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Gifts from 2015: BookDragon’s Top 25, NYT’s The Year in Illustration

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I missed these two nice mentions before 2015 came to an end:

Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s BookDragon named Love Love as one of its top 25 of 2015.  Here’s what it had to say about it:

Love Love by Sung J. Woo proves that jaw-dropping dysfunction can make for some spectacular Schadenfreude.

Over at The New York Times, they picked a handful of best graphics for their The Year in Illustration list and guess what was there…

None other than the fantastic artwork by Jun Cen for my Opinionator piece back in April.

Thank you, 2015.  You were the gift that kept giving until the very last day.

Favorite Songs of 2015

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“I hope the world sees the same person that you’ve always been to me / And may all your favorite bands stay together”

Here’s a list of my top songs for this year, in an order that might be surprisingly mixable. These are not necessarily from 2015; I just happened to have heard them in the last twelve months.

When We Were Young, by Adele on 25
Budapest, by George Ezra on Wanted on Voyage
Jealousy, by Pet Shop Boys on Behaviour
I Can Change, by Brandon Flowers on The Desired Effect
Clearest Blue, by Chvrches on Every Open Eye
Want to Want Me, by Jason Derulo on Everything Is 4
Fire Under My Feet, by Leona Lewis on I Am
Queen of Peace, by Florence + the Machine on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
All Your Favorite Bands, by Dawes on All Your Favorite Bands
Karen Don’t Be Sad, by Miley Cyrus on Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz
Farmer’s Road, by Telekenisis on Ad Infinitum
Capable of Anything (8 Chamber Rock Song Featuring yMusic), by Ben Folds on So There
Superheated, by New Order on Music Complete
Talk About You, by Mika on No Place in Heaven
Just Like Me, by Betty Who on Take Me When You Go
Cradle to the Grave, by Squeeze on Cradle to the Grave
Crystals, by Of Monsters and Men on Beneath the Skin
Wherever Is Your Heart, by Brandi Carlile on The Firewatcher’s Daughter
Missing You, by All Time Low on Future Hearts
Nobody, by Selena Gomez on Revival

The snippet under the heart up there is from Dawes’ “All Your Favorite Bands,” whose lyrics seem apt to mention as my own favorite band, New Order, pretty much broke up forever this year (they put out a new album, but without one of their key founding members).  Musically, the highlight this year is Mika’s “Talk About You,” which never fails to put a smile on my face.

Haiku and Review: Eleven Movies

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It’s that time of the year…when I see a lot of movies.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thank you, Harrison
You owned this remake/retread
A new hope indeed.

 

MV5BMTc2MTQ3MDA1Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODA3OTI4NjE@._V1._SX95_SY140_The Martian

Why is Matt Damon
always needing to be saved?
Grow those potatoes.

 

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Keaton at the helm
of a newspaper story.
Second chance justice.

 

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Walking and talking
can only take you so far.
“Sorry, a system…”

 

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Heroic Tom Hanks
can do no wrong in Berlin.
Nicely made, but yawn.

 

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Sly Stallone can act.
Story is complicated.
You’ll stand up and cheer.

 

MV5BMjE0MDI3NTE5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzI3ODM2NjE@._V1._SX94_SY140_No Escape

It’s not quite Taken.
It’s actually a horror
movie in disguise.

 

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Yes, it is precious.
Artsy-fartsy to a fault.
But oh, such beauty.

 

MV5BMjM1NTc0NzE4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDkyNjQ1NTE@._V1._SX90_SY140_Terminator Genisys

This movie is bad.
Please, do not see it, ever.
Not worth the hate-watch.

 

MV5BMTYzMzc5OTkyOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzc3OTMyNTE@._V1._SX95_SY140_I’ll See You in My Dreams

A woman in grief.
Two men who bring her love, life.
Leading Blythe, at last.

 

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Saoirse surely shines
as the heartfelt immigrant
in this gorgeous film.

Love Love in Booklist Editors’ Choice: Adult Books, 2015

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Huge thanks to the lovely folks at Booklist who chose Love Love as one of the titles for this year.  It’s not every day that I get to share a list with Jonathan Franzen, Lauren Groff, and Anne Tyler!  Here’s what they had to say about their picks:

BOL

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The Adult Books editors have selected the following titles as representative of the year’s outstanding books for public library collections. Our scope has been intentionally broad, and we have attempted to find books that combine literary, intellectual, and aesthetic excellence with popular appeal.

And here’s the blurb for mine.

Love Love. By Sung J. Woo. Soft Skull, $15.95 (9781593766177).

Their father’s medical crisis reveals shocking lies and fractures in the lives of siblings Judy Lee, a 38-year-old temp who once dreamed of being an artist, and former tennis pro Kevin in Woo’s sharp, astute, and stunning novel of aging, loss, and disillusion.

Booklist, you made my year.

 

Cycling Guide to Lilliput (1-10), on Juked

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lilliput

 

Back in January, I encountered the works of a miniaturist painter, Dina Brodsky.  Some of you may have read an essay I wrote about her project, “Cycling Guide to Lilliput,” this past May in KoreAm Journal.  Simply put, I love her work.  And when I love something, I want to write about it.  Which is what I did, but it turns out I wasn’t done.

Thanks to the editors of Juked, you can now read ten tiny short stories based on ten of these Brodsky paintings.  This year, I’ve interviewed Dina twice to hear about her cycling journeys.  These stories of mine are based on her trips, but they are also works of pure fiction.  If that sounds like a contradiction, you’re right.  I’m not sure what is real and what is not anymore, as the tales she recounted and the tales in my head have fused together.

During the submission of these stories, an editor from another journal taught me a new word: ekphrasis.  Apparently this is what I was doing.  Wikipedia’s definition is “a graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art,” but what I really love is the etymology of the word: “From the Greek verb ekphrazein, to proclaim an inanimate object by name.”

To proclaim an inanimate object.  That’s it, exactly.  That is why I have written these stories, because I wanted to make these paintings come alive in my own mind, in the best way I know how, the only way I know how.

And now it’s your turn.  See the paintings.  Read the words.  Get on your bike and take a ride.

Inside the Writers House

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Inside_the_Writers_House_w._Sung_J._Woo

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of talking with Rutgers students via Inside the Writers House.  The event was conducted via Skype, which was great because not only did I not have to drive down there, but folks could also lay eyes on one of my cats.  We talked about my books and literature in general, an hour of stimulating conversation.  My hearty thanks to Alex Dawson who invited me and put the whole thing together.

One thing that Alex asked was if I could provide the students a writing prompt.  If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it’s basically just a little something to get the writing juices flowing; Writer’s Digest has an ongoing repository of them.  For mine, I read them this little short-short story:

I didn’t know your grandma would show.  How could I?  You said your grandma was out shopping, but boom, “Hi David, how’s your family?  How’s your job?” so I had to sock away all six balloons, and fast.

And your grandma is quick.  Darts around, up and down, old lady’s got top-notch vision.  Saw through my brown box that has two disco balls and says, “What is that?”

What could I do, Mary?  I had to show it.  And it wasn’t my fault.  It was your fault!  If you had rang just half an hour ago, our party would still…

I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t shout, but I know I’m disappointing you.  I know how much you want this to go smoothly.  You know that, right?  You my girl, baby.  Good days, bad days, always.

Anyway, so I say to your grandma, “Happy birthday, Mrs. Mills.  You got us.”  So your grandma looks around and says, “How many chairs in total?”  Wants fifty chairs.  So I gotta run out and bring back thirty additional chairs.  And now your grandma is looking at my music, what I was gonna play tonight, and says, “No, this won’t do, David.  It’s simply not a party without Lady Gaga.”

Mary, my darling, haul your ass, pronto.  Your grandma is nuts.  And I’m going crazy.

Do you notice anything odd about this story?  Perhaps the title will give you a clue: “A Surpris(e) Birthday Party.”

The e is in parenthesis because that’s the only occurrence of that letter.  Yes, this story does not feature a single use of the letter e.  This type of writing is called Oulipo, and I must thank J. Robert Lennon for introducing it to me.

Princeton Public Library’s Local Author Day

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It was great being at Princeton Public Library’s Local Author Day!  Not only did I get to be one of the featured authors, but I also got to deliver a workshop.  I’m a little late with this, but for those workshoppers who wanted a copy of the syllabus/outline I used, here it is.  We got some nice coverage of the event via the Princeton Packet, and I made a new Facebook friend, Ed Tseng, another author who happens to be a big tennis fan.  Thank you, Princeton Public Library, for inviting me to this fine literary event.

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I love you, Mets. I really do. Even if I haven’t shown it much.

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photoIf I may be perfectly frank – until this current postseason, I had not seen one single complete game of baseball all year.  And that’s including the live game I caught at Wrigley Field last month.  Even there, I left in the seventh inning.

If I may be even franker, I have not paid much attention to baseball in quite a few years.  Which probably also explains why my fantasy baseball teams have been so awful.  Not that I need an excuse for my usual subpar performance in my leagues – I kind of suck.

But now I’m glued to the TV set, because my favorite team, the Mets, have come out of nowhere and no expectations to be in the World Series this year.  In fact, they are less than an hour away from playing their first game against the Kansas City Royals.  And I am going to watch.

You can call me a fair-weathered fan.  I deserve it, even if I don’t think it’s entirely true.  No, the real reason why I’ve stayed away is because of Armando Benitez.  That was back in 2000, the Subway Series against the Yankees.  I knew as everyone else knew that we didn’t stand a chance.  And every time Benitez came out to “close” the game, I wanted to just turn off the TV.  But of course I couldn’t.

And there’s another reason why I’ve ignored baseball: Carlos Beltran.  Striking out looking to end the series against the Cardinals, the NL team I hate the most (I know you guys are the nicest fans in the world, but screw all of you, because when I think of the Cards, I see a slideshow of horror starring John Tudor, Vince Coleman, Willie McGee, Terry Pendleton, Jack Clark, Ozzie Smith…oh my goodness, please, all of you, leave my brain alone), nine years ago.

So it took almost a decade and a miraculous run to bring me back to my beloved Mets.  I did write about them earlier this year in the Times, so maybe this reunion was presaged.  My dear Mets, please believe me when I say I never left you.  I just couldn’t watch you for a while.  It was me, not you.

Now let’s win four more and bring the trophy home, okay?

Sung

p.s. You know that guy named Sungwoo who’s the Royal’s Superfan?  Well, guess what — my name is Sung Woo and I’m the Mets Superfan.  So consider me your bearded Spock (sorry, Star Trek reference), Mr. Sungwoo Lee.

Starred Review from Library Journal

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Thank you, Terry Hong of Smithsonian BookDragon, for loving Love Love!  This review was for Library Journal, and it came out on 10/15/2015.

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*STARRED REVIEW
At 40, Kevin Lee,  an almost-tennis-pro-turned-club-instructor, finds out he’s adopted when he tries to donate a kidney to his less-than-deserving widower father. The only clues to Kevin’s identity are an unfinished letter from his late mother with a nude centerfold of his birthmother.

Meanwhile, his younger sister, Judy, abandons her latest temp job, but takes a not-quite-budding office romance with her: Roger is late to their first date and dismisses a telling tattoo as a youthful mistake yet proves inexplicably devoted. Reeling from recent divorces, the siblings are, well, love-love for love. Both must leave – Kevin to San Francisco in search for his birth history, Judy to Cape Cod to recover from a rattlesnake attack – in order to figure out how to be whole.

Verdict: Woo is currently two-for-two with rollicking novels about Korean American family dysfunction starring a pair of New Jersey siblings. If Woo’s 2009 debut, Everything Asian, was charming and youthful, this new work is practically middle-aged, a biting, jaw-scraping, guffaw-inducing bit of fun complete with porn stars, rebel artists, and an aging, loyal dog who just might break your heart. Perfect for devotees of impossibly serendipitous comic fiction à la Carl Hiaasen and Tom Robbins and enhanced with multi-generational, cross-cultural depth.

Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, October 15, 2015

Published: 2015

 

10/22/15 7pm: Adopting an Identity @ AAWW (NYC)

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If you’re in the NYC area, please come on by to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop this Thursday evening!

Thursday, October 22 7pm
ADOPTING AN IDENTITY
with Lee Herrick, Tracy O’Neill, and Matthew Salesses
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
110-112 West 27 Street, Ste. 600
New York, NY 10001

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