Friday, February 15, 2013

Recommended by Jan


One of the exciting aspects of reading is losing yourself in different worlds.  Two titles that Jan recently finished took her into the fictional world of a family living in modern day Korea, and into the Depression-era childhood in the Bronx experienced by a young Mary Higgins Clark, now a bestselling author.

Thank  you Jan, for sharing these with us!


PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM by Kyung-Sook Shin


When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom?

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.


Kyung-Sook Shin is one of Korea's best known authors, and the first Korean and the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize

KITCHEN PRIVILEGES: A MEMOIR by Mary Higgins Clark

"Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer, The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would later use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories.

Along with all Americans, citizens of the Bronx suffered during the Depression. So when Mary's father died, her mother opened the family home to boarders and placed a discreet sign next to the front door that read, "Furnished Rooms. Kitchen Privileges."


The family's struggle to make ends meet; her days as a scholarship student in an exclusive girls academy; the death of her beloved older brother in World War II; her marriage to Warren Clark; writing stories at the kitchen table; finally selling the first one for one hundred dollars, after six years and forty rejections -- all these experiences figure into Kitchen Privileges."  - From the publisher

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