I have another book for you to check out. Also, next week I hope to have a website up and running to continue these recommendations, and to also have a Beanie book club. Let me know if you want to join in and be tagged when I get that together.

Every once in a while a book comes along that hits the sweet spot intersecting several of your disparate interests. This week’s recommendation, The Plotters by Kim Un-su is one of those books.

Writing the above lines, I started humming “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music:

Ambiguous morals and heroes so moody
Library settings and characters knitting
Organized murders tidied with ease
These are a few of my favorite things.

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    Okay, I know that didn’t really work, but can’t you just imagine Maria and Von Trapp kids calming themselves during a thunderstorm by singing about assassins? (Note: Thunder and lightning are currently putting on a show outside my window. Coincidence?)

    But, as always, I digress. So, in his only English translated novel, The Plotters, Kim Un-su imagines a well-organized murder-for-hire industry in South Korea. This thriller playfully crafts a hidden, yet influential, society of assassins and the infrastructure needed to plan, carry out, and clean up each job.

    Reseng, “was found in a garbage can. Or who knows, maybe he was born in a garbage can.” Raised in a convent until he was adopted at age four by Old Raccoon, Reseng grows up in a library. A library that serves as the criminal headquarters for Old Raccoon’s network, and is therefore, crawling with assassins, hired guns, and bounty hunters. And well, of course, Reseng slides easily into this line of work.

    But, as with most careers, there comes a time when a person becomes weary of what they are doing, question the meaning of their work, and ponder the value of the outcomes. Capitalistic economic factors, bureaucratic politics, and maybe even morality, begin to chip away at Reseng’s pride(?) in his work. Like any valuable, but yet mid-level, minion in a corporate structure, Reseng begins to wonder why he does what he does.

    To be honest, I’m finding it difficult to encapsulate this novel succinctly. At its core, it’s a thriller and a detective novel, but it’s also coming of age novel of sorts. Not just for Reseng, but for the economic and cultural structures of South Korea. There is a battle brewing between the old and the new, between tradition and cold efficiency, and Reseng is at a crossroads and needs to choose, not between right or wrong, to kill or not to kill, but rather, well, I won’t spoil it.

    This book was fun for me. First, because I love moral ambiguity. I love characters who skirt the lines of societal norms. In short, give me a nest of assassins and criminals, and I’m in. If you give me an assassin who lives in, and works out of, a library, and I’m doubly in. Add in a cranky, knitting librarian, a pair of quirky, possibly dangerous sisters, and now you’re really talking. Then add some dashes of philosophical musings, practical job tips (assassination related here), and literary references and touches throughout, and I’m gonna love you.

    If that sort of thing speaks to you too The Plotters might just be as enjoyable for you as it was for me.

    Side note: When I really like a book, and can easily imagine it being adapted into a film or series, I have a tendency to cast the major players. This one was easy. Yoo Ah-in is Reseng, and Kim Mi-kyung is quite obviously the cranky, knitting, librarian.

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      I hope The Plotter is enough of a success, that more of Kim Un-su’s work is translated in the near future. While it clearly contains many familiar mystery thriller elements, there is also a non-western feel to the plot and characters that I found intriguing. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know how it would be resolved, or if it would even be resolved, and I kept putting off reading the ending because I didn’t want to let Reseng and cohorts go.

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    I also want to talk about both the translation and audiobook readings of novels.

    Translation is an art in itself. As a person who is only fluent in one language, and despite studying three others, only attained at my best very elementary speaking and reading levels in the course of those studies, I hesitate to criticize the hard work of any translator. However, I’ve made a point over the few years to read more translated works. Usually, I find they are done beautifully, and I assume I am getting not only the literal meaning of the original language, but as close as it can come to the same style, tempo, and tone as the author conveyed in the original text. Though, sadly, this is not always the case as the controversy surrounding Han Kang’s The Vegetarian illustrates. (You can read about it here https://www.koreaexpose.com/deborah-smith-translation-han-kang-novel-vegetarian/)

    So, why do I bring this up? Well, if I had come across The Plotters three years ago, I would have breezed through it with little thought to particular phrases and titles, but since becoming familiar with dramas, and learning bits of Korean language, formalities, and terms of address, there were moments when I found the translation, well, irritating. I’m not sure if it is because of the genre, and the publisher’s likely target audience, that they made the decision to not use any Korean words. But, more than a few times I found myself wishing they had kept the Korean and just provided the reader with either a footnote, or a glossary explaining the term and its significance. My irritation was most pronounced whenever I came across the words “big brother” instead of the more correct hyung, as big brother doesn’t quite convey the relational complexity of the original term. I felt it was a dumbing down of sorts, and that the publisher is not giving the intelligence and cultural awareness of their readers enough credit. Oh, and don’t get me started on how they decided to spell character’s names.

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      Additionally, I read a lot of books by listening to them. Not only does this allow me to give my eyes a bit of break, but I can multitask and still hammer away at my never decreasing to-be-read list. While I am recommending The Plotters, I am not recommending the audiobook. If this had been a novel written by a western author, and set in a North American or European setting, I would wholeheartedly tell you to listen to it. The reader has a pleasant voice, an easy rhythm, and differentiates well between characters. I will even give him credit for correctly pronouncing names, places, and foods (as much as this non-Korean speaker can tell). However, the flavor of his speech, the modulation of his tone, and the accents he uses for voicing these very much Korean players, is so decidedly and obtrusively American based that it was disrupting my enjoyment of the book. For example, there was one thuggish, low-level assassin that the reader gave a vaguely New York Irish thug type accent. Ugh.

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        Thanks for pointing this out about audiobook vs reading. I was just about to add The Plotters to my cart for next month’s credit!

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          I didn’t hate the audio version enough to ask for a refund on my credit, but I will definitely be sending an email to the publisher about being more linguistically and culturally aware when choosing readers for novels.

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            Back to my cart. Add me to your book club list! I’m always up for recommendations!

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      On the note of Han Kang’s Vegetarian, I actually am thinking of reading the original (it will super hard for me, I am not there yet in my Korean but I want to try and see the controversy of the translation)
      Even then The vegetarian(translated version) will remain “the book” closest to my heart, there was never a book which talked about what I dreamed of so much, almost like the brother in law… It was scary but so close to heart… all three of them were a part of me and this was why it was so scary…

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        I started reading The Vegetarian but it was harsh. However I did read the authors other book called Human Acts – and that was powerful.
        So maybe I should try The Vegetarian again. One thing I usually don’t think about is the translation and if I’m missing anything.
        Thanks for starting this discussion/book group @egads!!!!!!!!!

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          I don’t about you , but I have a love hate relation* with food! And for years I have been telling my mom, that evolution went wrong way and humans should be able to photosynthesize. I even have a draft version of a sci-fi short story on my computer…. that should explain very well, why this book is closest to me! And why I identify so closely with every character in the book! And I was shocked and amazed and scared by it.

          *I love to cook food even though I may not want to eat it.

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            I think mine is mostly a love relationship with food. My waist and thighs are a testament to it!

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            I’ve had a complicated and adversarial relationship with food in the last few years, so I’ve purposefully avoided reading The Vegetarian. Particularly, since Human Acts was such a viscerally powerful read.

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          I am now reading Human acts and White book!

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      On the other hand, I don’t think I agree with everything written in the article above:

      Cho Jae-ryong, a literary critic and professor, points this out when he argues that Yeong-hye is “passive and even dream-like, suppressed by Korea’s patriarchal system.” In contrast, the article states that Cho feels that “Smith’s incorrect interpretation portrayed her as someone who is active and rational.”

      This is not true at all, the critic dreamt of it on her own, at no point does it seem that Yeong hye is rational or active… (or defiant more just because of English words than because of her actions…)

      And the rest of the lines were totally meaningless as well about western readers asking for active and rational things ….

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      I have so much respect for translators. To be able to understand not one but two (or more) languages to such an extent is incredible and enviable.

      But I did also get irritated by the same thing whenever I picked up a Korean novel in the library, that because of my own personal exposure to the language, some of the translations were frustrating.
      This book sounds fun though. I’ll try check it out at some point.

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        I think what frustrated me most with this translation of The Plotters is not the skill of the translator, but rather I think I see the heavy hand of a publisher trying to appeal to an audience that might not want to read a “foreign” book.

        I am in awe of translators to be honest. And then to be a translator for a piece of art….good golly, a truly enviable artistic skill in itself.

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      I’d like to be added to the bookclub please. I’ll probably be an underperformer until life mellows a bit though.

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    I want to be a part of the beanie book club! ^^

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    Me me – I’d love to talk/writeabout/discuss books!

    I like how you write about the book and your thoughts. It makes me want to try and explain more coherently how and why I loved Tara Westmoreland’s memoir “Educated”. I spent most of last weekend working and listening to it.
    Now I’ll look for The Plotters.

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      Educated is so good, and a horrifying look at into a subsection of US culture.

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        I am reading it now! I look forward to both of your comments on it!

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        Oh dear it was horrifying. Some of it resonated with me as one of 9 kids in a big catholic family – my dad wasn’t quite like that, but he had a temper.
        The other part is one of my older brothers is a born-again-fundamentalist christian – and not in the most open-minded way. He had created something of a bunker for Y2K and I think all 9 of his kids were home-schooled. Yes it reminds me of him I just realized.
        His eldest daughter left the family when she was 17 or 18 – I don’t know if anyone has contact with her.
        It just goes to show that religion can be very very divisive, but a good solid education is critical!
        But Idaho is a gorgeous state…

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        I just finished listening to Educated last Friday! So good!

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          Did you listen through Audible? The narrator was fantastic in all her voice of the people in the book.
          I read somewhere that her brother (can’t remember which one – but also one of the bros with a PHD) actually commented on her book on Amazon. But it was taken down. I’ll see if I can find the link to the site where I read it.
          Essentially he said that some of the things she remembered were different than his memories – but on the whole he thought the book was very well done. yeah

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    Sign me up! Beanie book club!

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    Thanks for recommendation, I would love to join book club for Beanies.
    And about translation, I checked local bookstore, and my language version is translation from English, ugh I hate it, I have to look up the English version, it should be forbidden, doing translation of the translation of novels.

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      So much is lost in translation that I cannot even fathom how much more is lost/warped in translating from a translation.

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    I want to join the book club

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    I’d be interested in a beanie book club.

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    Yay, book club!! I’ll probably just be there just for recommendations but reading your guys’ discussions will be so much fun!

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    Yes a beanie book club would be so much fun! I’m still making my way through books everyone has recommended, I’m adding this one to the list.

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