Kim Jae Min Reading Journal Blog

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,  By Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1968) 8/10 I had one question after reading this story: Is the old winged man an actual angel? His feathers did have magical effects. Unintended, strange and comical effects, but still magical they were. Also, the flaps of his wings caused terrifying wind, and the doctor did say that his wings seemed to be perfectly logical. Could all this be a Christian miracle? Or maybe he was just a perfectly normal being. The letters from Rome were asking whether the old angel was Norwegian. Near the end of the story, we learn the angel was speaking in ancient Norwegian. Maybe Norwegians in this world grow wings and feathers with random magical abilities if they live long enough. But I guess all this never actually mattered to the townspeople. All they wanted was either money, entertainment, and a cure for their condition. Even Father Gonzaga , who seemed like a true Christian, seems to find the presence of a could-be ange...

   The Handsomest Drowned Man i n  The World ,  By Gabriel García Márquez  (1972) 8/10 The story remineded me of a short film I saw on Netflix named <The Drowned Giant>. The story of the film is quite similar with this short story. It starts with a giant corpse washing onto a shore next to a town. Only, this giant is much, bigger than Estevan. However, this is not the biggest difference between the two giants. While Estevan is considered handsome and is loved by the townsfolk, the giant in the film is treated like nothing more than a rare entertainment. This difference becomes greatest at the ending. While the townspeople in Marquez’s story decide to change their whole town as in honor to Estevan, the giant in the film rots away until only his bones are left, which the townspeople greedily strip away as a souvenir. Both stories were strange and magical, but also weirdly realistic at the same time. What could have caused the difference between the two ...

Barn Burning, By Haruki Murakami (1992) 9/10 After reading three short stories written by Haruki Murakami, I guess I can say became quite familiar with his way of writing. He seems to show several unique features in his stories.  One of these features are not naming his characters, Not naming his characters seems to put us in a strange distance with the story. We are not too close to the characters, but we are just close enough to immerse in their story as a third person.  I also sensed that Murakami enjoys making his characters commit crimes, and also making these crimes seen harmless and meaningful. Through good buildups he made robbery and arson seem like a strange but acceptable action.  One difference 'Barn Burning' has with the other stories is that it ends in a mystery. Did the man actually burn the barn? Was he lying about the whole thing all along? Both we and the narrator would never know. Just as the narrator lives on with the idea of the barn in the back of hi...

 The Second Bakery Attack, By Haruki Murakami (1981) 9/10 Only after re-reading the story one more time to check whether there are any parts I might have missed, I realized that everything that happened in this story is unbelievably illogical. Waking up in the middle of the night in severe hunger is surely possible, but how in the world did that conclude into robbing a McDonalds and taking thirty bigmacs? It’s amazing how the author was able to make the situation seam logical and smooth. It was quite strange how what the couple did was a crime, but is still so humorous. Something about Haruki’s ways of explaining details such as the sleeping customers and paying for the drink makes even the most intense situations feel comical than serious. It gives the whole story a magical atmosphere. My favorite part of the story was how the narrator explains his feelings like floating on the ocean right above a volcano. It was very wholesome when the narrator decides to let the waves take h...

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, By Haruki Murakami 9/10   Love at first sight is probably the most cliche things to happen in a love story. But despite the fact it has been overused so much more times than it should logically be, it still makes us feel an unexplainable warm excitement. Maybe that’s why love is such a magical thing. It cannot be explained, it's not logical at all, but still, it’s it is the greatest beauty of life. About the term ‘100percent’. I first found it a bit too numerical and direct. It felt wrong to explains love in numbers, probably because I was used to writers explaining love with long, fancy sentences full of mellow words. However, when I reached the end of the story, I concluded that it was a special and honest way to explain affection. I found the part where the man explains the concept of a boy and a girl who lost their memories and met after years have passed to be very  intriguing . It was a strange but af...

 The Dead, By James Joyce (1914) 9/10 Throughout about 80 percent of the story, I felt that this story was basically like just another story in Dubliners. The only difference was that instead of focusing on few characters throughout the whole story, the character this story focused on changed every few passages. I supposed it was nothing more than just an experiment where the author tried to show many characters and teach various lessons by making a dull main character face mildly individual characters one after another. When I reached the part about Michael Furey however, I realized I was so wrong. It felt like a giant puzzle was all coming together. Every small part of the story, the details about how old the sisters are, the short talk about their dead relatives, the conversation about the monks sleeping in coffins, the speech about change of tradition, all this led to one great conclusion, that the dead will forever live among the living as influence and memories. The great...