Uncomfortably Happily

Author: Yeong-sik Hong
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770465340
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 580

Book Description
When the gentler pace and stillness of the countryside replace the roar of the city, but your editor keeps calling With gorgeously detailed yet minimal art, cartoonist Yeon-Sik Hong explores his move with his wife to a small house atop a rural mountain, replacing the high-rent hubbub of Seoul with the quiet murmur of the country. With their dog, cats, and chickens by their side, the simple life and isolation they so desperately craved proves to present new anxieties. Hong paints a beautiful portrait of the Korean countryside, changing seasons, and the universal relationships humans have with each other as well as nature, both of which are sometimes frustrating but always rewarding. Uncomfortably Happily is translated by American cartoonist Hellen Jo from the acclaimed Manhwa Today award-winning Korean edition.

Umma's Table

Author: Yeong-sik Hong
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770465332
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
The joy of food and tradition brings a family together Translated by Janet Hong Madang is an artist and new father who moves to a quiet home in the countryside with his wife and young baby, excited to build a new life full of hope and joy, complete with a garden and even snow. But soon reality sets in and his attention is divided between his growing happy family and his impoverished parents back in Seoul in a dingy basement apartment. With an ailing mother in and out of the hospital and an alcoholic father, Madang struggles to overcome the exhaustion and frustration of trying to be everything all at once: a good son, devoted father, and loving husband. To cope, he finds himself reminiscing about their family meals together, and particularly his mother's kimchi, a traditional dish that is prepared by the family and requires months of fermentation Memories of his mother's glorious cooking—so good it would prompt a young Madang and his brother into song—soothe the family. With her impending death, Madang races to learn her recipes and bring together the three generations at the family table while it's still possible. A beautiful and thoughtful meditation on how the kitchen and communal cooking—both past, present and future—bind a family together amidst the inevitable. Umma’s Table is translated by Janet Hong, a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the TA First Translation Prize and the 16th LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was a finalist for both the PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and longlisted for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award. She has translated Ha Seong-nan’s Flowers of Mold, Ancco’s Bad Friends, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass.

Our Happy Time

Author: Chi-yŏng Kong
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476730458
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Two flawed individuals form an unlikely bond in this story of love and forgiveness set in South Korea.

Stumbling on Happiness

Author: Daniel Gilbert
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307371360
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

The Plotters

Author: Un-su Kim
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385544391
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • A fantastical crime novel set in an alternate Seoul where assassination guilds compete for market dominance. "The Plotters’s first convenient comparison may be to the ever-expanding John Wick movies" --Los Angeles Review of Books Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind--a plotter--working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want? Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library," Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women--a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian--Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot. Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.

Happily and Madly

Author: Alexis Bass
Publisher: Tor Teen
ISBN: 1250195926
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Alexis Bass' Happily and Madly is a mature, twisty, compulsively readable YA suspense novel about a young girl who embraces a fate bound in love and mystery. Maris Brown has been told two things about her destiny: 1. She will fall happily and madly in love. 2. She could be dead before she turns eighteen. The summer before that fateful birthday, Maris is in the wealthy beach town of Cross Cove with her estranged father and his new family--and the infamous Duvals. Since the youngest member of the Duval family, Edison, is back from college and back in the arms of Maris’s new stepsister, her summer looks to be a long string of lazy days on the Duval's lush beach. But Edison is hiding something. And the more Maris learns about him, the more she’s given signs that she should stay as far away from him as possible. As wrong as it is, Maris is drawn to him. Around Edison, she feels truly alive and she's not willing to give that up. Even if it means a collision course with destiny. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

All Natural*

Author: Nathanael Johnson
Publisher: Rodale Books
ISBN: 1609615484
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
In this age of climate change, killer germs, and obesity, it's easy to feel as if we've fallen out of synch with the global ecosystem. This ecological anxiety has polarized a new generation of Americans: many are drawn to natural solutions and organic lifestyles, while others rally around high-tech development and industrial efficiencies. Johnson argues that both views, when taken to extremes, can be harmful, even deadly. Johnson, raised in the crunchy-granola epicenter of Nevada City, California, lovingly and rigorously scrutinizes his family's all-natural mindset, a quest that brings him into the worlds of an outlaw midwife, radical doctors, renegade farmers and one hermit forester. Along the way, he uncovers paradoxes at the heart of our ecological condition: Why, even as medicine improves, are we becoming less healthy? Why are more American women dying in childbirth? Why do we grow fatter the more we diet? Why have so many attempts to save the environment backfired? In All Natural*--a sparklingly intelligent, wry, and scrupulously reported narrative--Johnson teases fact from faith and offers a rousing and original vision for a middle ground between natural and technological solutions that will assuage frustrated environmentalists, perplexed parents, and confused consumers alike.

Your Best Happily Ever After

Author: Ginger Kolbaba
Publisher: Barbour Publishing
ISBN: 1634093267
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
Cinderella. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel. These beloved stories all conclude with, “. . .and they lived happily ever after.” We sigh, smile, and know there’s an amazing story of love, adventure, and redemption coming. We all yearn for a fairy tale life, but too often our existence feels less like the pages of a storybook and more like a bad reality TV show. From poisoned apples (sin) and Ugly Stepsisters (joy-stealers) to magic mirrors (real beauty is more than skin-deep) and glass slippers (God’s perfect calling for us), the truth is that as daughters of God, we can live the perfect story the Author has written for our lives—we can experience the happily ever after that He has penned for us, now, regardless of our circumstances! Writer, speaker, and surrogate fairy godmother Ginger Kolbaba offers encouragement, challenges, biblical insights, and a little humor on how God wants us to live and love our stories in the here and now.

Charlotte Sometimes

Author: Penelope Farmer
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681371111
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense. It’s natural to feel a little out of place when you’re the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she’s baffled: everyone thinks she’s a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare’s. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. Her teachers think she’s slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. If she doesn’t figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance.

Queerly Beloved

Author: Susie Dumond
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0593243978
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
A people-pleasing baker tries to find her place as a bridesmaid-for-hire. Will she finally find her happily ever after—and her own voice? “A delightful debut, perfect for any person who’s ever created their own place to belong.”—Casey McQuiston, bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue and One Last Stop FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot Amy, a semicloseted queer baker and bartender in mid-2010s Oklahoma, has spent a lifetime putting other people’s needs before her own. Until, that is, she’s fired from her job at a Christian bakery and turns her one-off gig subbing in for a bridesmaid into a full-time business, thanks to her baking talents, crafting skills, and years watching rom-coms and Say Yes to the Dress. Between her new gig and meeting Charley, the attractive engineer who’s just moved to Tulsa, suddenly Amy’s found something—and someone—she actually wants. Her tight-knit group of chosen family is thrilled that Amy is becoming her authentic self. But when her deep desire to please kicks into overdrive, Amy’s precarious balancing act strains her relationships to the breaking point, and she must decide what it looks like to be true to herself—and if she has the courage to try.