BookPeeping

A while back, I did a bunch of elaborate posts in which I took note of what my fellow commuters were reading on the subway, and then I posted the books' covers and links here. I called it "bookpeeping" and it satisfied my literary voyeurism.

I have had some botched attempts lately. Two posts I can recall that never were posted because, well, sometimes people read boring books. Or sometimes, they are reading books that I can't find referenced online, or with different covers, and to omit them from my bookpeeping log seemed disingenuous.

So, I've decided to do only mini-bookpeeping sessions. You should also feel lucky I abandoned my podpeeping project (I caught a glimpse of someone listening to Outkast, but that was the end of it).

Anyway, on a crushing subway ride this morning, an attractive young lady with purple eyeshadow was reading this book:


From the University of California Press website:

Dictee is the best-known work of the versatile and important artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982). A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictee is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The element that unites these women is suffering and the transcendence of suffering. The book is divided into nine parts structured around the Greek Muses. Cha deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry to explore issues of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory. The result is a work of power, complexity, and enduring beauty.

Also, someone else was reading this: