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One of my favorite short stories which I read in college was Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivner." But Bartleby's got nothing on Yeong-hye. Her decision to become a vegetarian sends her family into a tailspin, as Han explores how an effort to renounce violence and reject the world's demands provokes a more and more violent reaction from those around her. Aspects of the story are absurd, but are told in a straight, just-the-facts-ma'am style that heightens the sense of how stark (yet simple) Yeong-hye's actions are. She determines, for her own reasons, to live as she wants, and the novel illustrates how challenging it is to take such a stance.

Han narrates, from multiple viewpoints and time periods, a 1980 uprising that was brutally put down by South Korea's military government. At the beginning of the book I was struck by how ordinary people banded together to help each other -- in this case, working tirelessly in a makeshift morgue to help families identify their loved ones, all the while listening for the army's return. Han evocatively carries the story through time and shows the lasting effects of the government's brutality. And yet, the novel also demonstrates that people can be moved to come together and fight for each other, even in the face of brutal, senseless violence.

Not the book I thought it would be, but still an interesting and worthwhile read. Cohen explores several sets of friends whose bonds are close without passing over into romantic love. Her work illustrates how impoverished our language, legal structures, and social norms are when it comes to describing and honoring these types of bonds. The stories she tells demonstrate that deep friendship is possible and valuable, and just how hard people have worked to make it work. The payoff, in an enriched life that others may never fully understand, seems entirely worth it to all the people involved. The book may lead you to question some of the conventions which limit how we let others into our lives.

Miller's book is a good overview of the history of the gag rule, a story with complex parliamentary maneuvering that Miller tells with patience and good humor. He has mastered the intricacies that John Quincy Adams used to press the issue and those that Adams's opponents used to suppress the same. The book features many lengthy quotations to give a sense of the proceedings (and get a sense of Adams's acerbic wit), but the citation format will be frustrating to the serious researcher attempting to locate the materials.