I just finished Crying in H Mart, a memoir by Michelle Zauner, which mainly focuses on her relationship with her Korean mom.
This summer, it seemed like I saw this book everywhere, so I put it on hold at the library, and it has taken until now for my copy to come in.
Luckily, I am rarely in a hurry for a book, so I never mind when I am #87 in the queue, as was the case this time. I just click the hold button and then forget about the book until it comes in!
This is kind of a sad memoir (the title kind of gives that away!) because Michelle’s mom died of cancer when Michelle was only in her early 20s. She and her mom had a rather rocky relationship as she grew up, and just as they were managing to reconnect as adults, her mom got sick and died.
So, the loss stings doubly…it seemed like the best years of their relationship would have been those to come!
Food is one of the largest themes in this book, and the main thing I came away with is that traditional Korean food is impressively full of vegetables and lean meats. Michelle and her family ate so much seafood and so many vegetables, including plenty of seaweed. And one of their breakfast comfort foods was a tofu and vegetable stew.
I feel like my diet generally leans toward the healthier side of American eating, but still, when I think of a breakfast comfort food, nothing with vegetables comes to mind!
(Sweet rolls? Yes. Tofu stew? No.)
My favorite sentence from the book because the accuracy made me laugh: “In the course of those biannual visitations, at the age of 12 and nearing the peak of debilitating insecurity….”
Most of us who have been 12 or 13 do not remember that age as a time when we were brimming with confidence, so this sentence probably rings true for most of us!
It was nice to take a little detour from my long trip through the world of medical memoirs, but now that I’m done with this one, I’m diving right back into my next medical memoir, one about nurses. 🙂
What’s the last book you read?
(And if you read Crying in H Mart, I’d love to know what you thought!)
I read this book this past year also. Overall I liked it; it DID read as a part medical memoir to me simply because Michelle was so open and brutal about what cancer death looks like. There were parts of her relationship with her mother that were hard to read and things her mother said and did that were horribly sad and traumatic and now she has to resolve those things on her own, because her moms gone and because despite the hard things she did love her. It was sadder in that way for me than just simply knowing her Mom died, I guess. Relationships with your parents can be so fraught. I’m glad Michelle married her husband-he sounds like a really good guy and good support.
Hi Kristen,
What a coincidence that your subject today is about books. My copy of New Morning Mercies just came yesterday in my Amazon delivery and I never would have ordered it if I hadn’t seen it mentioned on your blog. The last book I read was Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. And now I know what the next book I pick up is going to be. Have a great day!
I also ordered a copy of the book from ebay.
Kathy
The devotional.
Ooh! I love hearing about what other people are reading, so I can’t wait for others to chime in, too!
I just finished What the Eyes Don’t See by Mona Hanna-Attisha. It’s about the Flint (Michigan) water crisis a few years ago. The story was pretty incredible and I’m glad I read it. I remember when the events hit the press. I’ve seen how the Flint water crisis has left ripple-effects on our part of Michigan even though we’re not right next-door to Flint (like a few years ago when our city was having water issues and the city assured us that the water was safe, we were super skeptical and thinking, “Yeah, we’ve heard that before. Get an independent test.”) I thought it was well-written and really intriguing for a nonfiction book.
Kristen, the author is the pediatrician that discovered that there was lead in the water in Flint. I know many others have recommended medical-based books for you so maybe this one would fit the bill, too. She’s also an immigrant and weaves her story in throughout the book.
I just finished Crying in HMart this morning! There were so many things in this book that resonated with me in both fondly nostalgic and uncomfortably close to home ways- the food, kimchi, the descriptions of the maze of foreign travel, not being able to communicate with your relatives, figuring out one’s relationship with your parents…. I miss going to my favorite Korean restaurant- it is such a communal experience and I’m not sure when we will be back, given COVID.
I’m the child of Taiwanese immigrants, and this line was my favorite:
“…Am I even Korean anymore if I can’t remember what brand of seaweed we used to buy?”
I feel that whenever I go to HMart myself- it’s so familiar and full of comforting things, but at the same time I never know what anything is.
Sometimes I found the book hard to follow because not everything in the book is strictly linear, but i guess that is also the nature of recollection.
The last one I finished was “Never Done: A History of American Housework” by Susan Strasser. I find the subject interesting, but the book was basically an expanded version of a PhD dissertation and it was honestly a little boring. I’m currently reading “A History of the Wife” by Marilyn Yalom, which is also very interesting and much easier to read.
Ask Again, Yes
Where the Crawdads Sing
The Book Thief
The Giver of Stars
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
Loved them all.
I’ve read the middle three. Where the Crawdads Sing was fantastic, wasn’t it?
It sure was! My sister had recommended it to me and it was so much fun talking to her about it after I finished reading!
Well, I have a junk food book diet compared to all these. I read and edit trade publications and church materials for a living, so nonfiction holds little appeal, frankly.
I’ve been on a RaeAnne Thane kick recently (completely harmless Harlequins) as a stress reliever.
The book I’m partway through and will likely finish tomorrow is Daughter of the Morning Star by Craig Johnson. His first half-dozen books were much better than this, his 17th, but I’m pretty committed to reading every single one. He spoke at a library thing in 2019 and was just so interesting to listen to. Character, character, character, and geography a major character.
It’s been on my list for awhile, too. Your review makes me eager, yet patient, for the library to get to my name on the list. This is a very cool option we have now- click on my app from wherever, request my book, and learn right away if I can come and get it, or how far down I am on the request hold list.I never didi this before COVID, and don’t know how long my library has offered it. I really like your honest book reviews and collect nurse books, from the very old Cherry Ames and Sue Barton and the like, to 60s and 70s Harlequin romance types featuring nurses, to biographies and autobiographies and memoirs. Some of the romance ones are really ludicrous, and I don’t always finish
or keep those. Mostly my nursing career has been nothing like the majority of the books but they’re good to read for fun, learning, and seeing the evolution of nursing and medical stuff. Let me know about what you’re reading, OK?
A close friend eventually collected all the old Betty Neels books. Some of them are cookie-cutter but many hold up really well, I think.
Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard anyone else mention her! 🙂 She’s just my favorite when I need something mindless and comforting to read that I’ve read before and don’t have to think too hard about. “A suitable match” is probably my favorite.
Yes! They’re like your favorite mental recliner — they’re just very pleasant.
Ooooooh, I LOVED the Betty Neels books. I was quite young when I read them and they resonated with me as her heroines were pretty young too. I think of them fairly often, such sweet plots. Sigh…
I’ve been reading the Maison Ikkoku manga recently. I’m enjoying it a lot which doesn’t surprise me as I’ve loved the show based on it.
I just finished Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. It’s thick. I admit I skipped some small sections that I knew already, but she had a LOT of information, such as types of fabrics and how to clean each of them, that is actually quite useful. She also gives the why – what is different about this fabric, why is it a good thing to do a task this way and not that way, why are some chemicals better at cleaning this but not that. She must have spent an incredible amount of time in research. For anyone who has never before kept or set up house (she gives a basic list of necessities for setting up a home), this book would be an ideal reference to have on hand.
Huh, I just wrote a book review, it seems.
JD, I admit that cleaning and housekeeping is not my specialty! I’d rather be cooking or baking. So Home Comforts sounds kind of interesting to me. I just put in an interlibrary loan request for it.
I LOVE this book. I’ve read it a couple of times. And then I read many of the books listed as her references in the bibliography, too.
She wrote one almost as big just about laundry. I haven’t read that one, though. The subject doesn’t interest me as much as general “homemaking.”
I am currently reading “A Girl of the Limberlost” I have known the title for years and years and finally decided = time to read it! I am glad that I did. 1) It is a young person’s book and 2) it is like a modern fairy tale; sentimental and delightful–an all around happy book; so far, anyway.
Before this I read “From Sarah to Sydney”–the biography of the writer of the Jewish children’s series about ‘all of s kind family’., growing up in 1900s New York.. It is rather a thin book because the author has so little to go on, but still interesting. The children’s books were big favorites of my daughter’s when she was about 10-12 years old.
Ohhh my goodness, I loved All of a Kind Family so much when I was a kid! I really wanted to be Ella.
A Girl of the Limberlost was one of my favorites as a kid. It has a happy ending. 🙂