the characters that it throws off our perception: We’re more aware of the fountains of blood than we are of the people losing them.” And with regard to the film’s rapturous reception: “There’s something annoying about the way Spielberg repudiates his past work in interviews now, as if his beautifully crafted pop entertainments were somehow embarrassing in light of the heavy-handed, well-intentioned ‘Schindler’s List.’ If art were determined by good intentions, then ‘Judgement at Nuremberg’ would be the lasting work of film art and ‘Triumph of the Will’ largely forgotten, instead of the other way around.”

It’s an inevitably melancholy experience reading so much vital work by someone who left us too soon. (There’s still not a month that goes by in which I don’t see a movie and wonder what Jim would have made of it. And I hope there’s a heaven, so he’ll get to see “De Palma.”) It stings even more because Ridley was so eloquent about the ways in which our relationships with movies evolve over time, and it becomes clear throughout the book that age and fatherhood were deepening his perspective in rich and rewarding ways. (On “Ikiru”: “The difference between seeing Akira Kurosawa’s film early and later in life is the difference between looking at a window and a mirror.”)

My favorite piece is his appreciation of Francois Truffaut’s widely misunderstood “Two English Girls,” a deliberately downbeat revisiting of themes and scenarios explored ten years before in the director’s freewheeling “Jules and Jim.” While Ridley confesses he initially couldn’t get through the movie as a teen, “I love them equally now. The speed and whirling beauty of the former makes the latter even more poignant; the sad, persistent ache of ‘Two English Girls’ makes ‘Jules and Jim’ seem even more buoyant. To choose between them would be to choose between your first and greatest loves – between the one that taught you how to feel, and the one that’s all the richer and deeper for the memory of the other.”

People Only Die of Love in Movies takes its title from a line in Jacques Demy’s heartbreaking 1964 musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” for which Jim wrote the Criterion Collection booklet essay. It’s a gorgeous piece of writing with which Haruch closes out the book, summing up its author’s ever-evolving adoration of the film and how changing life circumstances have altered his interpretation over the years: “When I watch it now, it reminds me of the doorjamb in my grandmother’s house with my height marked in pencil over the years, or the dresser with my own children’s measurements notched along the edge. In it I see the person I was and the person I turned out to be. But the object itself will always be the same. It will wait, forever.”

“People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley” was released on June 21st, 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, profound and prophetic.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, evocative beautifully written book. A simply wonderful book. The book describes the year spent in a tiny wooden house built on the sand dunes at the outermost edge of Cape Cod. The book filled me with a longing for a simpler life, spent closer to nature. Henry Beston is such an acute observer of the natural world & is equally acute about human beings. He tells of his friendship with the coast guards who patrol the wild beach, withbtheboften raging Atlantic Ocean always close, always to be watched. Beston writes with the utter simplicity of a great Piet, " the old loveliness of the earth " .I wished I were his friend, wished I had had the vivid experience he so movingly, affectionately & humorously conveys. Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars An almost-forgotten classic This book was written in the 1920s and is a classic of the wonders-of-nature style. In this, it most resembles works like John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and Edward Abbey's Beyond the Wall. Beston records a full year spent in a tiny, two-roomed house (a shack, really) on the Eastern Shore of Cape Cod, a place renowned for having a lot of weather, whose fury he records with great eloquence. He wrote about everything he saw there -- the sea, sky and birds, mostly, about also about the few human residents of the area, including its tiny complement of fearless Coast Guardsmen (they appear most vividly in a gripping account of a shipwreck). Beston describes everything he sees in simple but graceful prose that, on occasion, rises to a kind of rapture. My favorite passage (which I have framed on a wall) rejects the common notion that animals are fundamentally inferior to humans: "...for the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners in the splendor and travail of the earth." It's a wonderful read. Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars A Celebration of the Cape Cod Seaside in the Tradition of Thoreau This near-classic account of the author's year alone in a self-built cottage on Cape Cod's shore, sometimes dips a little into purple prose. "Then time gathered like a cloud, and presently the stars began to pale over an ocean still dark with remembered night." These descriptions often sound lovely and poetic, but they might tend to roll off your back like water off a duck, just because they contain no sharp particularities to stick in your mind.Nevertheless, this is undeniably a stirring account of the ritual of the seasons that Beston observed from his solitary outpost on the beach near Eastham, Massachusetts. And in among the occasionally too general sonorities, there are many, many truly telling metaphors, as when he describes a wind that was "a thing to search the marrow of one's bones."I initially felt a little frustrated reading his descriptions of his sand and sea surroundings. I wanted to turn the page and find a big glossy picture that would immediately convey the details to me. But then I realized that such a longing was a laziness, and that it was actually better to have to create the picture myself, to build it slowly from Beston's words. This made my experience of nature more interactive and ultimately more satisfying. I was forced to use my imagination. It was like listening to radio, rather than having the completed pictures of TV always there - bam - in front of me. Ultimately my having to create the scene myself in my mind's eye made me concentrate more and appreciate better the beauties being described.However, I do think that a better map of Beston's location might have been helpful to orient the reader at the outset.Read more › Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars nature classic a lyric paean to the outermost beach, dunes, and wild inhabitants - experienced firsthand during a year alone on the shore. Beston is a fine writer who can sustain descriptions of coastal nature's dimensions - sight, sound, smell, night, wave, to name a few - with fullness and precision and grace. A gem of a book and clearly a classic in literature about the natural world. Go to Amazon