I’ve just finished reading Fishnets in the Far East, a dancer’s diary in Korea.
This is a book by a lady called Michelle E. Northwood. This is a very very very interesting memoir. I loved it.
Following you can hear the podcast with my thoughts, watch the video (if you can call it that), and read a cleaned up version of my review.
Listen to the podcast:
Watch the video:
The story
Michele went to Korea for six months in the 90s. She was very young at the time, only twenty years old. She turned 21 in the trip. She went to dance with two other girls. They were very different in shapes and sizes, and that ended up being a little bit of a problem for her, which we know later on.
The other two girls were very
distinctive. One was Rachel, who was young but had gone there before,
so she became the head of the trio. She was a little bit of a
narcissist. And there was Louise, who
was a don’t take s%#@t from
anybody kind of woman. So Louise was a very important presence in
Michele’s life.
Michele went there being very kind, very
non-confrontational. Because of things that happened in the trip, and
because of Louise’s presence, she learned to stand up for herself as
she became her own woman.
So this is a really fascinating of the book.
Takeaways
It has two elements that I I love, so these are the two main things that I cherish of the book:
One is that she went through the hero’s journey in the flesh. So you can see the transformation, you can see the external trip and the internal trip and how she ends up being a different person than the one
that left, and how all the transformation goes.
Of course this kind of transformation implies going through a lot of hassle and she went through a lot of hassle, but she conquered it.
It’s very heartwarming to see someone
conquering her own mountain.
So this is amazing about this book.
It gives you that feeling that it can be done for whatever mountain
you need to conquer.
The second thing that caught my eye was the cultural clash. Korea is a very different culture from England—and from Occident in general—and in the 90s, apparently, was very misogynist. So she really had a cultural clash in there.
It also makes me think about all this
stuff about microaggressions that we are seeing in the culture. I
mean, a guy looking at you five seconds it’s not harassment. Someone
hitting you in the face or in the butt is harassment. I think we owe
our boys to be a little bit kinder. But, of course, this can
be
controversial and if it triggers you in any way I apologize,
that’s not my intent.
My intent is to think things through and
learn about ourselves through looking at others. That’s why I’m so
fascinated about migration. Because when you go to live to a
different culture, yeah, things
are very very peculiar.
The tech side
Let’s go to a little bit of the
technical part.
It’s 3,000 and something long in my Kindle–3367
positions. It’s not a very very long book. It’s about 10 hours,
reading at normal speed and paying attention. I didn’t skip a single
page. I wanted to read all.
The edition is very good. I only found one typo, that was “now” instead of “know” and I didn’t singled it out, so I’m very sorry. One typo in the whole book is nothing, and I’m sure it will be corrected fast.
This is something that is very important for me: to read books that will not push me away of the story with too much fluff, lack of care for the product in the form of typos, weird structures or coherence problems (this is a biggy for me).
I do have weird expressions in my own writing. Not many of them get pass the beta-readers, and when they do, the editor takes everything out.
About the podcasts
I’m going to be reviewing books from Next Chapter, because I’ve seen that they work both with bigger authors and smaller authors (in the sense of sales), but they take care of the details. So when you get a book from them, what I know is that it’s going to be a well-written book, a book without typos. And the covers are beautiful.
So these are the two places where I’m going to be looking for books for reviewing: one is the Next Chapter authors because I’m working with them, so I’m interested in knowing other authors and knowing what they do. The other place where I’m going to be looking for books is the top 100 of Kindle, for obvious reasons.
Okay, that’s more or less it. I hope to be reviewing a book a week. Of course it can happen in a different way—you never know—and I’m going to put these podcasts in different places.
Final words
If you happen to find this useful, please, write a comment down here. I’m doing these just for the interaction, to find like-minded people.
I think it’s good to to build a tribe, especially in these days where we are all each one in their own
house.
So… be safe, take care of your family and have a great one.
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