A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

                                                                           

This novel is set in North Korea and has as it's protagonist a police inspector known simply as Inspector O. James Church is a pseudonym, the only information about him is what is on the book jacket: he is "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia."

This book take awhile to warm up but once you are sucked in you realize that Church knows his stuff and has some writing chops as well. The writing can be vague in places but the descriptions of the people and what it must be like to live in a place so foreign from our own shine through.

The main thrust of the story concerns O's efforts to solve a murder, the aforementioned corpse in the Koryo, but what it is really about are his struggles with the politics and infighting of his country. The scarcity of goods is emphasised and that really made me think about how lucky we are. Socio-economics aside, for the most part if we want something simple then we can usually just go to the store and buy it. The characters in Church's story don't have that luxury as almost everything is closely rationed and/or has to be smuggled in.

It also opens up a door into a word that most people know nothing about. Often we think of other countries as vague political entities but we forget that they are populated by regular people who are just trying to live their lives.

If you enjoy books about other cultures or would like to see North Korea form a different angle then check out this book. There are several others in the series as well. This debut was listed on many "best-of" lists and the featured in a panel by the Korea Society which you can find here. You can also hear Church discuss Kim Jong Un as successor to his father in an NPR interview.

As always, feel free to contact me at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

Prohibition by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

                                                                 

This is a Ken Burns PBS documentary on Prohibition. I usually review books but I finished watching this over the weekend and it was great. I knew a little about Prohibition but learned a great deal from this documentary.

The pro-income tax people were in cahoots with the Prohibition supporters for one thing. That just goes to show that politics really does make strange bedfellows. This film also details the fascinating story of George Remus, among many others. Remus was a Chicago lawyer turned Ohio bootlegger who had it all figured out, until he didn't anymore. It worth watching just for that story but there is so much more information packed into it. Burns does a great job in telling the story of Prohibition from many perspectives, not just the cops and robbers that we always hear about, but also from the regular people down the street.

If you like this, check out Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. I don't know if the film was based on the book but Okrent is listed as Senior Creative Consultant in the credits on pbs.org.

Also at PBS.org there is a great section where people can share their own stories about Prohibition.

Also Burns has made many other fine documentaries. Most people know him from his The Civil War and Baseball. I can personally attest that his documentaries on Mark Twain and Jack Johnson are both very well done.

As always feel free to drop me a line at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller

                                                                       

Live from New York is an oral history of SNL from it's beginning up to about 2002 as recounted by those who were there. In essence, the authors interviewed nearly everyone involved with the show, provided some narration to help with the flow, and then got the heck out of the way of the story. I wish more books were written this way as it was very refreshing to see the history of the show told almost exclusively in the words of the people who lived it.

As with any large group of people, there are differences in opinion as to how certain things happened and people with obvious axes to grind. It's all out in the open though so that you can judge for yourself.

I'm not a huge fan of the show although I do watch occasionally. I learned a lot of history from this book. I did learn that the show was an even bigger incubator for talent than I had previously realized. I knew the big names of the early cast as well as some of the newer people but I had no idea that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Downey Jr., and Anthony Michael Hall were cast members. Also Garrett Morris, who plays Earl on Two Broke Girls was an original cast member.  I've seen very little of the early stuff so I may have to check him out on DVD. The first five season are currently available on DVD.

Shales and Miller also wrote an oral history of ESPN, Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. I haven't yet read that one but if it's half as informative as Live from New York then it will be great.

As always, feel free to drop me a line at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

Books I Read as a Kid - Gordon Korman's Bruno & Boots series

                                                                           


I had all of these as a kid, except for the last one, Something Fishy at MacDonald Hall, which came out when I was older. They told the story of Bruno and his boarding-school roommate "Boots" and their friends. Over the series hijinks ensue as they interact with teachers, other students, and their headmaster, Mr. Sturgeon, nicknamed "The Fish." 

They are funny books but they teach a lot about friendship and standing by your friends. My favorites were, as I recall, This Can't be Happening at MacDonald Hall and The Zucchini Warriors. The former is the first book in the series and was written as an English project when Korman was only twelve. It's shorter and would be perfect for a reluctant reader as it's very entertaining.

Besides this series, Korman has written many other series and quite a few stand alone books. I also had an autographed copy of his A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag that the school librarian got for me at a signing and I read it many times.

If you've got a young reader, introduce them to these books. As always you can reach me at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com and on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

                                                                     

The Daughter of Time is armchair history at it's best. Tey's series detective, Alan Grant, is laid up with a broken leg. Having plenty of downtime, he investigates the allegations of murder laid by history against Richard III.

Grant proceeds logically through the evidence, aided by an able-bodied researcher. This is a great novel that draws you into the mystery. This is the best kind of mystery because you can do further research and make up your own mind. Historians are still arguing about the guilt of Richard III.

If you like historical mysteries then you should check this book out. When you've finished it and want to know more, and you will, check out the Richard III Society, both the UK and American branches. They both have huge amounts of information available.

As always, you can contact me at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

Books I Read as a Kid - The Great Brain Series

                                                                    


I loved these books as a kid. They told the stories of J.D. Fitzgerald, generally involving his precocious brother, Tom, the "Great Brain" of the title, his other brother Sweyn and their friends. The were set in the fictional town of Adenville around the turn of the century. It was a time when the West was still somewhat wild and the boys have many adventures, including rafting down a river and bringing the sport of basketball to their town.

Tom was generally scheming to make money and it generally got him into trouble. My favorite of the series is The Great Brain at the Academy in which Tom is sent away to boarding school. He gets into quite a bit of trouble there and runs a brisk trade in bootleg candy.

I would recommend these to anyone with young readers. They are great fun to read tell stories that will keep kids interested. For those looking to learn more there is a wonderful website called Finding Fitzgerald as well as a blog of the same name.

Feel free to drop me a line at jeffsemonis@yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.

Hotel Babylon by Anonymous & Imogen Edwards-Jones

                                                                     

Hotel Babylon is another of the sub-culture books that I love so much. It's a behind the scenes look at the luxury hotel industry, with the best stories of an industry veteran condensed into one 24-hour nightmare shift. I did learn a great deal about the hotel industry although I've never stayed in a hotel of that caliber.

The book is packed full of anecdotes about the outlandish things that people do when they stay in hotels. There are stories about many celebrities and the author isn't afraid to name names. It's set in London but I imagine that the mindset is the same  in hotels all over the world.

The author has several other "confidential" books; I haven't read any of the others but I am intrigued by Air Confidential.  There is also a Hotel Babylon series on the BBC network. Fans of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential will enjoy this one as will anyone who is curious about the high end hotel industry.

As always, feel free to drop me a line at jeffsemonis@yahoo.com or find me on twitter @jeffsbookcase.