Growing up

Last week I bought the book "Growing Up" written by Russell Baker. In fact, it is a second-hand one for which I paid 6,000 wons including the shipping cost. His essay "The roots of my ambition" had triggered me to seek to read more of his writings and I have finally ended up with this 30-year-old book--the year of printing appearing in the book is 1981. It smelled so bad as if it had been placed in a toilet for a good 10 years. I sprayed it with febriz exhuberantly and, as if it wasn't enough, had it sterilized in a UV-enabled book cleaner in a public library.

Fortunately, though, the book is meeting my anticipation more than enough at least so far. Russell Baker really seems to have a knack for writing and amout to the status of a Pulitzer prize winner. One interesting fact I got to learn from his description of his hometown in Virginia around the turn of the 19th-to-20th Century is that life was just as harsh there as in Korea's hard times, and Russell's grandmother and mother were just like plain Korean grandmothers and mothers you could have easily met in your neighborhood. After all, we are all of the same human species and so have so much in common.