North Korea fascinates me; it's like a real life dystopian novel. I might just spend the rest of the year reading books about North Korea, so fascinated am I by it. Not really. Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy is another NPR pick. Demick was the LA Times Seoul bureau chief for several years, and the stories in this book come from interviews she conducted with North Korean defectors living in South Korea. It doesn't read at all like a collection of interviews, though; Demick does a wonderful job turning the stories of the six people she focuses on into a cohesive narrative, even managing some dramatic suspense despite the fact that we know from the outset that all these people survive and make it to South Korea. And, of course, focusing on this group of survivors also gives a bit of light and hope to a pretty relentlessly dark subject.
Next up: I might finally finish listening to Alice McDermott's After This before the library makes it disappear from my iphone. And I'm either going to keep reading The Picture of Dorian Gray on my Nook (started it this morning) or I'm going to break down and buy Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Science fiction set in the Disney World of the future? Yes, please. Oscar Wilde vs. escapist fluff. Hmm....
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