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27 holds on next returned in the local library system  Apparently a popular book to read right now.
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Jun 6, 2016 11:03
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Just ordered it off Book Depository as that was the cheapest option I could find after looking at the ebook. Will get stuck in once it arrives since I never manage to read a BOTM during the actual month it's being discussed. I know very little about South Korea. Is there any general background I should have going into it?
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Jun 6, 2016 12:42
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I got my book today, so I, uh, I'm going to go read it now...
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Jun 14, 2016 22:12
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I have also just started this and am not too far in - just finished the work dinner part with her husband. The whole world they live in seems so miserable and suffocating. The husband mentions that he often works until midnight, and everything has to be done a very specific way. I tried describing the beginning to someone - how she stops eating meat and it is causing chaos in her husband's life - and it was hard to really explain why something like that could upset a relationship so much. He really doesn't seem to see her as a person in her own right. She slots into the image he has of a good life for himself and completes a necessary function, and that is all.
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Jun 17, 2016 23:50
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I have just finished it. I was expecting to only read while eating lunch today, but I couldn't actually put the book down so just kept reading until I was done. I had no idea what to expect from this and was mainly intrigued to join this month by Mel's enthusiasm, but what a great read. One of the things that I noticed in the first two sections was that both the husband and the brother in law at times find the affection and desire of women to care for others to be repulsive and oppressive. When Yeong-hye tries to kill herself in the first section and her mother comes to the hospital really concerned about her daughter's suicide attempt, the husband can't understand her concern and finds it repulsive and is annoyed that he has to deal with a mother's concern over her daughter, his wife. In the second section, the brother in law mentions that he finds his wife's goodness to be oppressive - how she shows compassion for her sister and dedication to raising their son and looking after both of them while also running a business. He shows no self-awareness of his own behaviour and gives no consideration to the idea that others are not just there to provide for him but also have their own needs - as he says, he is the real victim here. The brother in law section shows several instances where his wife is caring for him and being a loving, stable presence in his life, and he seems to resent her for it because it makes him uncomfortable to realise that he is not returning this care and love, that he is taking but not giving anything in return. I suppose that level of self-awareness is one step more than the husband in the first section, but he finds dealing with the reality of who he is (everything from his imperfect physical body to his selfish relationship with a woman he mostly ignores) so uncomfortable that he runs away from it and turns to the idealised fantasy he can create with art. Everything is perfect in his head, and he cannot tolerate that reality doesn't live up to those expectations. The final chapter seems to take that self-awareness another step further into a kind of acceptance. Enfys fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 19, 2016 |
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Jun 19, 2016 19:12
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knees of putty posted:I have just finished the 2nd part. Oh boy. I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it, but it's certainly a challenging vision of patriarchy. The obsession with the Mongolian spot seemed reminiscent of the mark that appears on Toru's face in the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Is there a particular reverence attached to such spots in Korea/Japan? I had to look up what a Mongolian mark is, and I don't really know much about Korea, but wikipedia mentions this in the article on it: "Korean mythology explains the spot as a bruise formed when Samshin halmi (Korean: 삼신할미), a shaman spirit to whom people pray around childbirth, slapped the baby's behind to hasten the baby to quickly get out from his or her mother's womb." No idea if it has much meaning beyond that, but I did notice that at several points in the second section, a connection is drawn between that spot and children/youth (which I suppose is obvious since it is something children tend to grow out of), and at one point he comments that he finds the idea of her having a mark which is only present in children to be arousing. When he calls his ex wife later, it is only because he wants to see his son. Maybe that predatory part of him finds the innocence of children appealing (I don't mean that he is a pedophile, but more that they also represent an innocence he no longer has and is trying to take back for himself or consume)? Yeong-hye's sister sees the happiness and desire to please in her son distressing as she knows that he will soon lose that and she cannot prevent it, so she abandons him for someone who never lost a mark that children grow out of.
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Jun 19, 2016 19:33
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If we're gonna start taking noms for next month, I want to recommend The Little Red Chairs by Edna Obrien. Both of these sound really interesting. I would like to read LitM, but could we maybe save that for August if these suggestions are appropriate given Brexit?
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Jun 28, 2016 20:29
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Her husband describes her as plain and even a bit ugly in the first few pages, but he seems to like that about her because it is completely unchallenging and undemanding of any effort on his part to maintain the relationship. He mentions that if she were beautiful, he would have felt pressured to prove himself a worthwhile mate, and he was happy that he could just sort of "acquire" her without any real effort. Once she stops eating meat and asserts herself in something, it's like he starts to notice her physically. She's no longer plain and unremarkable in his eyes, but initially attractive and then hideously grotesque as his section continues. He describes her as ghastly and corpse-like for the business dinner, almost as though she becomes uglier to him the longer she defies his expectations of her.
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Jun 29, 2016 16:43
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I enjoyed all the yelling and the analysis of Mel and others. The extra analysis helped me think through the book all over again.
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Jul 1, 2016 13:31
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:50 |
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Abalieno, take it from someone who doesn't really have a horse in this race - your posts are so disproportionately venomous and self-righteous that most of this just screams projection.txt. You don't seem to be actually reading Mel's posts, just sort of skimming them, pulling out the odd word or two that suits your own prejudices, and then using that to build a crazy strawman to attack. It's much like what you did with The Vegetarian by skipping sections and skimming it because you saw what you expected to see in it and didn't want to look any deeper or have to engage with the book as a whole. Everything is pretty black and white when you strip things of their context and pull out pieces here and there to suit your prejudices. I get that you really love the Malazan books and are extremely invested in them. When you invest a lot of time and energy into something over a long period of time, and someone doesn't like that thing, it often feels like a rejection of your own identity, even though it really has nothing to do with you. You are coming across as very insecure about your own identity as a reader and desperate to project those insecurities on the figure of someone else (Mel, in this case) so that you can fight a battle that's mostly just happening in your own head (in the sense that you keep coming back determined to resume a battle that has little to do with the BOTM and everything to do with your own prejudices).
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Jul 9, 2016 11:37
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