My Korean Deli Risking It All for a Convenience Store

"In this WASP-out-of-water tale of a "Paris Review" editor moonlighting as deli owner--or is it the other way around?--Howe plunges boldly into life's ultimate mysteries: marriage, money, cohabitation with in-laws, the yin-yang currents of striving and slacking, and--perhaps the biggest mystery of them all--why the store can be empty of customers for hours and hours, and then twenty show up at once. Read this book, and you'll come away wiser not just in the ways of the world, but of the human heart as well."--Ben Fountain, author of "Brief Encounters with Che Guevara"""""My Korean Deli" is about a Korean deli, as I expected. But it's also about love, culture-clashes, family, money and literature. Plus, it happens to be very funny and poignant. So buy a Slim Jim and a Vitamin water and sit down to enjoy it."--A.J. Jacobs, author of "The Know It All" and "The Year of Living Biblically""I don't know how else to explain "My Korean Deli" except to say that Ben Ryder Howe has made kimchi. As in that splendid staple dish of Korea, the mundane (cabbage/Brooklyn) is combined with the piquant (crazy spices/families) and pickled (natural fermentation/a job at the Paris Review). The result is overpoweringly good. But "My""Korean Deli" will sweeten your reading rather than stinking up your house and will give you deep thoughts not breath that can kill mice in the walls."--P.J. O'Rourke"It's hard not to fall in love with "My Korean Deli."..[It] tells a rollicking, made-for-the-movies story in a wonderfully funny deadpan style. By the end, you'll feel that you know the author and his family quite well -- even though you may not be eager to move in with them."--"The New York Times Book Review""As he leapfrogs from Staten Island to Brooklyn to the "Review..."Howe gains new understanding of life on both sides of the register--the deli is revealed to be a fickle friend, perpetually seesawing between financial promise and ruin, but also magical, a place touched with a