Megan Yu > Recent Status Updates

Slow burn and world building on another level. The inspiration it takes from Russian fairy tales remind me of Shadow and Bone - but even slower, though just as well written and more mature, serious.

Finished "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women". This is an excerpt from Murakami's novel, "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", would be interesting to read the novel.

Read 2 stories from this collection:

A Strayed Allegiance
It’s clear these are Montgomery’s early works because this was a very simple story with a simple ending, but I appreciate that! I also love the emphasis on strong women who make their own decisions in these works.

The Red Room
Another simple but more adventurous read. We don’t always know much about the characters, but become invested in them quickly,

It’s slow progress but after 4 years I’m coming back to this book and rereading it in the original Korean <3

This reminds me of how much I love short story formats haha, it’s such a joy to see the techniques and attention to detail in these pieces, I’d really love to read these in Korean.

At first the prose seemed a tad bit dry (perhaps the result of translating from stylistic choices originally made in German), but after getting through the first few scenes it's easy to become totally absorbed in the story. Constantly switching between different third-person POVs can be tricky, but considering it's done multiple times in a single page, Hess uses this tool quite successfully.

started reading on 4/10

gets more and more heartwrenching with every section, because even if its fiction it really isn't. all of this pain is real and buried deep in korea's history and its reality today.

I'm reading the physical book copy, and it's so nice having the comic in my hands to flip through, but it's also available here and just as beautiful: https://www.onasunbeam.com/

This graphic novel is absolutely stunning, read almost a third of it in a sitting.

Need to put this book down for a bit. On the surface, it's not difficult to read. But it's a book that takes time to absorb & revisit. It sinks through you & fills you with a sense of being picked apart. It's not that Demian presents entirely unheard of ideas about religion & self, but that it awakens an awareness that these ideas have existed in you, in some way. In questioning Sinclair, you question yourself.

Read Before & After Liberation by Yi Taejun (p 235-73) for class. This piece presents a rare glimpse at the change that connects Korea pre- & post-liberation through the eyes of Hyon: in particular, the pre-1945 passive, idealistic dream of liberation & embracing the return of an old Korea, vs. the actual political conflict & irreversible discarding of tradition that occurs post-liberation. Intend to read the rest!

Read pages 81-88 for a class: The Photograph & the Letter by Kim Tong-In. Stylistically it's engaging, and 김동인's work is a lot more colloquial than other works during this early era of modern Korean fiction. It's an interesting twist on the battle of sexes theme, & I like the flow of the translation (vs Grace Jung's). Outside of class, I'd like to finish the rest of the anthology and read them in the original Korean.

Started again yesterday and it's just as beautiful as I remembered.

Yet another amazing comic, I love the way Satrapi isn't trying to tell the story for everyone but provide another perspective of Iran. Will write a more in depth review of this when I finish.

This has been so incredibly moving. I think I've said that too many times already, but this second volume especially, in context of the first, is so tinged with guilt and tenderness. I'll come back and write a more in-depth review on this in a bit - I think that's the least I can do for this comic.

You begin to read it differently, the farther you get in Maus. The differences between the first and second volume of Maus are so complex - the artistic choices, the stylistic choices, the voice, the text...

Finished volume I of Maus, and it is just so incredibly moving. I've probably said this already. But that last page of panels... This is a novel that needs to be read.