"I read your book." | Sung J. Woo

Last night, I drove to the Brielle Public Library to do a reading/signing.  When I walked up to the front doors, I saw the poster they’d created for me.

You might notice a slight problem with the poster.  I walked through the doors laughing my head off — I don’t know why, but I just found the badly pixelated photo of J. Robert Lennon and his expression hilarious.  One of the librarians explained they don’t do the posters themselves, headquarters does, and for some reason, they used the photo I’d taken at Cornell, and for some even more inexplicable reason, they used Lennon’s picture instead of mine.  I don’t know…maybe he looks more like me than I do.

In any case, I got there and set up in their magazine room.

That’s what the room looked like at 6:15pm.  We’d get started at 6:30pm.  This is what the room looked like at 6:45pm.

I spent the time reading Ladies Home Journal, an interview featuring Nora Ephron, Meryl Streep, and Amy Adams, about their new film Julie & Julia (it was basically a fluff piece, but great photos).  At five to seven, I realized that I was going to experience my first bagel.  Not bad, I suppose; I’d done over twenty events before this one and had avoided it thus far.

As I was just about to pack up, an old friend showed up.  Saved!  And in a big way, because we ended up talking for a good hour about books and movies and everything else we used to talk about when we worked together many years ago.  I had an audience of one, but it turned out just fine in the end.

It’s been a while since I had time to watch four movies over a weekend.  Movies are fun!  I should do this more often.  Some of these have been on the backburner for a while; we’re talking a couple of years.  These haiku are not exactly reviews, just reactions.

	The Hangover Not really sure why I didn’t find this film funny Old School, that I liked
	Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Chris “Charlie Nash” Klein when his nostrils flare out, they’re Holland and Lincoln
	Death Sentence Kevin Bacon is Charles Bronson with a conscience Still he kills a bunch
	Crank: High Voltage Ten times funnier than The Hangover, enjoy the Godzilla scene

Of the four films I saw, Crank: High Voltage was my favorite. It’s just a crazy movie from start to finish. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first one, but this one is a ten in my book.

A quick update:

1) I’ll be partaking in Significant Objects, a very cool project that’s run by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker.  From the website:

A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

So if you feel a hankering for some significant eBay chachkie like this one, go for it.  I’ve been buying and selling stuff on eBay since 1998, so I look forward to having my item listed.  I believe it’ll be up in a week or two.

2) On May 2010, a nonfiction piece I wrote for KoreAm Magazine will be included in a New Jersey anthology aptly titled What’s Your Exit? From the website:

Punk rock-spirited independent publisher Word Riot Press will release What’s Your Exit?: A Literary Detour through New Jersey in May 2010.

The anthology, edited by Alicia A. Beale and Joe Vallese, will include feature new and previously published work from over 40 writers.  Among the book’s contributors are Joyce Carol Oates , Tom Perrotta, Robert Pinsky, Jason Biggs, J. Robert Lennon, Alicia Ostriker,  Paul Lisicky , Louise de Salvo, Donna Steiner, Joe Weil, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lee Klein, Suzanne Paola, James Richardson, Susan Fox Rogers, Gerald Stern, JC Todd, BJ Ward, and Sung J. Woo.

It goes without saying, it’s an honor to be included with so many talented writers.

On Thursday, I spent the evening with the Korean Community Center of Greater Princeton’s Women’s Club, where we had a lively discussion of my novel.  What an honor it is to have this many people interested in my book — it’s all an author can hope for.  The event was also mentioned in the Korea Times!

On June 25, I did a reading in New York City for an event titled “Generation XYZ,” where I read from an original essay, some parts of my novel, and a flash fiction piece.  Everything was captured for your viewing pleasure, so click on the big fat play buttons in the middle of the videos below.  To read the essay itself, you can go to The Nervous Breakdown.

1) The first part of the reading, where I read from the essay, “sang” a part of a song, and read from the novel.

2) If you are curious about the singing part, you can listen to just that portion here.

3) The second part of the reading, where I read my flash fiction piece “Confessions of My Wart, Which Is on My Right Foot, Second Toe.”

The panel (New Currents in Korean American Literature: The Origin and the Distance) at the Korea Society on Wednesday night was wonderful in every way.  Not only did I get to meet and talk with a pair of fantastic writers (Ed Park and Janice Y.K. Lee), we had a great time discussing books and language in front of a captive audience.