Too Fond of Books

In books:

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home , by Kim Sunee: I had fully intended to read this book while waiting to see if I got placed on jury duty or not, but then I started reading it one day last week, and then I couldn't put it down. Sunee is an accessible and relaxed writer whose prose slides by, punctuated by recipes for unbelievably delicious-sounding Provence-style/French cooking, with a few Korean recipes thrown in. (I cannot wait to make the "easy" kimchi.) However, the story of her search for her racial and feminine identity is ultimately a saddening one, as she is thwarted on both fronts by a series of people and expectations that she cannot free herself of. Sunee is Korean, abandoned in a market in Seoul when she was three years old and adopted by an American serviceman and his wife and raised in New Orleans. Her account of her childhood is at turns delicious (her grandfather is a famous Cajun cook who teaches her and her sister how to stuff crawdads and make dirty rice) and sad (her classmates make fun of her with racial epithets). In college, she runs away to Europe and gets involved with a series of men, most of whom are good for her culinary horizons, but are bad for her in terms of dealing with her culture shock and figuring out what her true identity is. In the saddest passage of the book, Sunee attempts to return to Korea, only to find that people there can't understand her few turns of phrase and assume she's a prostitute because she's with a Western man. However, this book is well worth reading for the descriptions of the food she makes and eats, and seeing Sunee attempt (and eventually succeed) to break out of the shell she's had built around her for so many years.


Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons: ... Wow. What a mind-fuck of a book. I mean, really. A GIANT SQUID? O RLY? NO WAI! Ahem. I can see why this was such an influential book; I can see why Moore is one of the most talented writers of our generation. However, I have several concerns:

1) What would this book have looked like if Moore were a woman?
2) The old EC-Comics style pirate story is interesting, but its layering into the full narrative seems labored and forced. Again, I could see what Moore was up to, but it seemed incredibly heavy-handed.
3) I do not see the slash that other fans see. Seriously, this is the most heterosexual book I've read in ages and ages.

A lot has been written about this work all ready, so I won't go on too much longer. I am curious to see the movie now, and especially curious to see what better ending the writers have come up with (because A GIANT SQUID is not the ending that saga needed. An A-bomb would have been more appropriate.)

In anime:

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: I enjoyed this, with only a few reservations. The animation was good quality, the story definitely got my attention (I'm a sucker for coming of age stories, and urban fantasy, and everyday settings, and this had all three at once), and although the pacing was a little slow at first, the overall tone and plot were solid. I was just disappointed in the ending, and there was one character who I would have liked to have had more screen time. However, well worth putting in my Netflix queue.

On DVD:

The Wire: I know we're late jumping on the bandwagon for this show, but what a riveting story, told with no punches pulled and compelling characters. It's the first time in a long while that I deliberately sought out spoilers for a show, just to make sure that my favorite character did NOT die during the course of the story. The best thing about this story is the lack of an absolute morality--all the characters are shades of grey, and even those whose side we're "on" are completely and totally human, sorting through their failings as adults and grasping at minor triumphs as they navigate the often stormy waters of the Baltimore police force and legal hierarchy. We're just finishing Season 1 and looking forward to Season 2.