Escape from Camp 14
One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
Author: Blaine Harden
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (March 29, 2012)
Amazon Link
Note: I received a review copy of this book free from the publisher, Viking Adult. The review posted below is based on my personal thoughts while reading the book.
Ratings: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
My thoughts:
North Korea. I have always been interested in this country for years so when Penguin approached me for a review, I instantly said yes. The book is about Shin Dong-hyuk life story, the only North Korean known to have escaped Camp 14, a prison/labor camp for the political enemies of North Korea.
Reading the first two to three chapters, I was a bit hesitant to read more because of the gory things (beating children to death, execution by hanging, firing squad, etc.) mentioned in this book and the fact that these are really happening in North Korea. I was so absorbed by it, felt like my eyes were glued to the pages of the book. This is the book I cannot say I enjoyed reading, it was actually painful to read Shin's story but I just couldn't stop. Imagine, Shin's first memory was an execution of one prisoner from Camp 14, he was just four, a baby to our eyes. However, for Shin, and other North Korean prisoners, babies or not, they must be exposed to almost "daily" execution.
Some years later, Shin was again forced by the prison guards to witness the execution of his own mother and brother. They were executed because they tried to escape. Reading this book was like reading Hitler's Holocaust stories. I nearly cried when I finished this book. How he managed to survive and escape from the brutality of North Korean militaries was absolutely unbelievable. No one escaped camp 14 but Shin did.
Frankly, I don't understand myself. Why should I be interested with North Koreans or even Hitler's stories? I don't really have an answer for that. Perhaps it is because every time I read things like this, I appreciate and value life more.
I highly recommend this, totally a life-changing book that one would not stop reading until the last pages of the book.
About the book:
The shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.
In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden's harrowing narrative of Shin's life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.
About the Author:
Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a roving national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine.
His most recent book is Escape From Camp 14. It's the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have been born and raised in a North Korean prison camp -- and to have escaped to the West. It will published in late March in the United States by Viking, and in much of Europe in April. In a pre-publication review, Publisher's Weekly said Escape from Camp 14 "reads like a dystopian thriller."
Blaine is also the author of A River Lost. It's about well-intentioned Americans (including the author's father) who dammed and degraded the West's greatest river, the Columbia. The New York Times called it a "hard-nosed, tough-minded, clear-eyed dispatch on the sort of contentious subject that is almost always distorted by ideology or obscured by a fog of sentiment." An updated and revised edition of A River Lost will be published by Norton in the spring of 2012 to coincide with a PBS American Experience program about Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia River.
Blaine's first book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, was described by The Independent (London) as the "best contemporary book on Africa."
Blaine lives in Seattle with his wife Jessica and their two children, Lucinda and Arno.
Gandhi (A Manga Biography)
Author: Kazuki Ebine
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Original edition (September 27, 2011)
Amazon Link
Note: I received this book free from the publisher, Viking Adult. The review posted below is based on my personal thoughts while reading the book.
Ratings:
★ ★ ★ ★
My thoughts:
I enjoyed reading this manga. It was a fast read as this manga/graphic novel is just 192 pages. I knew that Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian hero, and that he was the one who lead the salt march (for the Indian Independence). However, I was not aware of all the things he did for his country to be considered as a great man in India. I even didn't know the meaning of Mahatma until I read this manga. Mahatma means Great Soul and that Mahatma Gandhi's real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
This manga would be a great help to teachers of history. It's a great way to entice the students in reading his life. If all history books are done in manga/graphic novel style, I'm sure no one will get bored in reading them. I also recommend Gandhi: A Manga Biography to other readers looking for a unique experience.
About the book:
The life of a true twentieth-century hero told in a vibrant graphic novel format.
Through his quietly powerful leadership and influential use of nonviolent resistance in India's struggle against the British Raj, Mahatma Gandhi became one of the most revered figures of the modern era. While history has recorded Gandhi's words and deeds, the man himself has been eclipsed by maxims of virtuosity that seem to have little resonance in our everyday lives. In Gandhi, the third volume in our exciting new manga biography series, created in conjunction with Emotional Content, Kazuki Ebine combines a gripping narrative with stunning illustrations to share Gandhi's inspiring and deeply human story with a whole new generation of readers.
Developed in conjunction with Emotional Content.
About the author:
Kazuki Ebine is an up-and-coming manga artist and has won several highly recognized awards from the major comic book magazines in Japan. He lives in Tokyo.
Kitchen Counter Cooking School
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Hardbound: 304 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (September 29, 2011)
Amazon Link
Note: I received this book free from the publisher, Viking Adult. The review posted below is based on my personal thoughts while reading the book.
Ratings: ★ ★ ★
My thoughts:
This is not an ordinary cook book as this one could also be considered as a memoir. The author, Kathleen Flinn shares her experiences and journey after she graduated in a culinary school, the famous Le Condon Bleu in Paris. I enjoyed reading this book as I can relate to some of the stories Ms. Flinn shared. However, there were a few times in the middle where I did skim over it. As a beginner, I was expecting to see pictures to help me understand Ms. Flinn's recipes. I am so not familiar with almost all of the ingredients here so I had to search some in order for me to understand them.
Overall, I enjoyed reading Kithen Counter Cooking School however I don't think that this is a book to recommend for someone who has NEVER cooked before.
About the book:
The author of The Sharper Your Knife tells the inspiring story of how she helped nine others find their inner cook. After graduating from Le Condon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned with no idea what to do next until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chertenal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy and easy meals.
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School includes practical, healthy tips that boost readers' culinary self-confidence, and strategies to get most from their grocery dollar, and simple recipes that get readers cooking.
About the author:
Kathleen Flinn is the author of "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry," a memoir with recipes about leaving her corporate life to study at the venerable Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and falling in love along the way. Her next book is "The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices Into Fearless Home Cooks" (Viking/Penguin 2011).
A long-time writer, her work appeared in dozens of publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Smithsonian, Men's Fitness, the Globe & Mail (Canada) and USA Today. She serves as the chair of the Food Writers, Editors & Publishers section for the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). She is at work on two additional books and teaches both cooking and food writing Seattle.
El Filibusterismo
Author: Jose Rizal
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics; 1 edition (May 31, 2011)
Ratings:
★ ★ ★ ★
My thoughts:
El Filibusterismo (The Subversive) is the sequel to Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) written by Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines. Rizal dedicated this book to the three martyr priests Don Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, Don Jacinto Zamora who were executed by Spaniards on charges of subversion in 1872.
I first read this book (along with the first one Noli Me Tangere) as a requirement in my high school classes, of course the stories were written in Filipino. Fourteen years later, I was given another chance to read El Filibusterismo in English version (originally written in Spanish), provided by it's publisher, Penguin Classics. I realized it was a boring story then maybe because it was taught in school, never read it with much enthusiasm but now I found it an interesting story of revenge. I can only imagine Rizal's situation when this book circulated in the Philippines. I am not an expert of Rizal's work and the Philippines history but I think this was one of the many reasons why he was executed by the Spaniards. I enjoyed reading this book so much and would like to recommend this to readers of classic books.
About the book:
El Filibusterismo (The Subversive) is the second novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), national hero of the Philippines. Like its predecessor, the better-known Noli Me Tangere, the Fili was written in Castillian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages. A nationalist novel by an author who has been called "the first Filipino", its nature and a social document of the late-nineteenth-century Philippines is often emphasized. For many years copies of Fili were smuggled into the Philippines after it was condemned subversive by the Spanish authorities.
Characters from the Noli (Basilio, Dona Victorina, Padre Salvi) return while new ones are introduced: Simoun, the transformed Ibarra, Cabesang Tales and his struggle for justice; the nationalist student Isagabi; Indio priest Padre Florentino. Through them the colonial milieu is expanded-its official-dom, education, legal system, power plays, social patterns and see a new as context for conflict and insight. Translator Soledad Lacson-Locsin is the first to have worked from facsimile editions of the original manuscripts. The result is the most authoritative and faithful English translation to date, one which attempts to preserve in English the cadence and color of the original.
About the author:
Jose Rizal was one of the leading champions of Filipino nationalism and independence. His masterpiece, Noli Me Tangere is widely considered to be the foundational novel of the Philippines.
=====
Need catering equipment rentals? Try Swit Doll Events and Catering Rentals!
The Man In The Rockefeller Suit:
The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter
Author: Mark Seal
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (June 2, 2011)
Note:
I received a review copy of this book free from the publisher, Viking Adult (Penguin Group U.S.A.). The review posted above is based on my personal thoughts while reading the book.
Ratings:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
My thoughts:
I'm not really into non-fiction books so I tend to avoid them. When the publisher approached me, I was hesitant at first but I was glad that I accepted the request.
The book is about the "real" story of the "fake" man named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. A German who first came to the United States posed as a foreign exchange student in 1978. He was able to manipulate too many people. He first disguised himself as Christopher Mountbatten Chichester, a British baronet, who made the whole town of San Marino loved him. And then Christopher Crowe who was able to get a high paying job in one of the Wall Street investment firms, and then finally Clark Rockefeller who managed to deceive and marry Sandra Boss, a wealthy woman with Harvard MBA from New York. All these lies were believed for thirty long years!
Just imagine, he duped a lot of people including the whole town of San Marino (a whole town!), the Wall Street's super intelligent geniuses and his lawyer wife. I could not believe he was able to fool Sandra Boss for more than ten years. The only mistake that ended his lies was when he kidnapped his own daughter and his wife had him investigated.
I loved it, it was a well-written non-fic book. This is the one book that will certainly entertain you from the first page to the last.
About the book:
A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man.
The story of Clark Rockefeller is a stranger-than-fiction twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man-because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. At seventeen, obsessed with getting to America, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents and his journey of deception began.
Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts-culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a Rockefeller.
The imposter charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions-working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection-until his marriage ended and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a connection to the bizarre disappearance of a California couple in the mid-1980s.
The story of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is a probing and cinematic exploration of an audacious imposer-and a man determined to live the American dream by any means necessary.
About the author:
Mark Seal has been a journalist for more than thirty years. Currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he has written for many major magazines and served as a collaborator on almost twenty nonfiction books. Although he has written thousands of stories, Seal says none has struck a chord with readers more than the story of the incredible life and brutal death of Joan Root, which he originally reported in the August 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.
