What the Book!

In Itaewon, Seoul, only a few blocks from the Hamilton Hotel, and just up the hill from the fire station, lies What The Book, a basement bookshop with a nice mix of new and used English-language books (only English) . . . classics, sci-fi, children's, magazines, travel, etc. They also have a full web-order service, and, while not cheap, it is dependable. I've ordered books via them several times, and did so again today.

I recently started reading Mary Stewart's Arthurian saga . . . it is a bit dated (70's?) and so doesn't have the action that Jack Whyte's The Camulod Chronicles does, but is a nice read all the same. I bought a used copy of Stewart's first novel in her series at What The Book a week or so ago, and was going to order the second novel today, but luckily found a good used copy of it; so I ordered the third, along with Truman Capote's The Glass Harp and Jonh Cheever's Oh What a Paradise it Seems.

I also picked up good used copies of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (never read it and know nothing about him, other than he won the Nobel Prize) and David Guterson's East of the Mountains (he wrote the very popular Snow falling on Cedars, which I enjoyed a lot and which got made into a respectable film).

Another reason to visit this bookshop is that it is just a few doors down from an international food store that is packed with products from India, the U.S., etc. A bit frenzied but run by nice guys.