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Comments (41)

Nothing to Envy

Ordinary Lives in North Korea
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1 to 25 of 41 items
Jan 06, 2023funeehunee rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Excellent read. It's worth noting that the book is written by a journalist and extremely detailed so there were parts of the book that dragged on. Overall this was a great read
Feb 11, 2022elleng rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book is hard to read, but so important to read. The hardships the North Koreans face is quite unbelievable. I learned so much about this country shrouded in secrecy.
Sep 21, 2021wholeflaffer rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Barbara Demick does for North Korea what John Hersey did for Hiroshima. A place and circumstance shrouded in mystery because of the immense challenges to journalists has been dissected and described through the stories of those who…
Mar 25, 2021Ragini629 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
The author, Barbara Demick, details the stories of six North Korean defectors and their families, struggles, and ultimate survival and hope. As a journalist, Demick portrays their stories without hyperbole and exaggeration and sprinkles in…
Oct 26, 2020bordiaradha rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Brilliant book! Below lines from the book stung me deep: Liberty and love These two I must have. For my love I’ll sacrifice My life. For liberty I’ll sacrifice My love. - Sandor Petofi
Mar 07, 2020tjdickey rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
You are in for horrors and triumphs both, in Barbara Demick's detailed lives of six "ordinary" citizens of North Korea. Her interviews with these individuals traces their lives in the shuttered dictatorship, through the death of the "Great…
Dec 12, 2019
Liberty and love These two I must have. For my love I’ll sacrifice My life. For liberty I’ll sacrifice My love. - Sandor Petofi This poem, a favorite of North Korean Jun-sang encapsulates the bittersweet realizations of both North…
Jun 04, 2019mini_moon_pie rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
The most interesting part of the book to me happened near the end. Though the people Demick interviewed suffered greatly in North Korea, they all explained how they were waiting impatiently for the regime to collapse, the 38th parallel to…
Oct 14, 2018WoodneathReads rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book follows the lives of six ordinary North Koreans over fifteen years. I am typically not a non-fiction reader, but this one provided so much insight to what it means to be living under a repressive regime. These North Koreans raise…
Aug 03, 2018WoodneathShirlee rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book follows the lives of six ordinary North Koreans over fifteen years. I am typically not a non-fiction reader, but this one provided so much insight to what it means to be living under a repressive regime. These North Koreans…
Mar 23, 2018sharylkalal rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This book was honestly a very good read. I thought that the story each of the six characters in their North Korean life and describing what it's like is what intrigued me and made for an interesting book. It is sad how they live compared…
Dec 13, 2017
Personal narratives of six defectors from the Republic of North Korea. Contrasts the reality of daily suffering and famine under tyranny with the grandiose images of their propaganda.
Nov 01, 2017horthhill rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
"Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" by Barbara Demick is an oral history of North Koreans who managed to settle in South Korea. It's reads as a biography of about a dozen people whom we first meet in the early '90s. The cohort…
Hvevans
Sep 21, 2017Hvevans rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking stories from defectors of North Korea. This book is really great if you are interested in learning about the country and the true lives of people under a complete Dictator.
Jan 02, 2017rationallady rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Outstanding! I read it in four days. This is Orwell's "1984" in nightmarish detail-and it's real.
NinaAlt
Sep 24, 2016NinaAlt rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
An upcoming trip to south korea urged me to read up on the country's history and I am so glad I did. This is a fascinating book giving you a glimpse into what it was like during the famine in the 90's and what it probably still is like to…
Jul 25, 2016martins_mom rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazing that all of this was going on and the information lockdown made it impossible to know about it. Stories of starving schoolchildren and desperate adults are heartbreaking. Demick has done a great job of synthesizing the period.
May 13, 2016chrisky6 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I found the accounts of day to day life in North Korea fascinating because of how little I know about the lives of its citizens. The book is an incredible window into what happens when things break down: the fabric of society fails,…
Aug 07, 2015ryner rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Prior to borrowing this title from the library, I'd had only the vaguest idea of what life appeared to be like in North Korea: urban areas were drab and purely utilitarian, its citizens were indoctrinated to revere their leaders as divine,…
May 06, 2015
An interesting look into the lives of six ordinary citizens.
Mar 20, 2015bark601 rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
A fascinating but devastating account of life in North Korea. I heard about this from reading Without You, There is No Us by Suki Kim. That was a gripping account of teaching the sons of the elite at a missionary school in North…
Feb 26, 2015savtadina rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
This is an extremely powerful book. The author was the L A Times correspondent for both North and South Korea for 7 years. She only got into North Korea two times (once with the LA Symphony) and under very controlled conditions. So she…
Oct 22, 2014notthatjenn rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Hard to read because of its content, but incredibly powerful because of what you didn't know about North Korea. One of the best books I've found for describing daily life and its daily indignities in the Hermit Kingdom.
Sep 14, 2014WVMLStaffPicks rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
In the 1990s, North Korea, under Kim Jong Il, collapsed into poverty, darkness and starvation. Restrictions on the foreign press meant that journalists such as Barbara Demick of the LA Times had to piece together what was going on by…
Sep 12, 2014
Too bad ebook only available in Adobe