We will be discussing The Absolutist at Nicole’s blog on Tuesday, July 10th. 

From the publisher:

It is September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War.But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan’s visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will–from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France. The intensity of their bond brought Tristan happiness and self-discovery as well as confusion and unbearable pain.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for July, please fill out the form below by noon, Eastern on Tuesday, May 29th. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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July BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Absolutist by John Boyne

A Bitter Truth

This is the third book in the Bess Crawford series. I previously reviewed the first two books, A Duty to the Dead  and An Impartial Witness.

Newly home on Christmas leave, Bess finds a woman huddled on her doorstep, a huge bruise spreading across her face. Bess is not one to ignore anyone in trouble, so she invites the woman – Lydia – in and even agrees to return home with her, to act as a buffer between Lydia and her husband. While staying with Lydia’s husband’s family, a family friend also staying at the house is found mysteriously dead after accidentally spilling a huge secret. Suddenly everyone, including Bess, is a suspect and Bess’s involvement in the case could make her a potential victim as well.

Bess always seems to get herself in these situations in a slightly improbable manner and this is no exception, but the plot of A Bitter Truth actually seemed more plausible than the first two. Certainly the appearance of Lydia on Bess’s doorstep is quite coincidental, but Bess’s actions from that point on are all completely in character and believable. Who, when under suspicion for a murder, would not look further to try to clear their own name and determine the true culprit?

The Bess Crawford series continues to be one in which I gobble down each book as I get to it and look forward to the next book. The sad thing is that after the next book, I’ll be all out of Bess for the time being.  Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Purchased.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd – Book Review

Before long, other new releases based on the situation in North Korea came to my attention. I found myself wondering whether there were always this many books about North Korea in a year and these authors were simply getting increased visibility due to Kim Jong-Il’s death, or whether this was either a coincidence or the result of some books being rushed out to take advantage of the timing. Regardless of the reason these books landed on my shelves, I decided that I wanted to look at them not only individually, but as a group of work that could shed additional light on North Korea.

Although the two fiction titles were the first to find themselves on my shelves, I decided to start with the nonfiction to gain a better background of the world of North Korea. My first read was actually the only one not originally released in 2012, Barbara Demick’s Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which tells the story of North Korea’s ‘Arduous March,’ the famine of the 1990s, through the eyes of six North Koreans who defected to South Korea. Demick’s book was the perfect choice with which to begin this journey, as it gives a very good background on the political situation within the country, as well as explaining the far-reaching consequences of the famine, all of which served as useful information for the other three books I read.

Next came Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West and my one non-book consideration on this subject, the documentary Crossing the Line. These two provided an interesting juxtaposition, with Escape from Camp 14 focusing on the story of a man who not only escape from North Korea, but escaped from one of the most restrictive parts of the country – so restrictive that he wasn’t even aware of his own country’s political situation – and Crossing the Line being the story of James Drsenok, one of the four American soldiers who defected across the DMZ to North Korea in the 1960s. For both I found the background from Demick’s book helpful to gain a deeper understanding, but they also stood on their own well enough that having read Nothing to Envy wasn’t strictly necessary; in fact, Harden references Demick’s book several times. There are times in Crossing the Line, however, that Dresnok references events that I might not have fully understood without having first read Demick’s book.

The two novels, All Woman and Springtime and The Orphan Master’s Son also benefited from the background I gained from Nothing to Envy, but both Brandon W. Jones and Adam Johnson did a very admirable job conveying the realities in which their characters lived without a need for prior knowledge or relying on info dumps. Interestingly, both stories deal with orphans – or purported orphans, since Jun Do claims to be not an orphan at all, but the son of the orphan master – but their paths take very different directions, with the girls from All Woman and Springtime essentially kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, and Jun Do initially rising through the ranks of North Korean society. Both are strongly influenced by the power of the official narrative in North Korea, it is how Jun Do manipulates his rise, and how Il-sun and Gi are manipulated into sexual servitude.

All four books, as well as the documentary, are well worth experiencing on their own, but combined together they are even more than the sum of their parts. They come at life in North Korea from so many directions that the reader cannot help to begin to get a grasp on this closed and repressive society.

It seems I am not the only one newly obsessed by life in North Korea. Shelf Awareness contributing editor Robert Gray discussed in Friday’s Shelf Awareness for Readers his “rerouting” into the realms of literature dealing with North Korea after he finished The Orphan Master’s Son. He and I read and reveled in some of the same books, but he has some additional recommendations that sound fabulous as well, so be sure to check them out as you make your own North Korean reading list, I know I will be.

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TSS: North Korea Wrap-Up

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, narrated by Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, and James Kyson Lee

Synopsis:

From the publisher:

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.

Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean 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.”

Thoughts on the story:

Jun Do’s story is, at times, a bit of a tangled web, particularly as part of The Orphan Master’s Son is narrated by a voice over the loudspeaker that broadcasts to all North Korean citizens, and part comes from the point of view of a prison interrogator. It is not that Jun Do is an unreliable narrator precisely, it is that the nature of narrative in North Korea is, by definition, unreliable. This becomes increasingly evident during Jun Do’s time with Sun Moon, as identity and reality shift based on what people allow or force themselves to believe. Jun Do knows that power of belief and blind obedience better than most, having been an orphan who was not really an orphan, and thus he is one of the privileged few who is able to make this quirk of North Korea society work for him – at least for a time.

It is this contemplation on reality in North Korea that makes The Orphan Master’s Son so very brilliant. At the same time, however, Johnson has also created a story that keeps the reader interested, even before this theme becomes so strongly apparent. From Jun Do’s time as a state-mandated kidnapper of Japanese citizens, to his time manning a radio on a fishing vessel, his inclusion on a diplomatic trip to Texas, and then finally his relationship with Sun Moon, every aspect of Jun Do’s life offers the reader tantalizing and often horrifying glimpses into life in North Korea.

Thoughts on the audio production:

The best part of this audio production is that it uses multiple narrators to fully differentiate between the multiple points of view in Johnson’s story. Kang is the primary narrator, telling the majority of the story from Jun Do’s point of view. Lee and Lee voice the loudspeaker and the interrogator, giving additional definition and clarity to the story. I must say that none of the narrators completely wowed me, but all were solid narrators and they told the story adequately and in an interesting manner.

Overall:

I might lean slightly towards recommending this in print over audio, but the audiobook also works perfectly well. Either way, this is definitely a book to pick up.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Print*
Indiebound: Print*
Audible.com

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

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The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – Audiobook Review

As I was reading about North Korea over the past few weeks, I thought it would be interesting to get a little bit different perspective on the country. Megan from Algonquin Books set me on the trail of VeryMuchSo Productions, a documentary film crew who has made at least three different documentaries about North Korea.Their 2002 documentary The Game of Their Lives follows the 1996 World Cup soccer team from North Korea, and A State of Mind in 2004 tells the story of a pair of North Korean gymnasts. Both sounded fairly interesting, but when I came across VeryMuchSo’s 2006 documentary, Crossing the Line, about 0ne of the four US soldiers stationed in South Korea who defected in the 1960s, I knew I’d found what I wanted to watch.

James Dresnok was the second US soldier to defect to North Korea, and is the only one left alive in the country. By now he has been in North Korea more than twice as long as he ever lived in the United States. Dresnok allegedly had a very tough childhood, that seems to have turned him into a troubled young man. His first marriage ended when his wife cheated on him during one of his tours in Korea. When he returned to South Korea, based on how he tells his own story, he acted like a petulant, defiant teenager. When his commanding officer refused to give him a pass, he forged one and when he was on the verge of being brought up on charges, he simply walked across the DMZ into North Korea to avoid taking responsibility for his actions.

Although there are conflicting stories about some of the things that have happened to Dresnok over the past 50 years in North Korea, even the opposing stories offer an instructive look into life in North Korea. For one, the accusations that the brides of all four American defectors were women brought to North Korea against their will.  Of the two women still alive (neither of which was Dresnok’s first wife in North Korea, his second of three wives total), one claims that she simply came to North Korea as a tourist and fell in love, but the other has said that, although she came to love her husband, she was in North Korea because she had been kidnapped from Japan.

Crossing the Line is a fascinating hour and 1/2 view into American defectors and the lives they have lived in North Korea. It is not a topic that would have ever occurred to me, people defecting TO North Korea instead of FROM North Korea, but it has happened and is an instructive phenomenon to study.

If you’re interested in North Korea, Crossing the Line is definitely worth checking out. It is currently streaming on Netflix.

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Crossing the Line – Documentary

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

The plight of ordinary North Koreans has been a topic increasingly discussed with Kim Jong Il’s death, and the bevy of new fiction dealing with the isolated society. Barbara Demick does a wonderful job chronicling the privations of the 1990s and the ensuing breakdown of North Korean society in Nothing to Envy, and it seems that the North Koreans of the lower class in the outer provinces have had as hard a time of it as nearly any people group in the world. What is less often discussed, however, are the perhaps up to 200,000 people held in North Korean prison camps. Some of these camps hold prisoners for short times only, to ‘rehabilitate’ people like free market traders back into North Korean society. Others, though, such as Camp 14, hold families for lifetimes, even for generations, without any hope of release. In Escape from Camp 14, journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the first person born into a North Korean prison camp to escape both the camp itself and North Korea.

Perhaps the most shocking parts of Escape from Camp 14 are those that detail Shin’s childhood in the camp. The dehumanizing treatment of prisoners – one guard who has since defected states that he was taught to “think of inmates as ‘dogs and pigs’” – meant that Shin never learned how to interact normally with other people. Everyone, including Shin’s own mother, was a threat to him, in competition for resources and someone who would snitch on him for any infraction of camp rules. Shin steals his mother’s lunch while she is at work, has rocks thrown at him by the children of guards, sees a little girl in his class beaten to death for stealing five kernels of corn. Eventually, as a 13 year old boy, he informs on his own mother and older brother who are planning an escape attempt and ensures their executions.

Equally fascinating and instructive are Shin’s attempts to acclimate to life outside of the camps, especially once he reaches South Korea and the United States.

“I am evolving from being an animal,” he said. “But it is going very, very slowly. Sometimes I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything. Yet tears don’t come. Laughter doesn’t come.” –p. 179

Shin had no idea about the government of his own country, let alone the rest of the world. It did mean that he had less brainwashing to unlearn, but the entire idea of normal interpersonal interaction has often difficult, and still continues to be so.

Escape from Camp 14 is not an easy book to read, much that happened to Shin will turn your stomach. It is, however, an important book to read. Perhaps people are not being systematically killed, but they are being worked to death, housed with little or no regard for the necessities of life and with no rights whatsoever. The existence of these camps has been known for years, but it is a subject rarely mentioned in the West, or even in South Korea. They are not something that we can continue to ignore any longer.

Harden tells Shin’s story in a clear, concise, and often horrifying way. Please read this book.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden – Book Review

All Woman and Springtime

Il-sun and Gi are North Korean orphans, factory workers, and best friends despite their differences. Gi is somewhat introverted, loyal, a math wizard. She is the kind of girl who always produces more than her quota in the factor, doing her duty for the Dear Leader, but always willing to share her extras with Il-sun, a girl who rarely meets quota and has the gall to spit on Dear Leader’s portrait when alone in the dark. Unlike Gi, though, Il-sun is beautiful, and her beauty covers a multitude of sins. The fact that she is also naive and an orphan, though, makes Il-sun’s beauty dangerous, and the two girls end up smuggled into South Korea and sold into sexual slavery, where they are particularly vulnerable thanks to their North Korean brainwashing.

Mr. Choy took on a hard, stern look, the hint of a dangerous rage rippling across his eyes. It was a look that said his friendly, accommodating exterior was a thin crust over a far more volatile core. He smiled wryly and said, “If you refuse to work for me, I will have no choice but to hand you over to the American army, who will rape, torture, and kill you. Of course the choice is yours.” –p. 161

All Woman and Springtime is beautifully written, both in prose and plotting. The story is almost immediately engrossing. Particularly effective is Jones’s method of occasionally switching to the point of view of more minor characters, whichever is currently most important to the story. This does not work in all narratives, but in All Woman and Springtime it adds layers of depth to the story, by highlighting the variety of North Korean mindsets and situations. In fact, Jones does a wonderful job in general giving his readers a background to the North Korean cultural setting without becoming overly didactic. He walks a line well, giving enough information to those who have little or no knowledge of recent North Korean history beyond the death of Kim Jong Il but not succumbing to an info dump that will bore readers who have done further reading on North Korea.

In addition to the rich setting, Jones has  created realistic and well-rounded characters who will stay in the reader’s mind for some time to come. Not only does All Woman and Springtime give readers a peek into the lives and vulnerabilities of some North Korean woman, but Jones’s story and characters are so compelling that the story becomes universal. Very highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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All Woman and Springtime by Brandon W. Jones – Book Review

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

In the futuristic dystopia imagined in 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only color to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. –p. 11

One of the hardest countries to get a look inside is North Korea. Closed off since the Korean War, North Korea initially seemed to be doing better, financially than its cousin to the South. Pyongyan, the one city where visitors occasionally came, was filled with only those inhabitants who would make a good impression on outsiders, but even outside of the capital city most North Koreans believed for many years that their lives were as good or better than those of most of the world’s inhabitants. All this began to change with the famine in the 1990s, however. As people began to starve to death, they took increased risks and increasingly subverted the state that had held them captive for so long. Crossing illegally into China to work or trade for food gave many North Koreans a glimpse of what life was like in the rest of the world. It was only at this time that defections began in earnest.

In Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick chronicles the lives of a variety of North Koreans who eventually defected to South Korea. All came from different family situations in the stratified North Korean society, and all initially had varying degrees of dedication to the state, but all initially believed the propaganda they were fed. How could they not, after all? None of the outside world penetrates North Korea enough to show anything different. Plus, any resistance would mean repercussions not only on the protester his or herself, but on all other known relatives.

Demick interweaves her subject’s stories in such a way that is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. Alternating stories could have made Nothing to Envy choppy, but it is done skillfully with good transitions, so that instead it serves to keep the reader’s interest and keep any of the subjects from fading into the background.

For a general overview of the day-to-day lives so North Koreans, plus fantastic background to the situation, beginning with the end of WWII, I cannot recommend Nothing to Envy highly enough.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

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Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick – Book Review

Front of the house, from the driveway

Daniel's favorite part of the house: the tire swing

View from the back porch

This week we’ll keep cleaning and putting stuff away, and then move over with the rest of our stuff next weekend. Next week should have ALL THE AUDIOBOOKING with the unpacking. This week I was actually surprised just how much reading I squeezed in. After getting home from work and cleaning I just collapsed on the bed with a book for a couple of hours, and then typically fell asleep with the light on and the book in hand (plus there was all that reading time before we actually got the keys early this week). Here’s what I finished:

And here’s what I reviewed this week:

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TSS: Be it Ever so Humble

Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs, narrated by A.J. Jacobs

Synopsis:

After hospitalization for pneumonia in his forties, A.J. Jacobs realized he needed to get his act together in regards to his health, especially with his long-suffering wife Julie telling him that she had no desire to be a widow at forty-five. As he is wont to do, Jacobs decided to approach the idea of improving his health as an overblown project; not only was he going to become a healthier human being, he was going to become the healthiest person he could be, even the healthiest man in the world. With the help of an entire team of experts, and by concentrating on a single body part at a time, Jacobs began his transformative and, at times, all-consuming quest with an enthusiasm only he can muster.

Thoughts on the story:

It should come as no surprise that Jacobs was able to arrange Drop Dead Healthy in a funny and interesting way, that both provided a good deal of information and kept his story moving. After all, he has already done so successfully in both The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All. Jacobs balances funny, serious, and informative very well, and this is something that continues to come out in Drop Dead Healthy.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Jacobs narrates Drop Dead Healthy himself and, while I wouldn’t necessarily advise him to make narration his career, he was the perfect choice here. If the author of a memoir is able to narrate with emotion and enthusiasm – but without getting overly emotionally involved in any painful memories – it often works well, and such was absolutely the case here. At one point, I was impressed with just how much enthusiasm Jacobs was able to insert into the phrase “Chapter 2,” and his verve never waned from there. He is open and candid, with enough ability to poke fun at himself that the listener doesn’t feel voyeuristic, even when he discusses his and his wife’s sex life.

Overall:

I love A.J. Jacobs and, having read his previous books in print, am certain that Drop Dead Healthy would be fabulously enjoyable in that medium, but his narration adds just a little something extra to the story that makes Drop Dead Healthy a must-listen. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

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Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs – Audiobook Review