Review: Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an excellent book. I read this all in one setting (ok, listened to it. Long wait at the doctor's) and enjoyed it immensely. 

At first it seemed a bit all over the place, but it was a great memoir / insight into David Starr Jordan's life / taxonomy / a couple of other poignant issues. 

I confess I had completely forgotten why it was in my library, but I just started it on spec. The audiobook version is narrated by the author and includes the author's toddler saying the word "fish" for the first time at the end! 

I should forget why I buy more books and start reading them randomly more often. If they are as pleasant a surprise as this one was, at least. 

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Review: Princess Bari

Princess Bari by Hwang Sok-yong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really don't know what to think about this book. 

I appreciate the idea very much, but in a way I feel like it was too much to tackle with one normal-sized novel. Had it been an epic, like The Odyssey, or Journey to the West, I think it might have worked better. Although maybe that's just in my head. 

As it was, some scenes just seemed random, or forced. Like the fire on the mountain, or some of the dream sequences. I got the impression they were inserted just to conform to the Princess Bari myth. 

This book had the depressing parts that any book about exodus from North Korea will have, but they did not seem gratuitous. 

However, the story arc with Xiang was probably what bothered me the most (Spoilers ahead!!). I mean, once Bari gains some comfort in life, she doesn't think to check on the one person who made it all possible (and lost her husband and got raped in the process). Instead, this friend shows up years later, a prostitute hooked on drugs, by her own admittance. And right away Bari thinks it's a good idea to leave her alone with her infant while she does laundry and grocery shopping?? I'm actually surprised child services didn't report her once the hospital found out about it (the book doesn't specify how much she tells the doctors about the accident). 

Anyway, maybe I'm being too "realistic" there. In my old age I guess that happens. 

I enjoyed other books by Hwan Sok-yong much more (see At Dusk and Familiar Things, both also translated by Sora Kim-Russell). 

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Review: Comparative Social Quality Between Taiwan and Korea

Comparative Social Quality Between Taiwan and Korea by Alan Walker Lih-Rong Wang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit, I'd probably be the first to gobble up any book of comparative studies between Taiwan and Korea, no matter what the specific subject. The topic matter has always attracted me. 

This is basically a collection of essays. I had to gloss over a lot of the data, since my chi-squared/ANOVA/SPSS days are long gone, but I found many of the conclusions interesting. I do wish there were an updated edition, however. 

Some of my notes:

Koreans seem to have a much more positive view of Capitalism than Taiwan (I wish they had an updated study for this). 

It seems like South Korea's financial expansion was quicker and greater than Taiwan's, but Taiwan's was more stable (and more equitable?), so when the 1997 crisis hit, Korea was much more affected than Taiwan. 

"When asked for their subjective responses to the word 'capitalism' the terms most frequently chosen in Korea were 'affluence' and 'economic growth' whereas in Taiwan, they were 'economic inequalities' and 'competition'" (p. 11, Graph w/ data: p. 76)

"In general, Korean workers, whether male or female, typical or atypical, are less satisfied with their work than their Taiwanese counterparts." (p. 57)

"High income can lead to better health. High income also results in distrust. Finally, distrust brings better health." (p. 60)

"For interpersonal trust, Taiwan again received a higher score than Korea" (p. 61)

"Growth has been stable in Taiwan but not in Korea; Korea has a centralized industrialization strategy focusing on big business and Taiwan a diffused industrialization strategy focusing on small and medium enterprises." (p. 75)

"The South Korean case can be characterized as recent and rapid financial expansion. This may have caused severe work insecurity over the recent decade, in turn leading to the currently downward class-identification trend..." (p. 106/107)

"The Taiwanese case shows earlier but stable financialization." (p. 107)

"Thus is seems that the economic crisis had considerably more negative impacts on the situation of people living in Korea than Taiwan". (p. 157)

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Review: The Canning Factory

The Canning Factory by Hye-Young Pyun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every book by Pyun Hye-Young requires some preparation on my part. They all have that atmosphere of loss of control, creativity and humanity, and this is no exception. This was a short story, so I think I preferred it, since it didn't drag me down quite as deep as The Hole did. 

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Review: Ayoade on Top

Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am assuming anyone interested in reading this book has seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0BWXXM8Q9o

Also, the book is literally what he says it is. A scene-by-scene rundown of the movie, with snippets of his life and other factoids inserted here and there. 

Anyway, I'd recommend getting the Audio version, since Ayoade narrates it. Then you get to spend the next few days having Richard Ayoade giving you an in-depth analysis of a movie you never had any desire to watch. 

5 stars. 

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Review: Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent book, and the best I've encountered thus far for learning a new language. 

His main three points:

1. Work on your pronunciation first.

2. Don’t translate.

3. Use spaced repetition.

Some of my (quick) notes:

- Find a good grammar book. Don't go through it in order, but keep it for practice.

- Spaced repetition  - use Anki, with images and (possibly) recordings

- Minimal pairs (this was superb. I know in Chinese there are plenty of sounds I just couldn't notice the difference between, while native speakers found them obvious. Using minimal pairs at the outset would have been extremely useful to me). 

- Forvo.com and Rhinospike are great websites. Check them out.

- Apparently children will ALWAYS learn "Mommy working" before "Mommy works". Interesting.

I can't say I agreed with his emphasis on the IPA. This is pretty darn difficult to learn, especially if you're just starting out, and seems like it would just add to the complications. 

Also, while there is a lot of emphasis on how to deal with languages that have masculine/feminine/neutral etc. (and some great methods for doing so), it was lacking quite a bit for languages like Chinese and Japanese, using characters. And some of his advice ("use pinyin in this scenario") seems a tad simplistic. Actually, I'd love for him to tackle Chinese, and then see what methods he develops for dealing with it (the tones, the characters, measure words, etc.)

And finally, toward the end his Spaced Repetition card recommendations got way too complicated for me. Probably because I'm not dealing with any elementary-level languages right now. But regardless, it seems like a lot of extra work. Still, if it's fun, all the better...

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Review: Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a book!

For some reason, I expected this to be a history of Chinese characters, from the turtle shells on (although the subtitle should have set me straight).

In actuality it deals with the modern issues that have come up, most of which was completely new to me, and all of which was fascinating.

From trying to figure out an alphabet in order to increase literacy, to figuring out how to build a typewriter for Chinese, to figuring out how to send telegraphs, to library cataloging, to the fork between the Nationalists and Communists, to making Chinese work on computers and Unicode.

Each of these involved dedicated people, which the author introduces us to, and among which I had only even heard of Lin Yutang.

Some of the other reviewers complain that it goes into too much detail, particularly as regards the technology. That's certainly true in my case, since much of it was over my head, but then again, had the author not written about it people would have probably complained about the lack of explanation.

4.5 stars

Here are some of my highlights:
"In the earliest study of regional dialects, a scholar, Xu Chen, in the first century took on the mammoth task of surveying the different forms of everyday speech. This early lexicographer worked for twenty-seven years, listing around nine thousand entries" (p. 16)

"Lu Zhuangzhang... developed the first phonetic system for a Chinese language by a Chinese. His 1892 SImple Script used fifty-five symbols... to represent the southern dialect spoken in Amoy."

He was following by Cai Xiyong "who developed his Quick script for the major southern topolect group of Min" (p.24)

Zhang Taiyan invented Bopomofo (p.40)

Today there are officially 8,105 simplified characters in circulation (increased from 2,235 in 1986) (p. 257)

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Review: Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech by Geoffrey Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating look into a fascinating company and its history, from its founding under BC Lee, to the legal scandals and travails of his grandson, Jay Y. 

There were quite a few points that amazed it. I think Samsung's international forays were the most interesting, highlighting the clash of cultures. It's crazy how the founder of Android wanted to sell to Samsung, and they laughed him out of the office (later purchased by Google, which apparently said it was their "best purchase ever")

Then Waze approached them for a sale, but again they didn't take it seriously, so Google bought that too, and it's now our Google Maps. 

Then Whatsapp! Although apparently Whatsapp decided early on it wouldn't sell to Samsung (Facebook bought them). 

Still, crazy to see some lay-ups it let go. At the same time, however, it had some immense wins (Ellen DeGeneres's selfie)

I confess it seems to cut off abruptly at the end, since Jay Y was on trial the second time, and we were awaiting an outcome as of the printing of the book. Seems like a supplement could have been added, given that he was convicted (and then later pardoned because he could help the US government apparently. Sort of like Lucky Luciano). 

Still, a great look into an interesting company, with some very interesting characters (many of whom, btw, seem to be on Linkedin!)

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