The other day I stumbled over this book entitled ‘The Two Koreas’ from Obersdorfer. I randomly opened it and started to read Chapter 5 ‘The Assasination and the Aftermath’. It was talking about the Assasination of President Park by the former KCIA director Kim Jae Kyu on October 26th, 1979. It felt like reading a fiction novel. The Assassination occured at the so called ‘Blue house’ the president’s mansion. Kim was executed in 1980.

I have decided to buy that book to educate myself more about Korean history. After all I have married into a Korean family. Learning more about his cultural background will help me understand him and his family better. I have so far finished a few chapters. It is pretty well written and gives an exciting insight about a small country caught up in a nightmare of (post) war cruelties, political power games and a socio economic struggle.

Alan Fletcher, a renowned art director, had published this book a few years ago. I stumbled over it in a bookstore. This book is like a magnet. You can’t get it out of your hands. You just have to buy it. It’s a true visual inspiration and is a compilation of drawings, quotations and interesting facts. It plays with our imagination and our brain. It’s a great brainstorming source and definetly belongs to one of my all time favorites.

..et encore une livre signé de l’auteur que je viens de recevoir d’un bon ami à moi: Fernand. J’ai une telle chance de rencontrer des personnes si remarcables et si ouverts dans le monde. Je me sens si heureuse. Merci Fernand. Je vais essayer de trouver du temps pour vous rendre visite un de ces jours à Genève. C’est promis!

1. Marie Antoinette from Stefan Zweig
2. The Aquariums of Pyongyang from Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot

The next on my list is ‘Eugenie Grandet’ from Honoré de Balzac. I started reading Balzac in high school and I totally got addicted reading french classics.

These are some of my favorite french classics I have read:

- Le Rouge et le Noir - Stendhal
- La peau de Chagrin - Balzac
- Le père Goriot - Balzac
- Germinal - Zola
- Antigone - Anouilh
- Mémoires d’iune jeune fille rangée - Beauvoir
- Madame Bovary - Flaubert
- Enfance - Sarraute
- L’amant - Duras
- Candide - Voltaire
- La Peste - Camus
- L’étranger - Camus
- Les Essais - Montaigne
- Bel Ami - Maupassant
- Les liaisons dangereuses - Laclos
- L’écume des jours - Vian
…and many more…

I specifically enjoyed this book

..merci beaucoup maman, jagee-ya, mes colleagues et mes amies, spécialement Fernand (puisque je n’ai pas eu l’occasion de vous remercier avant) pour les jolies cadeaux que j’ai recu:

- un bouquin avec des recettes
- Visiter Angkor - un magnifique livre sur l’histoire et l’architecture du Cambodge de Hy Sanh
- Le livre Marie Antoinette de Stefan Zweig
- Un bon pour une massage
- Un montre de Cartier - modèle tank francaise qu’il me faut encore regler pour mon petit poignet

Et Fernand, pour répondre à votre question: c’est sont 32 bougies sur le gateau

Hope you all enjoyed the new year celebrations around the globe. As for me I had been doing some travelling before and after christmas. I went to Metz in France and Venice, Italy for a couple of days with my boyfriend and then stayed another two days in Frankfurt where we attended the fireworks at the main river brigde. It was like a war zone. The air was filled with smoke and the ground was filled with glas and paper. In Venice I was able to visit this time the Peggy Guggenheim collection, a museum exhibiting mainly contemporary art, where I got a book from Paul Klee written in french entitled ‘la théorie de l’Art moderne’. My first book for 2007

Hier je suis tombé sur un magazin assez innovatif qui m’a attiré tout de suite puisque le magazine est me semble-t’il très créatif au niveau des photos et l’éditorial est contemporain. Les articles se portent sur la mode asiatique, des créateurs, des artistes et des top modèles. Le prix aussi est raisonnable (3 Euro). C’est certes un magazine à suivre pour ceux qui sont folles de la mode japonaise contemporaine.

What a nice surprise! Today I received a beautiful book of the swiss photographer Albert Steiner that contained pictures of the Engadin in Switzerland. I love travelling around and meeting wonderful people. Thank you Fernand! That was truly special.

This books tells the true story of this young honhyol, a mixed race child, who watches her mother’s murder. As a child, Elizabeth eventually gets adopted by an american family after spending some time in a korean orphanage…This books has caused quite some controversy in terms of validity in regard to certain facts but I guess it’s up to the reader to decide whether it is liked or not….

A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung

This book is truly emotionally compelling and a must read for everyone interested in cambodian history