Kim Jae Min Reading Journal Blog

Caring For Plants, By Hye-young Pyun (2017) 7/10 I found it interesting that not a single person in this whole story is likable. Oghi, pitiful and dismantled as he is, is a somewhat degenerate guy with pretty unlikable thoughts. The mother-in-law seems to be quite self-righteous with secret plans about everything. The caregiver possibly stole and drank during working, and secretly considered Oghi to be a cripple all along. The pastor seemed to be doing his job for the money. The only people we don’t really judge in this story are the therapist, who seems to be a decent guy, and Oghi’s wife, who is already dead. I guess this is normal, a bit even like real life. Everyone has flaws that they tend to hide from others to pass as a good person. Getting to close to that person, and getting to know all these flaws, may make us quickly hate that person. Does the mother-in-law actually plan to kill Oghi? I personally think she is pondering about it herself. She seemed to have mixed ideas ab...

 A Manual For Cleaning Women, By Lucia Berlin (2015) 8/10 I found the way this story was written to have more weak points then good points. I understood what kind of atmosphere the author wanted to deliver, but I don’t think this way of slicing up the story’s progress was that necessary. Personally, I think it basically made reading the story slow and hard to focus. I felt that this story delivered the feelings of the main character very raw. We are roughly introduced into the life of this weary, suffering cleaning lady. Her stories are realistic in both good and bad ways. Her thoughts and actions, choices are mentioned bluntly for the reader to judge, with only her descriptions to add to the details. Thus, although I found her to be likable and pitiful, I also wanted to keep my distance from her life. I guess since this story is originally from a collection of stories with the same characters, I would have better sympathized with the main character if I read the other stories....

Hunters in the snow, By Tobias Wolff (1981) 7/10   About Tub shooting Kenny, I believe it’s unarguable that we triggered it. Stating his hate toward three separate objects, shooting each of them, and then saying he hates Tub is definitely a severe menace. However, judging by Kenny’s character and the fact that the old farmer asked Kenny to kill the old dog, I believe Kenny wouldn’t have really shot tub. I found all three of these friends as total degenerates. Kenny is a wayward trickster who doesn’t know when to stop messing around. Tub is probably the least bad person in the gang, but he is a liar without self-control. Frank is obviously the worst person. He is a shameless pervert, and always distorts the situation cleverly so he and one other friend gangs up upon another. The three friends in this story showed a very strange form of friendship that functions partly on shared secrets and understanding, but mostly the stronger two allying against the weaker one. I found thi...

 Bullet in the Brain, by Tobias Wolff (1995) 8.5/10 Every detail of the robbers being so cliché while the story itself is everything but cliché was one of the parts I found ironic. The first impression I got from this story was that the author did his best to go totally anti-plot. It also felt like this story was ripped out of a longer one, in which we would probably get a better explanation about Ander’s character. Still, the compact writing did have its own charm. For the first few pages of the story, I felt Ander’s would be a tool the author came up with only to describe a scene he wanted to depict about. He just seemed too extraordinary and made up to be considered as a likable character. This view completely changed when I was done with the story. The author gifted Anders with so much character in the strangest way possible, and I loved it. Anders instantly transcended from a boring crazy guy into a man with decades of memories full of love, dreams and regret. I am surpris...

 The Swimmer, By John Cheever (1964) 7/10 I’ve once read an article about how people who suffer from schizophrenia lives in a world of total delusion. I was terrified that to a schizophrenia patient, everything he thought real and normal suddenly falls apart in a clumsy mess. It seems Ned suffers from a similar problem, which makes him think that he is living a peak life, while he is actually broke. He is living his days in happy, relaxed delusions, only to be struck in the head with the cruel truth every night. If I view Ned as an actual person, I don’t really sympathize with him. He ran away from reality and hid his mind in the past. However, I think Ned is supposed to stand as an example of many things. In a historic point of view, he might be American citizens or America itself, unable to return to the once glorious past anymore, but still grasping for control. Or, his journey may be a symbol of life, a slow, silent tragedy. My favorite part of the story was the evidences...

 The Five-Forty-Eight, By John Cheever (1954) 8/10 Until the last moment, I was positive this story would end with Miss Dent blowing a hole in Blake’s head. Yet she didn’t. All she wanted was to get over and forget him, and go on with her life. I found this very generous, since the things Blake did may not be crimes punishable by death, but still very evil. I think the best way to see this story is comparing Blake with Miss Dent. Blake has a house, family, job, and power, while Miss dent is probably broke, lonely, and unemployed. Frankly, he is much better off . However, if we focus on the actions of each character, this changes. Blake is a terrible person. He preys on weak people, cheats on his wife, treats his family like trash, fire people just without reason, and quarrels with neighbors. Miss Dent may be mentally unstable and low self-esteemed, but unlike Blake, she decided to not hurt the opponent at the last moment. Blake may have better social status, but Miss Dent is the ...

 The Enormous Radio, By John Cheever (1947) 7/10 I sometimes have a strange paranoid horror about what would happen if someone near me could read my mind. So just in case, I intentionally think “I know you are reading my mind, get out.” so the possible mind reader would be terrified and run away or whatever. I know this is stupid, but I guess that’s how much people prize their privacy. I actually think this privacy is what keeps the human society together. If everyone knew what kind of person everyone else exactly were, we would be so disgusted of this world. The ability to know exactly what kind of people others are may be considered a gift to some, but for most people, it would just make every single social exchange painful. Considering how this story was written in the 1940s, the idea of a magical radio could have been interesting when it was published. I suppose people who read this story before magical machines became a cliché would have found this story more interesting. ...