What Are You Reading Or Have Just Finished.

What Are You Reading Or Have Just Finished in Asian Related Fiction.

Tell us the author and title, and maybe a comment or review about it.

I just finished:

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
I'm really enjoying reading his books! I'm so glad I found him through everyone here. Thanks!

You're welcome (seeing as Murakami is one of my faorite authors!). :-)

I just finished reading Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck I enjoyed this book very much. I find this book follows a pattern that many good books do -- the first half is very rich in detail and the end half seems to go much more quickly. In that it seems to resemble life. Though set in a earlier time (I'm never sure if it's just after the revolution or just prior to WWII), this book is not dated, either. Had I not known when it was published, I would have thought recently. Excellent read. Definitely recommended.

Currently, Pu Songling's Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio.

Previously Han Shaogong's Dictionary Of Maqiao, which was excellent: a very interesting mix of things, episodic (like Pu Songling), influenced by personal experience of the cultural revolution, but also with a touch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez as well - Maqiao kept reminding me of Macondo...

This month - Dance Dance Dance by Murakami and Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto.

Loved the former, dislike the latter.

Currently reading a non-asian fiction title :) But have a few Vintage East ones queued up.

I just finished reading Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies) about a Taiwanese-American teenage girl who gets sent to math camp (it's YA; I'm reading it for the Library forthe Blind).

Then I started on Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss and I'm mid-way through.

Then I found this book on the bookshelf at my in-laws while on holiday during Christmas: John Sack's Dragonhead, about Chinese gangsters from China to Hong Kong to Vietnam to US.

All Asian fiction, all well-written and all compelling, though in very different ways.

Just finished Mr Muo's Travelling Couch - my feelings are mixed on this one. I liked the writing, beautiful beautiful words .. and loved the character of Mr Muo ("lives in books and theories", mulls things over using all such theories) .. and his adventures .. but the final part of the book ended up boring. Or as if it was the author wanted to wrap it up in the set # of pages.

Since my last post - in mid December, have read the following Asian titles

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - really loved it, hence needed to head out and get the book above.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima -another one I really loved. I purchased Mishima's tetralogy (as the book touts) about a week or so ago, and that will be the next Asian Fiction title in queue.

#7,

I love Mishima. Spring Snow is on my 2007 reading list, and I got a 1st US edition of Runaway Horses recently. After the Banquet and Forbidden Colors were also wonderful. I especially recommend the former.

missbookwormy,

I loved Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress too, but the end was somewhat abrupt. Maybe Dai Sijie has a problem with his endings (looming deadlines?). I saw Mr Muo's Travelling Couch at the library and hesitated over it. Now I'll go back for it.

Finished Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. It's very well-written but it's not a page-turner. Don't expect to breeze through it in a couple of days. It's about the Indian immigrant experience. Basically, it's a sad chronicle of the dispossessed. Somewhat depressing. I heard she had a lot of flack from the Indians back home. I'm not surprised.

Just starting Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

Hi, not a group member- just visiting. I also just finished Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio . I picked up the Penguin Classics edition after enjoying Chinese Ghost Stories for Adults, which was a retelling of some of Pu Song-Ling's stories. Eager to find more books in this vein, perhaps jumping over to Japan to check out Kwaidan or In Ghostly Japan. The thought that there are nearly 500 stories by Pu Song-Ling and that every edition I've found is merely a selection bums me out. The Penguin edition kindly lets you know which ones have been selected for the volume by listing their number in an appendix.

I'm currently in the middle of Mao's Last Revolution which is amazing, but dense. If you have any interest in the Cultural Revolution, I recommend it.

I'm reading Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki. Originally published in Japanese in 1924 (sometimes it's down as 1923), this book appeared in Japan under the title 'Chijin no ai' (which translates as 'A Fool's Love').

It's wonderful. I remember many years ago putting down The Makioka Sisters (1948) without finishing it. What a difference a few years makes! Now, I'm absolutely besotted by the subtle insights, wicked humour, and brilliant (fast) pacing of the earlier book.

Has anyone read Fire in the Teahouse yet? I have an arc by my bed.

Just finished The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa this morning. It was a little annoying in the beginning, at how the chapters would switch between the two main characters and how the chapters were really short .. but in the end, it made sense. Really liked it.

Have not started on Mishima yet (the 4 books), but that's next after the current non-asian one I'm reading.

#15 - Looooooove the Mishima!

I just started The Red Thread, which is not written by an Asian author, but takes place in China. The author had lived in China for several years.

I'm almost finished reading The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran. Hard to read at times, but well worth it. This is an excellent book. It gives a view of what life was like for women during the Cultural Revolution.

The first book I read in 2007 was Companions of Paradise by Thalassa Ali, which concluded a trilogy. This is a very good novel, and I would say, a romantic novel - even though this is not my favoured subject, but as it was so beautifully detailed in historical fact and interwoven with the story of a group of British officers in the Indian sub-continent in the late c.19th. The author is a convert to Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, and this philosophy flavoured the whole trilogy. There were some lovely observations of life through this angle, and this point saved the novel from being saccarine.

Just finished "Spring Snow" by Yukio Mishima last Friday. It was good, but a little heavy .. you tend to get sucked into it (emotion-wise).

Will continue with "Runaway Horses" later this evening, but started with "Harmony Silk Factory" by Tash Aw this morning.

I just finished reading Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang (Hsien-Liang Chang). I really like the way he writes. Zhang draws on his own experiences in the reform camps. This book shows how the Cultural Revolution scarred the Chinese people. He also talks about freedom and makes the reader think what it really is.

I just finished We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson. Prompted to read it by other fellow LThingers' comments, I was very disappointed. I was expecting something more...more suspense, more action....instead, I realized who had actually done the deed at the very beginning of the book and followed the unfolding of the story with increasing irritation. In this case, and probably because the book is so short, I finished it. Had it been longer, I know I would have chucked it aside.

I just finished A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguo which, by all rights should be British fiction. However, the author was born in Japan, the story is about Japan, and the writing is in the fluid Japanese style. Can this be considered Asian fiction or not?

The author moved to Great Britain at the age of five and lives in London.

just finished in the miso soup by ryu murakami. i really liked it, although i was so scared half-way through that i didn't think i could keep reading!

The Harmony Silk Factory - think everyone has read this already, but if you haven't .. you should. Really good read.

Currently reading Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima.

Loop by Koji Suzuki. I was rather disappointed in this book, as it sort of wrecked the previous two books for me. This one was more sf than horror and it wasn't even the sort of sf that makes sense. Too much "woo-woo", eh.

I just finished Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Eternal First Lady which was interesting, as I study mainland China and haven't read much on Taiwan!

I'm going to start This is Paradise by Hyok Kang soon (it keeps wanting to touchstone to This Side of Paradise sigh). I have to finish writing a paper first.

I'm looking forward to reading Ten Green Bottles and Shanghai Shadows this month to. Both are stories about Jewish refugees in Shanghai.

Just finished Runaway Horses yesterday. It was just so unbelievably good.

Currently proceeding with The Temple of Dawn which will be a comparatively quick read. I'm already past 100 pages after the commute this morning.

Finished up with Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility (final book - The Decay of the Angel on Monday) - all in about 2 - 3 weeks in March. It was .. good, to say the least.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Read it for a FTF bookclub. The footbinding description will make you cringe, but it was a good book about the relationship between two women who were matched to be friends (almost like picking an arranged marriage).

Just finished Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I read it several years ago and remember liking it, but after I read it again, slowly, for the second time, it dawned on me that it's an exceptional first novel. Complex, vivid, and non-linear, it doesn't seem like the work of a screenplay writer either.

Some reviewers seem bothered by the wordplay (which I find inspired) and the transitions (mostly well-handled). I was just blown away by the brilliant evocation of childhood. I feared for the children and for Ammu and Velutha.

I read Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch and loved the words but found it boring as well! I have avoided Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress because it was by the same author, but should I give it a chance if I had diffulty wading through Mr. Muo? Just curious.

I haven't read the tetraology of Mishima, only the last book, The Decay of the Angel and I loved it! The images and story are captivating and I couldn't help but get wrapped up in the myths- living and non-living! If the rest of the tetraology is as good I"ll read it, I"m just wary of spoiling my new-found Mishima enthusiasm. I liked The Temple of The Golden Pavilion, but read it while still in high school and remember it being almost too intense for me... Will be very interested to hear what you think!

Ok, sorry, I got so excited that people were reading books I love I started to respond before I'd read all the postings.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things- I think that it is understated, the wordplay is so evocative of childhood that it sometimes seems simplistic, but like above, upon second reading it really seemed to capture the nature of childhood and reveal interesting psychological ties we all make between words. I loved it and the transitions weren't confusing to me rather they kept me interested in the unfolding story... I love this book!

Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See was not my favorite, although the foot-binding description was very insightful and the friendship between the two women has elements of complexity, it felt like the author took facts about Chinese life and strung them together, rather than developing a story which happened to include all of these things.
I found The River Ki by Ariyoshi Sawato more complex and lifelike discussion of women and their friendships (although it has no foot-binding and takes place in Japan rather than China)

Whoever wrote that they were almost afraid to finish In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami- SHOULD NOT READ Almost Transparent Blue. In the Miso Soup is sooo tame in comparison. Just a quick warning.

I am currently reading A thousand pieces of gold by Adeline Yen Mah.
It is basically an excursus in the history of China through its proverbs. Interesting!

I just started Saving Fish from Drowning by amy tan. It looks fascinating so far, even tho I normally don't like dead people talking to me. The character that talks and is dead, is very funny.

I'm about a third of the way through China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston, which I'd guess that many of you are familiar with, and it's quite good so far. I've also read -- and enjoyed -- The Woman Warrior and The Fifth Book of Peace by MHK.

I just finished Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min. The book started out strong, but in the end I didn't really care for it. It claimed to unveil hidden facets of the character of Chairman Mao's wife, but honestly, a tough lady who just wants to be loved is not that original or interesting.

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I didn't care for Becoming Madame Mao either. That book put me off trying any of the author's other works.

I'm just about to start Love Stories From Punjab edited by Harish Dhillon. I'm reading it out of my usual TBR sequence because it's a BookCrossing book and I'm going to the Sikh Vaishaikhi (New Year) festival tomorrow and it's an ideal book to release there. I have a bus journey and some other bits and pieces today so should get it finished in time.

I agree wholeheartedly about the Makioka Sisters. It is excellent and the humor is wicked. I love the middle sister's passive-agressive reaction to her family's search for a husband for her. It was also bittersweet knowing it was the verge of WWII and that a way of life was coming to an end.

I did not enjoy Naomi so much. I just can't get into weak ineffectual people who allow themselves to be badly treated.

Currently reading Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. It is great, very psychological, with a wicked narrator, quite unlike Out.

Hi, I'm reading A River Sutra by Gita Mehta. It's only ok. I'm finding the author's style of not switching tone for each character distracting. Earlier this year, I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for the second time. I found it more interesting this time.

I have just finished reading The Book of Loss by Julith Jedamus. Its set in Heian Japan. I really enjoyed it. Its written in the style of a court lady's poetic diary.
I started reading Embers of Heaven by Alma Alexander. I thought it was set in China but realised she had just made up a country called Syai which was based on China. Think I will give it a miss for now and read it another time. If your going to make somewhere up I think you should make it up from scratch and not just change the name of a place that exists.

I just finished Transparency: Stories by Frances Hwang, a collection of stories mainly about the impermanence and loneliness of modern life. I just received a free copy of Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, which I'll probably start later this week.

I've been reading lots of Asian literature.

Last week, I read The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima. The writing style and characterization was beautiful, but I can't say the same for the sensationalist plot. I was pretty disappointed since I had heard so many outstanding things about Mishima's work.

This week, I read Red Azalea, Anchee Min's non-fiction account of her childhood amid China's Cultural Revolution. It doesn't quite compare with Jung Chang's Wild Swans, but I found it really vividly written and would recommend it to anyone interested in recent Chinese history.

Now I'm working on The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. I'm only about 150 pages in, but I'm really enjoying it. His depiction of a close-knit family feels really authentic.

Just finished Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross. Very good mix of Mishima, Japanese history and culture.

I just finished Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto. I really like it.

I also recently read Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (or Ailing Zhang depending on what edition you pick up. ;) ) I loooooooooooooved it and am looking forward to reading more of her work.

Have read

Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross - very interesting, it wasn't fully about Mishima .. and was a blend of biography-travel type book.

Sky Burial by Xinran - very compelling, beautiful, absolute tear jerker.

Currently working on I Am A Cat by Natsume Soseki. It's all 3 volumes in one (650+ pages) but am starting on the final volume today. Really really love this book and Soseki's writing/wit/humour. Lovely. I'm so going to go on a Soseki kick soon ...

Ba Jin's Garden of Repose. A cautionary tale, warning against letting your children be spoilt and become lazy and rude. I like the simplicity of Ba Jin's writing; he doesn't overdo the style or overstate things. He limits himself to simple language and nice turns of phrase. The translator, Jock Hoe, has captured the spirit of his writing well.

I guess it's more middle eastern than asian, but still brilliant - just finished reading a thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini, the author of the kite runner. it was absolutely brilliant, i highly recommend it.

I finished Waiting: a novel a few days ago. I really enjoyed it but when I read reviews after I was done people mentioned that it was really funny, the humor went right over my head so if anyone wants to comment on what they thought was funny I would appreciate it.

I just got The God of Small Things and Red Azalea but I don't know why one I will start first.

Fourth Sacrafice by Peter May
A mystery that takes place in Beijing, PRC. The main characters are Chinese detective Li Yan and American Pathologist Margaret Campbell. A fast-paced mystery with a touch of love story. The author takes every opportunity to blend Chinese culture into the unfolding of events and plot. Very impressive for a western author to provide so many insights into modern Chinese world.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in mystery and Chinese culture!

I just finished last night a book containing the two stories "Grave of the Fireflies" and "American Seaweed" by Nosaka Akiyuki. I don't believe these are translated in English (I couldn't find the translation, anyway) so I read it translated into French. So, in terms of touchstones, the book was called La Tombe des lucioles in French.

"Grave of the Fireflies"
This story is infamous now due to the animated movie by Isao Takahata which has regularly sent me to the Kleenex box. The original story by Nosaka Akiyuki was very well written but it didn't contain the emotion that the movie had, surprisingly. But, what was remarkable was seeing how the movie captured every single detail of the short story (about 70 pages): every firefly, every scrape, every tear, every word. I didn't feel as emotionally attached to the story as the movie but I wonder if that might not be due to the translator. There were two translators used, one for each story. The translator for this short story was Patrick de Vos.

"American Seaweed"
This was translated by Anne Gossot and was very well written/translated. The story revolves around a Japanese couple (of the age where they remember the WWII as the husband was in his teens/early 20s then) who invite over an American couple of the same age over to Japan. The Jpn wife had met the couple in Hawaii and was eager to invite them to her home in Japan after they had been so nice to her. The story revolves mainly around the Jpn husband who is angered at having Americans in his home and can't stop thinking about the war. Will this American remember the war as vividly as he? Will he think himself superior? When the Americans comes he insists on showing the American man the superiority of Japan and Japanese things while his wife goes out of her way to entertain the American couple. They both get annoyed when the Americans follow their own agenda and don't recognize any Japanese things as being superior.
I thought this story (about 80 pages) reflected very well the anger and frustrations between the Japanese and Americans when Americans refuse to accept Japanese norms (or, don't know they are doing as such). Having lived in Japan and been as Japanese as I could, I know it frustrated me to consistently have to prove that Americans are not as such, just to be shot down after meeting such an American. (I don't mention other cultures at this moment but I know there are issues between Japanese and other cultures as well, sometimes.) One negative was always stronger than all the positive I would do. So this story was incredibly accurate and continues to thrive during this day and age. Very interesting short story.

Just finished reading grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. I wanted to read it because I had so thoroughly enjoyed out. While this book was well written, I didn't find it as engaging as her previous work - these are the only two currently translated into english but apparently she has written numerous other books. Has anyone read some of her other stuff and can give a comparison if out was the exception, or grotesque?

Dai Sijie: Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise
(Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress"

I just finished this book a few minutes ago. It was a very charming and enjoyable story about two boys using occidental literature to educate a mountain girl during the Cultural Revolution. As they are 'reeducated' in the mountains' and she becomes 'educated' on Balzac, the story twists and turns into a delightful read.

Soseki's I Am A Cat was very good. It's one of my favorite books ever.

Thirst For Love - Yukio Mishima
This was a little tough to read or get through. It was one of his earliest works. The story sort of went all over the place.

Spiral - Koji Suzuki
Book 2 of the Ring trilogy. It was surprisingly good. I mentioned how it's less paranormal, more scientific .. although still as creepy. Some scenes have stuck in my head for many many weeks - although that's cause I'm such a scaredy cat that I don't like watching horror movies and get scared just by reading a book!

Botchan - Natsume Soseki
Not as enjoyable as I Am A Cat - somewhat unfair to compare it to just because it's the same author - and it was nice and witty and makes you giggle to yourself while reading .. but a little lacking. I remember hearing how this is usually a person's favorite of Soseki - one person even went so far as to have every single printing, edition, cover of Botchan on his shelf and could not resist a new one whenever he caught sight of it!

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
Finishing up on this.

I'm about to start reading The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata. (Called "Kyoto" in French translation.)

Lots of good ones already mentioned but these are some of my favourite Japanese novels:

The Woman in the Dunes by Kobe Abe
Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse
Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe

Black Rain, in particular, I think should be read by as many people as possible.

I have been on a bit of an Asian book kick recently. I read John Hersey's Hiroshima a few weeks ago which was a harrowing way to spend a few hours. I also recently finished Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and The Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. I've been reading a few short stories by Akutagawa but my current Asian fiction challenge is reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto in its original Japanese. It's slow going but it has made me appreciate how good the English translation is - it's one of the most faithful translations in terms of style and "voice" that I've seen.

I've started reading The Children's Hour, Volume 2, edited by Cristina P. Hidalgo. This is an anthology of short stories told in the voice of young narrators. So far, the 3 I've read (by Vince Rafael Groyon, R. Kwan Laurel, and F.H. Batacan) have been very dark.

Finished Three Daughters of Madame Liang last week. Currently reading Kinfolk - both by Pearl S Buck of who, I'm a fan now!

I finished Haruki Murakami's short story collection After the Quake yesterday and just finished Yasunari Kawabata's "The Old Capital" a few minutes ago. Both very good.

We're allowed Indian Asian on here as well as Japanese/Chinese, right? I just finished Samares Mazumdar's Sky Over The Mountain - it was sent to me for review by the publisher and I'm not that familiar with the traditions of Bengali literature, but it was absorbing and thought-provoking. There's a long review over at http://lyzzybee.livejournal.com and the touchstones won't work, sorry!

PS I sound like I'm advertising the publisher here - I'm not. I would have enjoyed the book whether or not they themselves sent it to me!

Just finished The Kite Runner.. an exceptional first novel. Currently reading Women of Silk after seeing the many recommendations on this forum!

I'm working my way through Junichiro Tanizaki's Seven Japanese Tales. Portrait of Shunkin was great.... Terror was interesting.... now I'm plodding along through Bridge of Dreams after I took a detour through a Mitch Albom book for school... Quite a contrast.

Not to mention, I've been preoccupied watching my Heroes Season 1 DVD Box Set.

I'm on the last chapter of The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi. Will finish the book tonight. Excellent book yet I'm positive I've read it before somewhere but I can't figure out where.

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I'm also reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I very much like this book. I usually don't care for historical novels, but I find this story very engaging. It talks about women's issues in China in the 19th century through fiction in a way that makes learning about them interesting in a like manner that Memoirs of a Geisha had me engaged in the culture of geisha in Japan.

The footbinding chapter was a painful read but alllowed me to learn much more about this odd custom. I never knew before that it was such a painful, dangerous, and disfiguring practice. I'm very glad it's no longer being done.

I certainly would recommend this book to others and would read more books by Lisa See.

The Jade Dragon, fiction for kids based on one of the authors' childhood, brought up some serious subjects regarding adoption of asian children by white parents.

I'm currently reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami. I'm halfway and I'm wishing Murakami would write a full length book on one of its short stories, Airplane. But as the introduction of Blind Willow said, Murakami doesn't work that way.

I just finished Peony in Love by Lisa See, and found that I didn't like it nearly as much as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which I loved. I think it was because it was really hard for me to feel sympathy for the main character.

Next up: The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones.

I'm reading Ma Jian's Red Dust, a memoir of the author's 3 year journey around China. It is a worthy winner of the Thomas Cook award for best travel book of 2002, when it was published in the UK.

It was immediately banned on publication in China in the mid-1980s. The author left the country soon afterwards and now lives in London.

Just finished Su Tong's My Life As Emperor a couple of weeks ago. Loved it! (Rice was also fantastic, but I read it quite a while ago.)

I am almost finished Mandarins a book of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Extraordinary stuff! The writing, at least in translation, has that concise, clear style that can often take the breath away. I saw that someone else was reading Thousand Cranes by Kawabata - one of the best books I've read by him.

I'll be starting After the Quake by Haruki Murakami either today or tomorrow. I really loved After Dark, so I've made it my goal for 2008 to explore more of his writing.

I very much enjoyed and would recommend The Long March by Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen, a nonfiction account about two guys recently retracing Mao's "Long March". An excellent glimpse into modern China. The writing is good, too. Often witty.

>75 archangelsbooks: Archangelsbooks, it's great to hear that Mandarins is a good translation and collection of stories by Akutagawa as I just ordered this book on impulse, with no previous knowledge of it, last week. Now I'm very much looking forward to receiving and reading it!

Howdy, I'm new to this group (and to librarything).

I've just finished reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and I'm currently reading The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

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Hi Misstriss. Welcome to LibraryThing!

Like you, I am a great fan of Haruki Murakami. Did you know that today is his 59th birthday?! My favorite book of his is a collection of short stories called The Elephant Vanishes. My daughter appropriated my copy of that book! :-(

I've also read Kitchen and liked it a lot.

>79 MissTris:,80 I love Murakami, when I was reading Kafka on the Shore I remember I used to sneak out from the office to go home quicker so that I could have the whole evening to myself reading that magic book.
I also love The Elephant Vanishes and my favourite stories from that book are "The Elephant Vanishes", "Barn Burning" and "The Second Bakery Attack". I've also got After Dark in my TBR pile, hoping to get to it next month.

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...and my favorite stories from The Elephant Vanishes are “The Window", "The Family Affair" and "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One April Morning".

Finished listening to A Street of a Thousand Blossoms last week by Gail Tsukiyama and really enjoyed the audio...saw on LT that the reading was slow but the audio kept me going.

I read Kokoro by Soseki Natsume a few days ago, the Edwin McClellan translation. Really enjoyed the last third of it, but thought the first two chapters were empty and dry. They set up the facts to make the final chapter so strong, but didn't seem to do much storytelling in the process.

I just finished Shadow Family, and before that was Crossfire. Right now I'm reading All She Was Worth.

Hi, I'm new to this group and I'm from Malaysia. There are some books that I have read from Asian writers and an Afghan writer that I believe will capture your heart as it did mine.
So these are some of the titles:-

Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair

The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun J Tejpal

My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Just re-read Red Azalea by Anchee Min; those of you who didn't like Madame Mao should check out her memoir - it is a good read.

Also just read Revolution is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine. Excellent fictional memoir for anyone from 5th grade up.

Just finished The Woman in the Dunes by Kobe Abe on the recommendation of SqueakuChu (thanks a lot for that). I think I enjoyed it, still thinking about it and will be thinking about it for some time as it's one of those novels which images will be haunting you for a long time. It's really unique, although allusions could be traced to some of Kafka's themes, they way he develops the story in his novels. From more contemporary authors, I think some of Haruko Murakami stories have underlying connection to those themes as well. A really fascinating novel!

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I'm glad you liked The Woman in the Dunes!

If you're up for another fascinating read, try The Box Man also by Kobo Abe. I promise it will leave you throughly confounded, but you'll also find it a fun read. The story is not quite as straightforward as The Woman in the Dunes.

What I like about this type of literature is that it makes me think deeply about what the author is trying to say (although I'm not sure I get it all!). :-D

Thanks a lot SqueakyChu, will try The Box Man soon. I will just have to be patient as I am moving the houses now, so will get this one from the library as soon as we move. I completely agree about what you said how these type of novels make you think what the author tried to say. This is one of the reasons I so enjoy reading Haruki Murakami. I find Chinese literature (at least, contemporary) a lot more straightforward in comparison with the Japanese. I love Chinese literature as well, although I find it more of an easy read. Those that I read recently included Good Women of China by XinRan, Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan, Snow Flowers and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie.

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I, too, find Asian literature fun to read. I already read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and found Snow Flower and the Secret Fan to be one of the most beautiful books about friendship that I've ever read. An acquaintance has given me Saving Fish from Drowning, so I'll now be looking for Good Women of China. Would you recommend that one?

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Hi SqueakyChu, Good Women of China is a little depressing, although a very engaging and fascinating read. XinRan is a former journalist and this book is a compilation of short stores from her radio journalist's days. Some stories are very tragic and quite hard to read, very emotional. Some are a little lighter and very interesting as well. Since I studies Chinese history, literature and language at the university and spend quite a few years living and working in China, I still take deep interest in everything that is happening to this amazing country and its amazing people. XinRan recently wrote a new book called Little Miss Chopsticts that is in my TBR list. Have you read this one yet? It's about the hardships of three sisters born in rural China during the years of cultural revolution and their attempts to escape the hard life and the destiny of their parents.
Funnily enough, I've got Wild Swans by Jung Chang, such a classical Chinese novel, not yet read... I feel I am getting behind with my Chinese reading. So many books coming out these days, feel so anxious as I can't read them all.

>92 Booksy: I also have Wild Swans on the TBR pile. Its been sitting there since last March! I'll get around to it eventually... :)

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Wild Swans has already been recommended to me, but I always seem to be putting it off due to its size.

I'm going to put Good Women of China on my wishlist as I'm a great fan of well-written short stories.

Have you read Daughter of China by Meihong xu and Larry Engelman or Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman? In both books, the experience of teaching English in China is described, although the former book is more about a woman's treatment in the times of the cultural revolution. Both are nonfiction, but make for interesting reads. In Iron and Silk, I was touched by Salzman's deep love of the people and country of China. His book was especially nice to read.

I've not read Little Miss Chopsticks, but I'll be sure to pick that one up if I encounter it.

I wouldn't be too daunted by the size of Wild Swans if I were you....it is one of the most fascinating and beautifully written biographies I've ever read. It's easy to read and very engaging....you'll finish it before you realise and want to go back and read it again.

--> 95

Okay, then. I'll pick up a copy of it next time I see it in my used book store.

-> 95 Thanks for the encouragement, I suppose I just was never a big fan of the biographies, but I do admit that I wanted to read this one since I lived in China myself and first got it from a friend of mine.

-->94 SqueakyChu: Thanks SqueakyChu, Iron and Silk indeed looks quite exciting (I've read three short reviews), will try to place an order for it in our library. I'm reading a non-Asian piece of literature now (for a change), Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, it's quite good, but I do admit I can't wait to get back to my "Asian" pile.

--> 97

Regarding Iron and Silk, I just want to to make it known that the author is American, not Chinese. The book is nonfiction (I guess I strayed from the original intention of this thread). I still recommend it highly.

A few other general comments:

A friend of mine just selected a book of mine from the book exchange shelf at my work. It was Out (mentioned above by Natsuo Kirini. That was a fun novel (if you can call a murder-by-women novel fun). I wrote down the names of all the characters as I was reading it so I wouldn't get the Japanese names confused. That helped a lot!

For those of you who liked The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossseini, I'd like to recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author. Although I liked the former the better of the two, most others liked the latter.

In addition, if you've already read The Kite Runner, see the film. I cried for two straight hours - right through the whole movie. I thought it was beautiful.

-> Completely agree with you on the subject of A Thousand Splendid Suns, I found it just a little bit not quite as good as The Kite Runner. I was just going to ask about the movie, but you answered my question. I will just have to see it now. I was thinking about it: should I see it or I will be disappointed after the book...

How about the Atonement movie, is it as good as the book? Well, I suppose it's not the topic for this thread, will better ask it at another forum.

Back to Asian literature subject, just a read a book review and an excerpt from a relatively new book written by a Chinese author who is originally from Beijing and now living in London: Diane Wei Liang, The Eye of Jade. Sounded quite intriguing. Has anybody read the whole book yet?

-->99 Booksy:

Atonement was an excellent film (or at least I think it was. Definitely one of the best book to movie adaptations I've seen).

The other excellent film I saw was Lust, Caution which inspired me to buy the book by Eileen Chang. The book should arrive early next week and I think it might go to the top of the TBR pile.

--> 99

I was just going to ask about the movie, but you answered my question.

I was talking to a colleague at work about the film of "The Kite Runner". She had been cautioned against seeing it because of its content. It does have violence - which was what was depicted in the book.

SPOILER --> The story contains rape of a child and death by stoning. Should you choose not to see this depicted on the screen, avoid the movie.

Agree wtih you - if you read French, then you will enjoy them even more, the language suits Mishima's style better than English

Agree wtih you - if you read French, then you will enjoy them even more, the language suits Mishima's style better than English

sanas -

Sorry, but, who you are agreeing with? I'm asking 'cause it seems you may be talking to me since I do read in French but perhaps you're talking to someone else and I don't realize who.

So in 2007 it seems that overall I read 6 Japanese novels,

1) Yasunari Kawabata : Kyoto (The Old Capital)
2) Yasushi Inoue : La Favorite (The Favorite)
3) Nosaka Akiyuki : La tombe des lucioles (Grave of the Fireflies)
4) Haruki Murakami : Après le tremblement de terre (After the Quake)
5) Fumiko Enchi : The Waiting Years
6) Masuji Ibuse : Black Rain

... and 1 book from China.

1) Dai Sijie : Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

My favorite books from Asia had to be "Black Rain" followed by "The Waiting Years" (I get the impression I've read this one before though).

Right now I'm currently reading a Spanish book but I think I'll go back to Japan after it with Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka, an author I haven't yet read anything from.

I've just started my first collection of Haruki Murakami's short stories, The Elephant Vanishes.

I just finished The Firemaker by Peter May and greatly enjoyed it as the beginning of a series set in and around Beijing. Someone in these threads had mentioned May or the book and it got me looking. The author isn't Asian, but there's lots of Chinese cultural information from the Post-Mao period. Good characters, I learned a lot about insider details and enjoyed the twists and turns.

I just finished Lisa See's Peony in Love - it got off to a slow start and I thought it was going to be a predictable story, however, it quickly took an interesting turn and ended up being a very creative and intriguing novel. Good stuff, but not as good as her earlier On Gold Mountain, the story of her family's early years in California.

I am now reading Beyond the Narrow Gate by Leslie Chang - I am about a third of the the way through. So far, so good...

I'm quite enjoying The Impressionist. I needed a shorter book than my other current book to take on a flight. A touch of whimsy. An indirect comment on Empire. A cracking good tale about a boy's (mis)adventures. And, what seems to be a reasonable portrayal of WWI-era India. Lots of flavor. Nice writing. Recommended.

108 - that's the first time I've seen that mentioned (Beyond the Narrow Gate). I loved it and have sent it off round the world via BooKCrossing - hope I'll get it back one day! Let us know what you think about it.

I just finished Peony in Love by Lisa See. I am listening to Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. I drive an awful lot so this way I get to be entertained.

These books seem simple in comparison to the books already posted. I am new to this site and I already have so many books on my list to read.

I started The Golden Days, first volume of the Hawkes translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber. I chose this Penguin-published version instead of the one from Yang published by the Beijing Foreign Languages Press because the latter was criticized on Amazon for being a rigid, literal translation (as if preserving the mode of a language is a bad thing) but after a mere three chapters I'm already getting second thoughts. Here are some of the inanities I've written down, with italics as in the text:

"In the center of {the table} was a huge antique bronze ding, fully a yard high..."
"And everything about her so distingué!"
"Yu-cun quickly hunted out a copy of the Gazette..."
"On the right-hand {table} was a narrow-waisted Ru-ware imitation gu with freshly cut flowers on it."

There's a disconcerting inappropriateness to translational details. Oh well, I'm glad I only bought the first volume.

Another observation: For a certain reason Peter Gabriel's "Games without Frontiers" keeps popping into my head when I read this book... ;)

I recently read The Temple of the Wild Geese and The Bamboo Dolls of Echizen by Tzutomu Mizukami, which I reviewed for my blog. It seemed the greatest mystery was trying to find how the two stories tied in together. Soon I'll be reviewing The Glass Slipper and Other Stories by Shotaro Yasuoka. They're part of a very nice series put out by Dalkey Archive Press. Very impressive set!

Finished The Treasury of Loyal Retainers translated by Donald Keene, which is also known as The 47 Ronin. It's a bunraku (puppet theatre) play, and one that has long captured the Japanese interest. Myriad books, stories, plays, have been made of it since 1703 when the incident took place.

I have the DVD's of Kon Ichikawa's 1994 version (132 minutes) and the classic 1941 version by Kenji Mizoguchi (241 minutes!) to use for ancillary education. Lucky I have next week on vacation!

-- Gerry

This is the well known Asian Philip Roth, Squeaky Chu? ;)

Ooops! Wrong group!

Deleted previous post.

114: NHK did a Taiga drama of Chushingura as well, I believe, which should be around 49 episodes if you can find them.

Peony in Love by Lisa See, a good read with lost of details about marriage and death rituals in China

Re: Chushingura/Treasury of the Loyal Retainers/47 Ronin:

Seems I remember when the NHK series was out a number of years ago and seemed too much of a commitment and frankly a bit unnecessary. They say that from it's initial kabuki performance in 1703 through it's more famous bunraku performances in the mid 1700's it gained more and more secondary plots. Most of these revolved around testing the loyalty of individual samurai's to find out of they were truly interested in participating and/or could be trusted with the details of the enterprise. By the the late 1700's it was generally fixed in the 1748 version by Takeda/Miyoshi/Namiki.

So in order to get to 49 episodes of this story it seems to me that vastly more of the ronin need to be tested. Works for series television, I guess, but sounds like a stretch as a version of the play. Kinda like a four-year TV series based on a short story.

I have yet to begin my cinematic marathon between the Ichikawa and Mizoguchi movies, but in the meantime I find there is an Japanese opera, filmed by Werner Herzog in 1998. I can't find a copy of it, but I did find a 1962 version by Inagaki that was filmed in '62 with Toshiro Mifune. It's 3.5 hours. So now I have three big honking movies to review. I hope the sake holds out!

-- Gerry

Botchan, Soseki Natsume, 1906.

Interesting enough: A young man, impulsive and arrogant, gets his first job working in a country school and leaves Tokyo to take the job. It's generally comic and the main character, though not as delusional as the indelible character of Ignatius J. Reilly from Confederacy of Dunces, has the same pompous over-bloated sense of personal style.

Frankly I'm not sure that's all coming from Soseki as much as it is from Umeji Sasaki, the translator. There is a distinctively dated British tone to much of the prose; a somewhat ornate and unnecessarily "proper" quality to the voice of "B". It's particularly inappropriate for a very young man with limited education to be speaking so eloquently.

And why do so a number of these meiji-era novels have characters with no stated name? There must be a cultural rationale for doing that. I spent two years finding a copy of the acclaimed The Factory Ship (1929) by Takiji Kobayashi, purportedly the masterpiece of the Japanese school of proletarian fiction. I was quite put-off that one construct of his politically inculcated style has him not giving ANY character a name! Instead we have "the man with the thick lips" and the "brothers from Sendai" and so forth. In this way we can avoid the specificity of any individual in order to make the group the fundamental "hero" of the struggle and so forth. Eh... I'll try again later. I wanted something quick and fun for a vacation read.

Anyway Botchan has a very real and honest character. Though he spends most of his time in his head (welcome to Japan), he has significant interactions with other characters and just enough dialogue to avoid feeling completely cheated. Another feature of Meiji fiction, or early modern Japanese fiction, is their apparent discomfort and avoidance of direct dialogue. I'm unsure if they felt it didn't represent a "true" Japanese narrative, since Japanese don't put as much value on babble as Americans and Europeans. Or perhaps it was an effect of their admiration of Russian writers. Or maybe something else. Despite the obvious reverence Siedensticker has for Kafu (me too!), in "Kafu the Scribbler" he mentions that his dialogue isn't so good and the stories fail in direct relationship to its use.

Botchan isn't a critical read, but pleasant and easy enough. Still not quite sure why it is so greatly loved among the Japanese. But I would recommend a more modern translation. I note there is a newer version (2007) translated by Joel Cohn of Hawaii University. He has also written on Japanese humour, and I can see that this book could certainly have been funny in English. I can't imagine his translation is not significantly better.

-- Gerry

Regarding Message #121:

When I arrived in Japan a couple of decades ago and Japanese friends and acquaintances discovered that I was interested in literature they would often, very thoughtfully, present me with a book. For some reason that book was almost always Botchan. I ended up with four or five copies on my shelf, and an attitude toward it that kept me from opening it for many, many years. Finally I did, and would agree with Gerry's assessment of it.

I wonder if it is a Japanese Catcher in the Rye, a book that everyone, including people with no particular interest in literature, has read (or is meant to have read) and that is, therefore, the first thing that comes to mind when one wants to buy a book for a literary friend.

Regarding names, I'm not sure if this is related to the nameless characters Gerry has encountered, but in Japan it's very common to refer to people by titles rather than names. My students call me "sensei" (with none of the Kung Fu-Grasshopper overtones), I call my department head "department head," younger students call older students "sempai" (which means something like "elder"), those working in companies will often be called "manager," "chairman", "president" or whatever title is appropriate rather than Mr. Sato, Mrs. Yamada, or Mr. Kawamura.

Just a thought.

Continuing the ramble from #122:

Additionally in Japan they refer to strangers by their general age category. I remember reading something where a woman was a little upset when a woman passed her in the store. The other woman was corralling her daughter through a narrow aisle and said, "make enough room for obasan", meaning "aunt". This, instead of the phrase "sister" or one indicating a younger woman.

I recently saw Kurosawa's "One Wonderful Sunday" and at one point a man impulsively jumps into a baseball game with a bunch of street kids asking "Can ojisan (uncle) play too?"

In Botchan, the main character is eager to give nicknames to all the principles in the book. Then he periodically refers to their real names too. But it is odd when he is speaking to others using nicknames which, in theory, they have never heard.

Inscrutable stuff.

-- Gerry

Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata Yusunari, 1964

There's little to say about his one. Before the book begins, a writer has a short and torrid affair with a very young girl, and later writes a successful novel about her. Twenty-five years later he is interested in seeing her again. She's became a noted painter and now has a student who has become her lesbian lover.

The student is consumed with how the painter was mistreated by the writer at such a tender age, and takes is upon herself to seek revenge for the injustice. The rest of the book revolves around the confusing histrionics of the young lover and her contradictory motivations. There is a seduction first of the aged writer, then his son, which provides endless confusion of all the principles, not to mention the reader. Generaly she see-saws between pouting coquette and tantrum-throwing noisemaker. Then, as Kawabata tends to do, the book ends.

I can't find many kudos on this book, Kawabata's final novel. It's tough for me to dislike almost anything I read by Japanese writers, they just never rise to the level of offense necessary for me, and usually produce such an interesting mood. This one does lay flat as a pancake, though.

I like Kawabata's descriptions of places. I like the directions some of his characters take in their ruminations on life and love. His love scenes are really a nuisance with the endless biting of a finger or an arm and requests for similar mistreatment. Doubtless some consider this erotic, but for me it's neither shocking nor titillating but somehow false and dull.

I couldn't help wondering if the germ of this story might involve the young geisha in Snow Country, Komako. Known to have been written about a real place, one might well wonder if Komako had been identified in real life and whether there had been repercussions relative to depiction in the book. Or perhaps to other characters in his fiction during his life. Certainly that idea is intriguing. But it doesn't really come together here.

While snooping for related information in my library about Kawabata, I noted in translator Edwin Seidensticker's memoir (Tokyo Central), a reference to translating Izu Dancer, so read that too. A great piece. Then on wiki noted his quote referring to Kawabata's prose in Snow Country, comparing it's elegance and focus to haiku. Kawabata sorta haiku-ized the thing late ('72) in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories where it is called "Gleanings from Snow Country" and reduced to about 10 pages.

I love it when readings take you, like linked verse, from one thing slowly to another.

I began pondering the 10 year genesis of Snow Country via a few syndicated chunks in this magazine, and then another 4 over here with a rewrite of the beginning, then another syndication over there with a new ending and so forth. He did the same with Beauty and Sadness from '61 to '64. And apparently much else in his career. He loved these micro-short stories which he called palm-of-the-hand apparently writing hundreds of them in life. This tells me that whenever you begin a Kawabata novel you can generally assume the author is as much in the dark about the trajectory of the characters and how the book will conclude as you are.

Rumination machine switched off...

-- Gerry

I've started to read Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto
*touchstone for it does not come up ?

Earlier in the year I also read Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara, another short-and-sweet book. (Or maybe not so sweet...)

Do the Japanese prefer a more shorter story ? Doesn't Murakami say he prefers to write short stories ?

I'm currently reading The Roads to Sata : a 2000-mile walk through Japan by Alan Booth. It's pretty interesting so far. Although I haven't learned anything new yet I think it would be a great read for someone just learning about Japanese culture. I'll give more info when I've finished the book.

Re: Messages 126

I'll look forward to your comments, Lilisin.

I absolutely love everything I've read by Alan Booth; no qualifications. The Roads to Sata is a gem as is Looking for the Lost. Regarding "learning anything new": There may well be few facts or realities that are uncovered for those who know Japan well. But that's not what moves me about Booth. He writes beautifully about the mundane and the average and imbues it with such personality. He encounters so many people and placed I can still see in my mind's eye.

I'm reminded of one little store in the south of Kyushu as he nears the end of his trip. A god-forsaken blip in the middle of nowhere. It's pouring rain. He buys his beer expecting from any such proprietor an amiable chat. Instead, she asks him to stand outside and drink it in the driving rain. He stands out there water pouring off his hat, scowling through the window at her.

But there are scads of them: The ryokan that doesn't want to lodge him, pleading with him in anguished Japanese, "But we don't speak your language!" "I know," he says, "that's why we're speaking yours!". But to no avail. "We have no FORKS here!"

And the ryokans where they want him to adopt him.

The policeman who keeps him company all afternoon after finding him a room in an otherwise terror-stricken hamlet. Then insists on driving him up a hill to the place after dark. Booth declines to the policeman's horror. "There are kitsune (fox) up there! They could bewitch you. They bewitched my brother!" he pleads.

I understand that Booth wrote regularly for the usual papers (Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, et al), for quite a number of years. As others have appealed; why won't somebody collect and publish these? I just checked for the first time this year. Nope. I almost bought another used copy of Roads to Sata to give away. I've that a few times. I thought I really should read it again, an honor I haven't bestowed often to books.

-- Gerry

I love this thread. I'm looking forward to reading some of the suggestions here.

I've posted this elsewhere on LT, but figured I'd slap it up here as well.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami

At rush hour on the morning of Monday, March 20, 1995 commuters on several Tokyo subway lines were gassed, the gas in question being the deadly sarin. The first section of Haruki Murakami's Underground is a collection of interviews with the survivors of the attack, and these interviews can, at first, seem monotonous. After all, each of the victims had more or less the same experience as each of the other victims. It doesn't take long, however, for the cumulative effect of their statements to build up . The full horror of the day becomes evident, and also the scope of Murakami's achievement.

"They are the people who live average lives (and maybe from the the outside, more than average lives), who live in my neighborhood. And in yours," Murakami writes, and he could have been describing those subway riders, but in fact those sentences refer to members of Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that was behind the attack. Murakami interviews several of them in the second section of the book, and considering their beliefs he is moved to remark: "Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that—by following language and a logic that appears consistent—you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge."

I recently finished Sayanora, Gangsters which I sought out on the recommendation of other LTers. If you like absurd fiction, this is a good quick read; especially the middle section, "The Poetry School", in which the narrator helps boys, girls, blobs and gangsters express themselves.

(warning - slight brag to follow). I spent two and half days last month with Anchee Min as I hosted her at two schools I work at (I'm happy to talk about it with anyone who wants to hear about it). She was incredible to say the least - but anyway, she told me that she's working on a biography of Pearl Buck so I've begun reading The Good Earth which I had never picked up. Anchee said that when she was young, she was told to write an article denouncing this "imperialist" writer named Pearl Buck by her school leader. Anchee asked what this person wrote and if she could read it; of course the books were banned from China and weren't allowed during the Revolution. So she wrote the article as ordered. When she came to the US and learned English, Pearl Buck's books were the first thing she looked for. So it turns out that Buck's parents were missionaries in China and had a pretty interesting life and now there's even a Pearl Buck museum in China. So she's writing a biography on Buck and it should be out next year.

I'm half way through The Good Earth and it's such a rich but sad book. It's hard to put down, yet it's hard to read because the suffering is so great. What's also stunning to think about is that there are probably still many people who live not too differently today than the family in this book.

I'm about 120 pages into JG Ballard's Empire of the Sun.

I'm a big fan of the books of his I have read and this is different but still recognisably his work, especially in the unflinching descriptions of war torn Shanghai.

--> 131

Very interesting information you posted about Anchee Min.

I might give another one of Anchee Min's books a try. I didn't care for Becoming Madame Mao all that much. I don't remember the details of that book, having read it seven years ago, but I did note that I found it disappointing . According to my notes to myself back then, that book "never fully fleshes out any of the characters, especially Madame Mao herself" and it "lacks the pizzazz to get the reader involved".

Perhaps it's also time for me to reread The Good Earth - which I read more than 40 years ago!

SqueakyChu - To me her best is Red Azalea; I've yet to read the last two Empress Orchid and Last Empress but I've heard good things about them; Madame Mao I've started two times and keep putting it down for other books. Her memoir, though, was so compelling to me, and seeing her in person (I saw her speak once and then decided to invite her to my schools) really affected me. In person she's just so much more than her books.

She said she's thinking about writing about her experiences after coming to the U.S. and is considering making it a humorous book.

Have you read Ying Chang Compestine's Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party? It's really good as well - appropriate for middle schoolers and up.

--> 134

Okay. I'll keep a look our for Anchee Min's other books and try out one or two more.

I've found that sometimes giving an author a second chance really works. Take Barbara Kingsolver, for instance. I wasn't all that crazy about The Bean Trees, but when I read her two books of essays, they blew me away. I'd found a woman of my heart! Even as we speak, I'm looking through Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral which I think I'll keep as part of my permanent collection.

ETA:

No. I haven't read Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party allthough I've been reading a lot of young adult books recently. Some of them are great!!

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - it's given me a lot of food for thought (pardon the pun).

# 44

I'm responding a year after your posting (I had not realized the existence of this group). I found The River Sutra to be wonderful book. I guess I wasn't bothered by the lack of tone changes in the characters, as I found the tales so enthralling.

Now, this past year, I did read Kafka on the Shore and there are significant tone changes in the characters in this novel.

Finished Nagai Kafu's American Stories. I really like a lot of it, but then I'm really a Kafu fan. (What--is the "touchstone" system simply broken that it can't find either of these?)

Kafu certainly can produce a transcendent description of time and place. These were written during and after his return from America between 1903 and 1907. Tacoma and Seattle Washington, Kalmazoo Michigan, stops in Chicago and DC and over a year in NYC. He concentrates on relating the experiences of his fellow countrymen. Or maybe that's a device. Again, with his focus on the decadent, prostitutes, those living life in dissipation, depravity, moral turpitude--or so he would like us all to think. It is a bit wearisome, but throughout his life he sure did feel like he was a reckless one spending his money time and energy on the low-lifers. It's not like he really tells tales of depravity, just how depraved much of the world "seems" and how, were it not for a precarious tether he'd be "lost" somehow.

A curious point: In two different short stories he points out how Japanese guys are appalled at how prostitutes work in the US: You pay your money and get your "business" over as quickly as possible. They can't understand why the heck anyone would do that, since their culture has created an entire cultural mechanism, "the floating world", over which they while away the entire week before, and sometimes without ever doing, the "business".

Anyway, there are quite a number of essays that manage to avoid this fundamental strata of Kafu; him endlessly standing on the outside the human condition musing over it. Some of these are really quite nice. His descriptions simply hypnotize me.

If you don't know Kafu one should read Rivalry, A Geisha's Tale which is the new title of Geisha in Rivalry, or perhaps the new translation of two novella's During the Rains & Flowers in the Shade. Hmm, I note the latter, which I bought in paperback last year, seems to have disappeared and have been replaced by a 58-dollar hardback. Strange.

-- Gerry

Motomama....I recently read Revolution is Not a Dinner Party and really thought it a great YA book. The Good Earth is one of my all time favorite books. I only read it a few years ago and why didn't a high school teacher put it in my hands?

I'm reading Yellow by Don Lee. It's a nice book of short stories.

I've devoured all but one of Ha Jin's novels and short stories, A Free Life, his newest novel. I loved all of his short stories in The Bridegroom, and Ocean of Words. His novels, The Crazed, Waiting, and War Trash are haunting. His texts are simple, but extremely powerful.

I also just heard a short piece on NPR about The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu. It's nonfiction, and will pick that up shortly. Murakami is also on my list to read. I'm reccommended his books often.

First ever post!

I've just started Tale of Genji which has been sitting on my bookshelf for 20 years, since I was in Japan. After that I may have a go at the manga Japanese version which is also on the shelf, and see if I can make any headway with my extremely rusty Japanese.

Re: Msg 142

If it's been 20 years, I assume yours is the abridged version by Seidensticker from 1990? That's what I use most to see in stores. I had it sitting on my bookshelf around for about 10 years. Then there was so much praise and rejoicing over the complete translation in 2002 by Royall Tyler, that I bought that with such good intentions. Now that has been laying around for 6 years.

-- Gerry

Re: Msg 143

Hi gscottmoore, I picked them up in 1987/88 so it's the two-volume Waley translation from 1970. I haven't really been keeping an eye on Japanese fiction for ages. May have to buy The Pillow Book as well after this. I just get into these themes... The last book I read was about Australian convicts.

I too have stuff sitting on the shelf for years and I'm on a bit of a roll at the moment reading books that have been there for at least 15 years. Bizarre that you can buy something, forget all about it for that long and then be right into it when you finally read it (good for people whose eyes are bigger than their reading capacity/inclination though).

Woman in the Crested Kimono by Mori Ogai / Ogai Mori (neither of which touchstones seems to like) by way of Edwin McClellan. I just finished it.

Our Lord Thomas Rimer in his discussion of Ogai in his A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature, makes mention of the book Shibue Chusai. He says "though it is the cornerstone of Ogai's oeuvre, it remains untranslated". Further, "Because of the formidable amount of historic detail provided, it is doubtless untranslatable." It covers much minutiae of the life of an unimportant doctor to a daimyo during late Tokugawa. In fact Shibue dies just two years before its conclusion in 1868, and half the way through the book. The rest of the book is dedicated to his wife and children, relatives and neighbors and what happened to them after Chusai's demise.

Donald Keene in Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era says "...even those who most admire (this book) admit that they contain little drama and almost nothing of conventional interest."

In his footnote, Rimer then points me to McClellan's book, "...his moving 'Woman in the Crested Kimono' in which the author sets out to re-create, rather than translate, the remarkable account provided by Mori Ogai of late Tokugawa life...".

The reality of both Mori Ogai's fascination in half the original book, and most all of McClellan's interest resides in Shibue Io, the good doctor's wife. Born note to samurai life, but to a wealthy merchant, she is strong, independent, extremely well-educated (even in martial arts!), and a fascinating study. With a good 15 years between their ages, she faces the initiation of Meiji without her husband and with five children in tow. We get to watch what the conclusion of Tokugawa meant for the massive social strata of samurai whose lives pivoted on the hierarchy of the society. One wonders how a society came hundreds of thousands of soldiers at the ready for 250 years while fighting no wars. At the conclusion of shogunal life, one finds even less use for them, their maids, craftsman, doctors, etc.

About 10 minutes before shogunal life concludes, Io is compelled to move from Edo to the far ends of Honshu, to Hirosaki; nothing in nowhere. Years later she eventually returns to Tokyo and penury. Throughout it all she remains strong-willed and capable. The woman learns to read English in her 60's in order to avoid what she considers miserable translations of important English language works! What a wonder.

Not recommended in the least, but it sure was interesting to me. Mori Ogai's "Apollonian" approach didn't require him to studiously avoid embuing the characters with any real humanity, interest, or personality--unless historic fact could support it. What of the couple's love? Of their sorrow at the death of children, of the anguish of moving from one of the most sophisticated and educated cities to a backwater where country folk would poke holes in the paper walls of their tiny miserable home so they could gawk at the strange outlanders? Of this Ogai says nothing--it's not in the records, is it? Sheesh...

It's now officially more of a mystery to me that I read this stuff at all. And yet I continue on, fascinated and completely incapable of saying why.

-- Gerry

I picked up Londonstani at our BookCrossing meetup today. I try to read my acquisitions in order so might not get to it for a while. Looks fascinating though!

Just finished No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai. He's a bummer. It's a unique vantage point from which to view the world, his endless life-long isolation outside it all. I took some minor voyeuristic pleasure in it, knowing that it purportedly mirrored his very real and very pathetic life.

Still, I guess I was doing nothing more satisfying than putting a notch in my surprisingly tattered NihonLit belt. I would always recommend Dazai's The Setting Sun before this overly self-absorbed stroll.

I'm well on my way with Grass for My Pillow by Saiichi Maruya, as close as I've gotten to my own chronology with Japanese fiction in a very long time indeed. That ought to shut me up for at least a week.

-- Gerry

Just finished Kafka on the Shore the other day. I'm not sure how I feel about it beyond the fact that I enjoyed it. Once I have time (probably six months from now, at least) I'd like to reread it. It's a fairly tight story, but towards the end I'd begun to scratch my head a bit. It's certainly deeper than Sputnik Sweetheart, the last Murakami novel I read.

I just moved on to Ring, which I read for the first time several years ago. I'm hoping to be done with that today or tomorrow so I can move on to Spiral and Loop in order. Those two I haven't read yet.

#141

Thanks for the mention of The Corpse Walker, it sounds fascinating and I've added to my TBR list.

I've started Wolf Totem by Rong Jiang and Life and Death Are Wearing Me out by Mo Yan is on the shelf.

I'm also currently in the midst of The Corpse Walker and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, both of which I'm enjoying immensely, but they're not light reads, to say the least!

I finished The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth last night and really enjoyed it. It depicts well Japan in all its absurdities but true beauty while driving the point home with the sentence "you can't understand Japan" because you really can't.

Throughout the novel I was reminded of my own experiences in Japan, whether that was in the mass metropolitan of Tokyo or the little side streets of Higashi Hagi all the way to the west of Japan. Ironically my experiences were the opposite of Booth's. The only times I found repulsion to my foreign-ness was in Tokyo while the little towns of Japan didn't even seem surprised that I spoke Japanese.

But Booth does an excellent job of pinpointing the true moments of Japanese-ness and writing it in a truly exquisite way while also demonstrating his exasperation with everyday encounters.

Oh how we all get sick of hearing "jouzu desu ne" (you're so good {at Japanese}!) after uttering the single word "konnichiwa" (hello). I must count myself fortunate that I've never been offered a fork.

I highly recommend this book to those who are familiar and unfamiliar with Japan or to those who are familiar with being a foreigner in another country. An incredibly written insight to what it is to be a foreigner even when you are fluent in the language of the respective country!

(Cross-posted at 75 Book Challenge)

"Zuihitsu," or "following the brush," is an artistic technique much honored in traditional Japanese aesthetics, one which, when applied to literary work, can give rise to essays not so different from those produced by the progenitor of the form in the West, Michel de Montaigne. If one's mind is not as well stocked as Montaigne's, however, this practice can produce formless globs of one-thing-after-another. Fortunately Donald Richie's mind is very well stocked indeed, and he is adept at choosing the form best suited to the work at hand. He demonstrates this once again with his Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics: how better to discuss this subject than by using a form such as "zuihitsu" that is an exemplar of what he is writing about. The brief seventy pages of this tractate are an excellent introduction to the tenets which have traditionally guided Japanese art, tenets which, though perhaps languishing, are still alive today.

(Also up at 75 Book Challenge)

Say what you want about The New Yorker—it's not the magazine it was under Shawn, etc., etc.—but the people they get to write for them produce some of the best narrative non-fiction around. Peter Hessler, author of Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, is no exception. This collection, based on pieces he wrote for that magazine, is a superb introduction to the Middle Kingdom as it was in the first years of this millennium.

Sometimes books that are made of magazine pieces stitched together are ungainly sacks of odds and ends. This is, perhaps, less the case with books by New Yorker writers since the magazine articles they produce usually want to be books anyway. The deft manner in which Hessler ties the pieces of his picture together with the story of the oracle bone scholar and poet, Chen Mengjia, ensures that his account is coherent and compelling.

Just finished reading Grass For My Pillow by Saiichi Maruya. I had noted a number of his books among those listed in the back of another Kodansha publication. I was unfamiliar with him and asked hereabouts. David Cozy recommended this one--thanks again for the tip, David!

This prose is as rich and full as any I've encountered in Japanese fiction in a very long time, perhaps forever. Admittedly the past many years have been spent reading the Meiji authors and hardly creeping forward very much past WWII, and there only with a few writers. Probably nothing past the mid-60's. Surely there are great writers that followed, but I've been preoccupied with "roots" for a good while now.

Grass For My Pillow tells the story of a Japanese WWII draft dodger from the standpoint of his life 20 years after the war has ended. It is such great writing; at line level it certainly borders on the poetic. It's such a fabulous read that it has me considering the translator, Dennis Keene, for his other work. Structurally it is also a delight: The way Muruya shifts time from the various periods of the protagonists life from his years on the run evading the draft, to the minutiae of his clerical job in a university. I've seen this approach with modern writers but his use of the technique is just so smooth and well-wrought. Ping-ponging 20 years back and forth every 10 pages can be jarring, but here it almost never is. In fact it's brilliant to see the various subtle parallels between characters and activities laying side by side like this.

Maruya has a profound ability to tell a tale both personal and individual while braiding it effortlessly with a cultural/national/historical issues and a universally human overlay as well. And never ponderous or didactic. There are exceptional side-tracks that emphasize a passing character met on the road which enrich our understanding of the primary character. This, rather than one of these interesting but episodic "road tales". It could easily have gone that way but did not.

A wonderful book and one of the best reading experiences in a long while.

-- Gerry

I'm about 150 pages into Takeo Arishima's "A Certain Woman", a title that touchstones has a seemingly endless array of bad hits on.

The writing is beautiful, especially for it's time (1911-1913 for the first half, expanded in 1919). But it is the "I Novel" in spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts. Can anyone give me encouragement to forge on?

Can I hear a "gambatte, kudasai!"

-- Gerry

Just finished Murakami Haruki's Hear the Wind Sing. It's definitely Murakami, though the plot is thin and without the expected layers of the later, thicker novels. There's the usual meandering, somewhat disjointed plot and "Boku," the young, unnamed male protagonist. It's obviously an early work, though it wasn't bad at all. Just sparse. It made for good morning reading on an unbearably hot day.

I'm starting a volume of two novellas by Tsutomu Mizukami, transled by Dennis Washburn: The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen.

-- Gerry

(Cross-Posted at 75 Book Challenge)

The enterprising Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly have committed themselves to bringing out the complete work of manga master Yoshihiro Tatsumi. As a result of their commitment we now have volume three of their edition of Tatsumi's work, Good-Bye, which collects work Tatsumi pubished in the early 1970s. Hiroshima, Yasukuni, and the "pan-pan girls" of the Occupation years all make prominent appearances, and make many of the comics collected more explicitly political than those assembled in the first two volumes (though Tatsumi's considerations of the miseries of the working class, featured in those earlier volumes, are certainly implicitly political). Tatsumi's vision continues to be as bleak as we've come to expect, and the rigor with which he writes and draws his accomplished short stories is unchanged. Tatsumi's work, even work decades old, is a welcome change form the airy-fairy fantasy which threatens to dominate, at the expense of this sort of gritty realism, the world of manga.

(Cross-Posted at 75 Book Challenge)

Everyone's heard the criticisms of Haruki Murakami: he writes the same character over and over, the same book; his prose, as Geoff Dyer has recently noted can be (at least in translation) "pretty poor." And yet . . . I don't think that's the whole story. Even if it is part of the story, one still needs to explain why he is so popular, and popular with a lot of very discerning readers. Thus I have sent myself to read through as much of his oeuvre as I can get my hands on (in English). The Elephant Vanishes is a piece of that quest, and, like all but the very finest collections of short stories, it seems to me a mixed bag: some of the stories are superb, others not so much. That's probably a fancy way of saying, of course, that I like some of the stories better than I like others. In fact, I've noticed, reading this collection and remembering the earlier Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, that it's stories such as "Chance Traveler" in the earlier book, and "A Slow Boat to China" in this one, in which Murakami lays a few fragments of story on the table and allows us to make of them what we will, which, to me, are the most appealing. I also notice that, though no one moves more effortlessly between the mundane and the fantastic, it is in those stories that have a firm grounding in the mundane—spaghetti making and so on—where the fantastic is used to best effect. The stories that are more purely fantastic such as "The Dancing Dwarf" seem to me less successful. Since I'm trying to move through Murakami's stuff in more or less chronological order, and since I finished Hear the Wind Sing not long ago, perhaps I'll move on to Pinball, 1973 next.

(And is it just me, or does Alfred Birnbaum render Murakami's prose into much crisper, livelier English than Jay Rubin?)

Right now, I'm reading Mishima's Confessions of a Mask. The third of his I've read after Spring Snow and Acts of Worship. Still have The Temple of the Golden Pavillion and The Sailor who feel from Grace with the Sea on my shelf. After I get through those I'll read the rest of the Sea of Fertility tetralogy.

Just past the page 400 mark in the epic that is A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

I just found this group and I've loved the discussions on it already.

I love Murakami, some better than others. But the one that I love best is Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood.

Has anyone read Shantaram by Gregory Roberts? A huge tome, but I really enjoyed this book. It gave me a very different insight into India, especially the society of those who have to live in the slums and the rule of justice that they govern themselves by. Even though the author is a fugitive, and managed to get himself involved with the local crime lords, I found myself rooting for him.

I'm currently reading Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop and really enjoying it. There are alot of references not just to the food of China but also some cultural lessons in the book as well that makes this a really rich memoir.

I have read a book called 'Chinese Cinderella, The Story of an Unwanted Daughter' and it is an autobiography by Adeline Yen Mah.

It's about a girl named Adeline and her mother died giving birth to her so her brothers, sister, dad and step mother treat her like a servant and always blame her for her mother's death. She finds it hard to find friends and have a normal life. Chinese Cinderella is about being brave, strong and never letting anything get in the way of achieving your goals. I really enjoyed this book! I strongly recommend to everyone!!

Recently finished Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li. I wholeheartedly recommend both of them. For more of my comments, I invite you to check my blog http://booktsunami.blogspot.com/

Finished Mao's Last Revolution.
Probably going to start The Latehomecomer

I'm just about to start GOTH, A Novel of Horror by Otsuichi aka Hirotaka Adachi. It's a series of related stories about two Japanese high school students who are fascinated by death.

A few weeks ago I finished The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi by Okamoto Kido. I like it a lot, and I'm not really a mystery reader. What I like most was the old Edo ambience, the feel of time and place was significant. They were written and published in newspapers between 1917 and 1937, but refer to a much earlier time before Meiji.

This collection was translated by award-winning Ian MacDonald who has translated a shelf of stuff to significant acclaim.

I then moved on to the book "devised" by Edward Seidensticker called The Snake that Bowed. Seidensticker weaves three of Kido's old stories into a novel of sorts. Rather than "written by" it says "After Okamato Kida" (sic). It's published by Printed Matter Press, and is riddled with misspellings, punctuation errors, missing words and so forth. Honestly, the original author's name they couldn't get right? It's really quite surprising.

I have great admiration for Seidensticker's legacy as a translator, and think his two books on the history of Tokyo are fabulous. Nevertheless, this is an interesting idea that didn't fully work. Besides, having just finished reading two of the original three stories, it leaves me pondering what he left in, what he left out, how he tailored them to overlap, how he has Hanshichi boinking an informant in the merged versions. The latter was not in the original, but also doesn't seem Hanshichi-like. I hate it when a work has me pondering process rather than content. I want to be in the story, not at the editing table.

I was going to write a full-blown review but singing in a cave sometimes leaves me feeling lonely.

-- Gerry

#167 - didn't that just become a movie recently?

Dream of the Walled City, by Lisa Huang Fleishman, is excellent. First-person tale of a woman living in Changsha, Hunan Province, from the birth of the Republic until the revolution. Loosely based upon the author's grandmother.

Gerry:

A word on Printed Matter Press. They are, more or less, a vanity press, but they have been put to good use by writers such as Donald Richie who, late in his career, has republished a great deal of his early work and published for the first time some less-commercial offerings, texts that had become hard to find and were in danger of slipping into oblivion. Trouble arises because I'm almost certain that Printed Matter provides no editing services at all; you give them a manuscript, they make it into a book.

It's notoriously difficult to edit one's own work, and I'm afraid that's what Seidensticker may have attempted to do--and he was an elderly, and not terribly well, man, I believe, when The Snake that Bowed went to press. Other Printed Matter books, such as Donald Richie's recent Botandoro, a miscelleny of work written over seventy years, are blemish free (probably thanks to the attentions of the book's editor, Leza Lowitz).

RE:171

That's good to know: I couldn't imagine how/why Seidensticker would be involved with such a shoddy outfit. I'm surprised that he didn't have a lackey or two that shuffled papers for him who could have done the proofing. I bought the book used through Amazon and noted immediately that a previous owner had set about doing the task of adding every necessary comma, missing article, etc. So I played along adding my own catches as well.

Whoever reads my copy will find that both the original owners lost interest in the task after about page 80...

-- Gerry

The Inspector Hanshichi sounds promising.

Reading the wonderfully enlightening, and full of gentle wisdom, Traditional Chinese Medicine for Women: Reflections of The Moon by Xiaolan Zhao. And finally finished Amrita Imroz, A Love Story by Uma Trilok, about the wonderful Punjabi poet & writer, Amrita Pritam and her life-long friendship with the artist Imroz. And relished the wonderfully erudite, Meatless Days by Sara Suleri, an interesting memoir recounting the turbulent years of Pakistan after Partition and up to Bhutto's martyrdom - that would be Benazir's father, Zulfiqar.

RE: 173

You shouldn't have to wait to check the books' promise. Have you noticed that as soon as you learn a new word, everybody starts using it? I noted this today in the Japan Times, from a scant week ago:

The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi

Beginning Tuesday, The Japan Times will serialize the classic Japanese detective story "The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo," or "Hanshichi Torimonocho" in Japanese. Written by journalist-turned-novelist Kido Okamoto, sections of the novel, which is told through the eyes of a streetwise detective, will run from Tuesday through Saturday every week...

And it is Ian McDonald's transation. The full text of the article is here:



What a curiosity.

-- Gerry

Cool!

Finished The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family memoir by Kao Kalia Yang. This is a wonderful book. I recommend that everyone read this book.

(Crossposted at the 75 book challenge)

Although one is sometimes confused by editor William J. Tyler's definition of modanizumu (modernism)—is it a concern with things modern? a collection of stylistic preferences? work written during a particular period of time?—one is never in doubt that Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938 is an important anthology (much of the work it includes is previously untranslated or difficult to find) that is essential to exploring a more or less (in English, anyway) uncharted region of Japanese literary history. Among the most arresting work in the collection is Kawabata's film script for "Pages of Madness," Kanoko Okamoto's "The Love of Kishimo," and Jun Ishikawa's "Mars' Song," but there's lots here that is diverting.

The Reading Globally Group is doing Japanese literature for January 2009: http://www.librarything.com/topic/53012

Just read Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka. Spectacular. Just spectacular.

I wrote a review which you can see off my profile or the book's work page.

I'm relishing Tunnel Vision, a very, very funny novel based in Karachi, Pakistan, by Shandana Minhas. I am amazed that this gem of a book was not picked up by any publisher in the west, and even rejected within Pakistan!

Also reading, and could not put down Unbroken Spirit, How a young Muslim refused to be enslaved by her culture, a shocking, and somewhat funny, account of growing up and fighting against cultural ties, by Ferzanna Riley.

(Cross-posted at 75 book challenge)

Kenneth B. Pyle's Japan Rising is a model of intelligent historical analysis. He offers a convincing thesis early on--Japan changes in response to outside pressure rather than as a result of internal conviction--and successfully supports it in a long but never tedious overview of Japanese history. Pyle's book is also a model of good scholarly writing, and in fact I have been using it as such with a talented young student and I see from her papers that she has learned a lot from it. Not all scholars are good writers; Pyle is.

Currently reading Red Dust by Ma Jian. I'm really enjoying this, it's a great wander through China in the early 1980s. Great observations on life in China (and in general) as the author tramps and makes-do, it's given me a bit of wanderlust.

#182 Your reviews/comments tend to cost me money! :) I just ordered Japan Rising ...

#183 I also loved Red Dust. If you like Ma Jian's observations, you may appreciate his short stories in Stick out your Tongue--strangely haunting stories mostly from Tibet.

#184 Stick out your Tongue was my intro to Ma Jian, I thought it was a nice collection of stories.

I am currently reading about Amelie Nothomb's 7 year old perspective on living in China in the book Le Sabotage amoureux.

(Cross-posted in 75 Book Challenge)

The Edogawa Rampo Reader

As was the case with the author from whose name Edogawa Rampo derived his pseudonym, to grasp this author's achievement one needs to read both his stories and his essays. Thus Kurodahan Press, in making available this exquisitely edited collection of both fiction and nonfiction, has done readers a great service . The author was, as he relates in one of the essays, a devotee, when a boy, of popular fiction, and entering the fantastic twists and turns of his stories one is soon lost in them the way, when boys and girls ourselves, we became the characters in the romance, the adventure, we were reading. The essays are similarly fascinating for the light they throw on an author devoured by many Japanese, but little known in the West. The piece on Poe's encounter with Charles Dickens, and Poe's reaction to Barnaby Rudge, is alone worth the price of admission.

You should actually post the link to your cross-posts. I went looking in 75 Book Challenge to see what other mayhem you might have accrued over the past few months but found nothing. Then I noted the group I was in is actually "75 Books Challenge for 2008", where you once maintained a thread as well.

-- Gerry

Just finished reading Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Haruki Murakami's lone nonfiction book. Excellent companion peace to Ian Reader's Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan which studies the rise of Aum Shinrikyo.

I'm about 100 pages into The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

I'm halfway through Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist by Kazuko Kuramoto.

I just finished Hikaru Okuizumi's The Stones Cry Out, which was good although not quite the remarkable book I expected based on other reviews, and am now reading Harukor, an interesting "novel" of sorts based on Ainu folktales and documentary sources by Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda. I also plan to start The Vintage Book of Contemporary Chinese Fiction in a day or two.

I did read Kenzaburo Oe's Rouse up o young men of the new age! and Amelie Nothomb's "Tokyo Fiancee."

Hi, just joined this group. I'm thoroughly enjoying (and trying to avoid finishing) Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino at the moment. I'm particularly enjoying Japanese fiction at the moment and as my other great love is horror books (psychological, not gory) I'd love recommendations of good Japanese titles in this genre. I've recently read Strangers by Taichi Yamada and the excellent Now you're one of us by Asa Nonami.

I finished War Trash by Ha Jin a little while ago, and really enjoyed the simplicity and honesty of it. It is about a man who "joins" the Chinese Volunteer Army and goes to Korea, only to get caught and put in a POW camp. His intricate details about life in the camp and afterward in China made me keep re-checking to make sure it wasn't a memoir!

Reinhard Drifte's Japan's Foreign Policy in the 1990s was disappointing largely for reasons that are evident in the title and are inevitable in topical works: it is dated. Those interested in, for example, a history of the trade wars of the 1990s will find much meat here. Those who want to know how things stand a decade and more later will be, of course, disappointed. Add to this that Drifte, if my guess is right, is writing in a language other than his native one and produces prose clunky and confusing, and the result is a book that is a chore to get through.

Just finished Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb - fun but predictable conflict between East and West sensibilities. Easy read, short.

I loved The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. I finished it last month but the charachters remain very close to me. I prefered it to his Sea of Poppies which sets the stage a little too much for a sequal.

Hideo Okuda's Lala Pipo is Sex in the City if the city is Tokyo, or more precisely that Tokyo neighborhood called Shibuya, and the sex is mostly commercial and not necessarily indicative of any strong human connection among the participants. It is a series of connected stories--and the connections established by characters who drift between the tales almost always feel right rather than forced--that addresses many of the things that the Japanese people--or rather the more salacious Japanese media--get all het up about. Promiscuous high school girls, perverted nerds, hopeless freeters, housewives starved for sex, amoral young men preying on innocent--or perhaps not so innocent--young women: all are present here. That each of the characters who have apparently died as the book progresses turn out, at novel's end, not to have done so, makes it clear that Okuda, who is identified as a "pop novelist" on the book-cover, is not interested in gritty realism so much as entertaining his readers, and this he succeeds in doing.

Love Hotel City, edited by Andrew Stevens

It's hard to imagine anyone liking all of the stories in this collection of Tokyo tales, and it's quite easy to imagine many readers not liking any of them. In most of them the author is trying much too hard to be (to resurrect a tired old buzz-word) transgressive, and usually to very little effect. (If anal sex is really the most shocking thing you can come up with, as seems to be the case with a couple of the authors whose work is collected here, well, let's just say you're no Bill Burroughs.) In too many cases the stories are reminiscent of the "ka-ka," "poo-poo," "pee-pee," that a toddler, having learned that those words will get a rise out of the grown-ups, bellows in company. At the end of the day the words, and the fact that a child would use them in an effort to be "transgressive," really aren't that shocking . . . or interesting.

Everything that drops from Ian Buruma's pen is worth reading, and his second novel, The China Lover, is no exception. It is surprising that no one has thought, until now, to base a historical novel on the life of that chameleon-like actress Yoshiko (aka Shirley) Yamaguchi. Buruma does so with aplomb, giving us a taut narrative that provides all the satisfactions of a page turner, but at the same time is a nuanced look at Japanese and world history—as well as history through the Japanese eyes of Yamaguchi and others—from pre-war Manchuria to late twentieth century Beirut. (Peripheral note 1: a character at the center of the novel is based quite closely on a friend of mine. That made for an interesting reading experience. Peripheral note 2: Buruma's first novel, Playing the Game, is, I think, a minor classic. If you stumble across a copy don't hesitate to dive into it.)

I'm reading and loving I Love Lord Buddha by Hillary Raphael, a highly-stylized, fascinating, funny, and sexy fictional "history" of an all-girl sex n' death cult, called Neo-Geisha. The book is nearly indescribable. It's one of those that one needs to experience for oneself-- dark yet mad-cap yet erotic yet ideological yet stylish...

Thanks, satsumi, for your review. I have the book, but it looked a little too transgressive-for-the-sake-of-being-transgressive; a little too Love Hotel City, so I had hesitated to open it. Now I am intrigued.

>202 dcozy: I can hardly wait to find Ian Buruma's The China Lover in pb (easier to tote around on the train) but I may have to break down and order the hc edition; I'm thinking perhaps your friend re 'peripheral note 1' has the initials "D.R." :) Whether it's him or not, it should be a great read. I'll have to locate Playing the Game sometime, too.
As always, thanks, dcozy.

P.S. re your post # 197, Reinhard Drifte and I participated in the US-Beijing summer study session in 1979 (the first of its kind in the thawing US-China education relations). Interesting flash from the past; I had no idea what happened to Reinhard.

(edited to remove wrong touchstones)

Just finished Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami, and The Castle by Franz Kafka.
Now I am reading Amuzing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami.

I was disappointed by The Castle (read in Dutch). This was my first Kafka, which I had been looking forward to for a while. However, the dialogues and monologues did not interest me, and the protagonist K. I found to be an annoying person.
Hear the Wind Sing was nice, although very different from his latter works.

So far Neil Postman has some good points, just strike out the word Television in all of the text, replace by Internet, and you have a hell of a current book.
South of the Border, West of the Sun, well, half way through, and even tough I prefer Murakami's more fictional/surreal works, I love the book so far.

hi

i just read this book - earthen angels - by sarbari chowdhury. The stories are absolutely mind blowing. Some of the stories give a perspective of an immegrant's life that anyone living outside their country can relate to.

I highly recommend the book.
p.s. i found it on amazon ...

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman For most of the first 50 pages I was thinking, "two spoiled, naive western bitches decide to inflict their ignorance on fellow travelers and hapless Chinese as they plunge clumsily through China and then decide to write an exploitive book"; however, by page 69 the author began to win me over with her self-deprecating statement: "I suddenly felt despicably naïve."

From this psychological turning point on, through the odd, sometimes nightmarish travel through China, this became an interesting and unique read--part travelogue, part memoir, part mystery.

The final chapter brought me to tears, and now I happily eat my words above—this is a fantastic book.

I'm about half-way through Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. I'm enjoying it so much, that I decided to give away my copy on my blog, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR, instead of posting it on BookMooch or PaperBackSwap. It's a quiet but deep book, and I'm hoping it'll do really well. It's been out since the end of January.

I'm now reading Eiji Yoshikawa's Taiko. I love a good dose of historical fiction. :)

Richard J. Samuels argues, in Securing Japan, that, with the end of the Cold War, Japan's security policy was thrown into flux, a state from which it has yet to emerge. What is clear is that whatever direction things go, they will not remain the same. If the Yoshida doctrine ("cheap-riding," or letting the USA take care of Japan's security concerns while Japan takes care of business) survives at all it will be in a truncated form, and indeed it has, in Samuels's phrase, already been "salami-sliced" down to a nub of what it once was.

just read 20 fragments of a ravenous youth by xiaolu guo. it was a lot of fun, very enjoyable. the character is very funny, and it has a rollicking, modern feel to it.

Just read Tongue by South Korean author Kyung-Ran Jo. It was provided as an Early Reviewers book and was quite interesting.

When I first arrived in Japan, way back in the Showa Era, many of the first Japanese I met, on learning that I was bookish, would immediately, and graciously, present me with a copy of Botchan by Natsume Soseki: I ended up with at least four copies on my shelf. I rather suspect Botchan occupies a place similar in the Japanese literary firmament to that occupied by Catcher in the Rye in the American galaxy—a sort of "Catcher in the Rice," if you will. That is, I assumed it was the sort of book that everyone was forced to read at some point in their lives, or felt they should have read, or had heard a lot of people describe as a masterpiece. I resolved, being the contrarian that I am, not to read it, a decision I stuck to for many years. Now comes the point where I should tell you that I finally did read it, and found it to be marvelous. That's half true. I did, after many years, and having sold all but one copy, open it and found it . . . okay. Not terrible, but not great.

I have, however, just completed another Soseki, Kokoro, and did, in fact find it marvelous. Written in 1914, it seems quite different from contemporary Western novels in its quiet simplicity, and its formal integrity. We are given three sections. In the first the narrator takes on an older man as a mentor; in the second we see the young man removed from Tokyo and his "sensei," and in the third we delve into Sensei's past and find out what made him the person he is. Soseki invites us—quietly, subtly—to slide these three puzzle pieces around, to attempt to make them cohere into a portrait of our young first person narrator.

It may be time for me to reread Botchan.

Lovely impressions of what is one of my favorite Soseki works, dcozy.

Given your appreciation of Kokoro, I suspect you might enjoy Soseki's other great serious novels, such as Mon and Sorekara or his impressionistic short work like Inside My Glass Doors or The 210th Day more than Botchan or the equally light and comedic I am a cat (which are charming and hold a special place in Japanese literature but which feel very different to me than his greatest, more somber and contemplative, work).

He was an extremely prolific writer (much like Dickens or Gautier in Europe, the serialization of his work in newspapers probably added greatly to his overall word count, not always to the benefit of his stories) and there's a lot to discover, even in translation. I hope you get at least a small portion of the enormous pleasure I've had discovering and reading his work over the past two decades.

The Soseki title that has particularly intrigued me is The Miner (no, touchstones, not Miner's Daughter by Loretta Lynn). Do you know it?

"It's about doing paperwork (or avoiding doing paperwork), going to teas with your boss's wife, and overseeing village well-digging projects, as well as smoking pot, masturbating, and reading Marcus Aurelius."

That's Akhil Sharma in the introduction to English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee, incisively summing up the novel , and if that doesn't whet a reader's appetite, particularly a reader looking for something new out of India, something without the sickeningly sweet fetor of "magical realism," then I don't know what will. His account of the life of a slacker, forced to give up his citified ways (if not the vices mentioned above), when, as a member of the Indian civil service, he is sent to a backwater town, is often laugh-out-loud funny, and never less than amusing. It is also refreshing that the slacker-narrator never does find certainty about the path his life should take but instead, at the end, accepts that life is an uncertain business.

(I finished Kokoro just a bit before reading this. I sure seem to be reading about slackers a lot these days.)

Just finished A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. Yes he's British but he is Japanese born and this book does take place in Nagasaki as well as London. I felt a little short handed by this book and only gave it 3 stars which is mainly due to me liking his style, not the content of the book itself.

Regarding Botchan, I wasn't enthralled with it. It was fine, just fine. Kokoro, some 16 years ago set me on a course of endlessly reading Japanese fiction. I think it is a great book and I really should go back and re-read it.

Last year, after reading some absolutely gushing testimonials, I got a copy of Three-Cornered World, also by Natsume Soseki. I wasn't moved and after about half the book couldn't summon the momentum to open it again.

Last month, while in transit and vacationing, I finished Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves and not only did I finish it (which I did not with his masterpiece The Temple of the Golden Pavillion), but truly enjoyed it.

So with Mishima at 1 for 2, I picked up a copy of Spring Snow, the first of a tetralogy, and am wending my way through it. I'm reminded anew why "Temple" was such a chore: It's tough to read through the endless ruminations and ruminations-upon-ruminations by a character with which you have no affinity and no small amount of disrespect.

Can someone encourage me with the idea that the whole of the tetralogy is worthwhile? Or even just this one book, Spring Snow}?

I started reading speed tribes by Karl Taro Greenfield, non-fiction about Japanese sub-cultures in the late nineties. it's a different slice of japan...

I've just finished Sputnik Sweetheart and Piercing by Ryu Murakami I enjoyed them both as quick reads, although Piercing was far more violent than anything I would normally read, but I think they will both be books that I won't remember much about in a few weeks

I just finished Rashomon et autres contes by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a short anthology including only 4 short stories, that I was reading when I had free time at work.

My "review"/thoughts can be found here.

I just finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the story of a immigrant Bengali family and how growing up in America affects the second generation. It was quite beautiful :-)

I'm also reading the manga series Fruits Basket... not sure if manga is counted here... lol

I just finished Le meurtre d'Otsuya by Junichiro Tanizaki, a short little 125 page book.

My "review"/thoughts can be found here.

Also finished Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi although I haven't come up with a review for that one yet.

I just finished Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. I found it to be a very quiet and moving book and the title is quite appropriate for the tone of the book.

I also finished Heaven's Net is Wide by Lian Hearn. I had finished the other Otori books a while ago and had this on my list. I enjoyed the book, but it was hard not too feel like at times it was just rehashing backstory without enhancing the current story in its own right. I'd recommend reading the others first even though this one chronologically happens first.

#225 JeannieLin I loved Hotel, and agree that the title was very appropriate. I learned a lot about the U.S. internment not only from the book itself, but was also inspired to seek out more info besides. There are quite a few great documentaries out there, and I think Ford watched a few, too, because there were a few similar stories in the book.

I recently read Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. Good non-fiction read on his experiences as a crime reporter in Japan. His writing could be better, but his stories are interesting. I recommend it.

Currently reading 2 Days 4 Girls by Murakami Ryu. Don't let the title fool you. It hasn't been translated to English, unfortunately. I read quite slow when I read Japanese, so it has taken me forever to read this book. Also because I have been writing my BA thesis at the same time I haven't had much time. Now I only have a 100 pages left. So far it hasn't been my favourite of his books. I have all the ones translated into English and then イビサ which is really great, in Japanese. I recommend that one to anyone who can read Japanese. Anyway, I'll let you know if the one I am reading now is any good when I am done with it.

I have been reading a Buddhist novel, Little Pilgrim written by a Korean poet, Ko Un. It's the story of the pilgrimage of younger by through South India and his spritual experiences along the way. The boy, Sudhana, has a beguiling restlessness.

Just finished Beijing Coma by Ma Jian which was fantastic.

It descrbes through the memories of a coma victim his young life as a student and participation in the Tianamen Square protests. Great book, sad, wry, and the description of the crackdown was quite vivid.

I just started The Blue Notebook, which is about child prostitution in India. It's compelling and sickening at the same time, and I can't help and think about my three girls, ages 17, 15 and 10, and how, but for the luck of birth, it could be them. Makes me shudder.

I have just finished Mother's Beloved: Stories from Laos, a bilingual book of short stories. Some stories were better than others, but all gave you an insight into the local culture.

Try Mulberry Child by Jian Ping.

Touching coming of age story during the cultural revolution. (non fiction)

Just finished From the Land of Green Ghosts, a great memoir by Pascal Khoo Thwe who recounts his life in Burma leading up to his escape, and experiences as a refugee attending Cambridge.

Another series I love is IJ Parker's 11th century Japanese detective, Sugawara Akitada. These books are really entertaining and I was happy to be exposed to Heian Japan, a time of peace in their history.

As a result I have start the Tale of the Genji (huge, will take me forever) and read the diary of the Genji authoress, again 11th century.

This is a great series. I read them in order as the main character development makes more sense. Please try to read IJ Parker.

I like the format: one longish short story (56 pages) in a neat little volume that easily slips into a pocket. Sometimes short stories in a collection can have their force muted by their proximity to so many other short tales. Isolating one, as New Directions has chosen to do in extracting Mishima's "Patriotism" from the collection Death in Midsummer and Other Stories, is an effective way to highlight it. I wouldn't even object to paying nearly 17 cents a page (actually, I got the book for free) if the content were worthwhile. Alas, as is so often the case with the vastly overrated Yukio Mishima, it is not. The main interest of Patriotism lies in the odd experience of reading the story of two right-wing extremists as written in the doting prose of another right-wing extremist. That is to say, the story has little literary appeal; such attraction as it does possess draws from the same sump as, say, a ranting, conspiracy-obsessed, web page one might have the misfortune to stumble across and not click immediately away from (though Mishima's prose, at least in Geoffrey W. Sargent's translation, may not be as good as that of an accomplished ranter).

Don't believe me? How's this:

"Reiko's body was white and pure, and her swelling breasts conveyed a firm and chaste refusal; but upon consent, those breasts were lavish with their intimate, welcoming warmth. Even in her bed these two were frighteningly and awesomely serious."

I'm pretty sure that it is not Reiko's breasts that are "frighteningly and awesomely serious," but the couple, Reiko and her husband. I can't be positive, though, because breasts that can convey chaste refusals are probably also capable of the sort of the high earnestness that Mishima loves so much.

Finally, let me note that in the book's fifty-six pages I count eleven typos (I have corrected one in the above quotation) One expects a lot better from New Directions. Mishima, on the other hand, in this turgid and over-written tale, has given us exactly what we have come to expect from him.

I have been reading 36 Views of Mount Fuji by Cathy N. Davidson, which is the sojourn of an American woman and her husband in Japan. She is an English professor who is teaching at Kansai Women's University in Osaka as part of an exchange program. Her memoir brings out the cultural differences between Americans and Japanese. It can be quite humorous at times.

I just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and The Last Emperor by Edward Behr and am about half-way through An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.

I just finished "Undress me in the Temple of Heaven" by Susan Jane Gillman. If you are at all interested in travelling to China or have travelled there you should enjoy this book. Those of you that visited after the early 1990's will hardly recognize it, but it is all true!

I am still trying to get through vol 1 of a (Dream of Red Mansions) by ((Tsao Hsueh -Chin and Kao HGO)) translated by ((Yang Hsien - YI and Glays Yang))
I like it but I am getting lost in the mansion so to speak. The cast of characters is enormous. Perhaps a different translation? What translation is preferred?

"Read" Shot by Both Sides by Meisei Goto. Terrible. Don't waste your time.

>241 havetea:

The Penguin edition called "The Story of the Stone" (in five volumes, translated by David Hawkes/John Minford) is considered the standard English edition. I own the first volume called "The Golden Days" but haven't read it yet.

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/orientalia/tsots.htm

I review Patriots and Traitors, Sorge and Ozaki: A Japanese Cultural Casebook in today's Japan Time. Read it here.

Spent last weekend reading The Eighth Day by Mitsuyo Kakuta which is told in two perspectives: the first, Kiwako who steals the baby of her married ex-lover, and then of Kaoru, now Erina, as she copes with her life after being reunited with her biological family. I couldn't stop turning the page to read on in this one. Easy to recommend.

Earlier this week I read Hotel Iris and The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. Neither impressed me. I thought The Housekeeper and the Professor was pretty good - these two seemed rushed, maybe trying to cash in on the success of it?

Have recently finished Haruki Murakami's slim short story collection after the quake. I have to say, as a writer with a reputation for the odd bit of surreally bonkers writing, I don't think he'll ever beat Super Frog Saves Tokyo on that score.

#247: In 2007 I saw the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's production of after the quake, which included the characters from "Super Frog Saves Tokyo" and "Honey Pie". I had read the book, and thoroughly enjoyed the play!

Berkeley Rep - after the quake

I just finished J ; Seventeen: Two Novels by Ōe Kenzaburo (translated by Luk Van Haute). I'm hoping that Ōe will allow the publication of a translation of "A Political Youth Dies", the sequel to Seventeen, which he apparently suppressed because it angered extreme right-wingers.

Is it really the case that Oe, one of the bravest of writers, has let threats from Japanese rightists scare him off of publishing an English translation of "A Political Youth Dies"? I wouldn't think the men piloting the bellowing sound-trucks around Tokyo were much concerned with anything written in any tongue other than god's own Japanese. Let's remember, too, that Oe didn't hesitate to go mano-a-mano with the Japanese right in court and given them a good drubbing.

Threats from the right--and Oe has had his share--certainly haven't prevented him from enjoying what his city has to offer. I saw Oe and his son at a concert just last week.

Well, the books were said to have caused a sensation when they were first published in Japan in the early 60s. The 3 novels - J ; Seventeen; A Political Youth Dies (the last two were based on the story of a teenager who stabbed a leftist leader and later hanged himself in jail) - deal with sexual perverts and how they become entangled with politics of the day. They still maintain their shock value in terms of graphic descriptions. The protests came from the sexualization of the character of the assassin in Seventeen and A Political Youth Dies. Since they were based on a true story of a 1960 assassination that was caught on tape and shown on national television, an event that entered the national consciousness and became a reminder of how the right can border on extremism.

He was like Murakami Haruki in the self-censorship aspect, but they have different motivations for censoring their own works. Murakami's motivation was aesthetic (he thinks his two early novels were juvenile works) while Ōe's were aesthetic and political (the rightists threw stones at his house and harassed him with death threats; leftists accused him of betrayal and cowardice when he withdrew the publication of the book). He later blamed himself, saying that he "should have handled" the books with "greater skill", that he "could have written without provoking the right wing and yet making my message more forthright."

I get why Oe might hesitate to publish incendiary works in Japanese. The Japanese right are unpleasant and, from time to time, killers. What surprised me was the suggestion that he was worried about publishing such work in English. If his hesitation is based on aesthetic considerations, though, that makes sense.

Shiftng to Murakami, what's the deal with Pinball, 1973? For years I had heard that,for aesthetic reasons (I think), he declined to authorize republication of the English translation of that work. Surviving copies of the original edition were going for $500 on ebay. Then, suddenly, the old bunko-bon was back in print.

Did he change his mind, or what?

The Author Theme Reads group has selected Junichiro Tanizaki as its mini-author from May through August. Early this morning I read his first major novel, Naomi, and later this month I'll read Some Prefer Nettles. Anyone who wants to participate is welcome to join in!

> 252

dozy,

Murakami didn't change his mind actually. He suppressed the publication and distribution of both of his first two books, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, outside Japan, a point I failed to mention in my post. Which is still puzzling since international sellers (eBay, Amazon) can always get hold of them and distribute them outside, albeit sometimes at prohibitive prices.

Rise

As kidzdoc mentioned in 253, we are reading Junichiro Tanizaki at the Author Theme Reads. Please join us!

Before starting on Tanizaki though I decided to read another Japanese book. Currently reading La fille que j'ai abandonnee (Watashi ga suteta onna/The Girl I Abandoned) by Shuusaku Endo. This is the first I've read from this author. It tells of a boy who manipulates a girl (Mitsu) into sleeping with him and decides to just drop and leave her. Years later though he can't get her out of his mind and decides to find her only to come upon a desperate story. Being a Japanese Catholic, Endo's works come with much criticism so it'll be interesting to see how his works differ from other Japanese authors.

I'm also rereading Fires on the Plain with my ESL student. Just as amazing the second time around.

Rise:

Actually the English Pinball was out of print for years in Japan, too, until quite recently. Hear the Wind Sing, on the other hand, remained in print, or at least I think it did. It was always easy to find.

The ways of publishers and prickly authors are mysterious.

I sure like Birnbaum's translations. I wonder why he and Murakami parted ways.

256: I think I read somewhere (maybe in the Music of Words book on Murakami) that Birnbaum ended up moving to Burma and marrying there.

Just finished Shusaku Endo's La fille que j'ai abandonnee (The girl I abandoned/Watashi ga suteta onna). Touchstones is having trouble picking this up and (granted I haven't looked that deeply into this) the book doesn't seem to be available in English that I can tell.

Anyway, this book was quite... touching doesn't seem to be the right word but it pulled at a few strings. Made me go out and learn a lot about the state of leprosy in Japan. Interesting stuff.

Latest Asian book is Out by Natsuo Kirino.

I've finished and reviewed Hawai'ian poet Barbara Hamby's Lester Higata's 20th Century, an ARC from the University of Iowa Press through the Early Reviewers program, in my thread...post #75.

Very, very good collection of short stories!

My review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Black Blizzard in today's Japan Times: http://bit.ly/c91QNX

@261 David: great review of Black Blizzard. By the way, thanks to your recent comments I bought and am enjoying Schoolgirl Confidential, too.

Glad you enjoyed the Black Blizzard review. If you're in the mood for a little pulp, it's just the thing. I really didn't expect Schoolgirl Confidential to be my thing at all, but in fact I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'll try to remember to post a link to my Japan Times review when it comes out.

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata. I didn't like the characterizations - most of them weren't believable; Keiko especially was bizarrely rendered I thought. She came across as a complete loonie, and everyone's interactions with her bizarre. I realised whilst reading this book that most of my favourite Japanese novels, all of which have a certain surreal, otherworldly ambience, achieve that via extreme passivity on the part of one of the main characters. Would anyone else agree with that?

I read Gibiers d'élevage by Kenzaburo Oe not too long ago. Wasn't too memorable but it was a good short book for the plane.

Just finished reading Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. I haven't read much about North Korea and this was very informative and compelling--strong stuff--but quite objective and balanced...yet vivid and heartbreaking.

Just finished The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam. Although I am not really into nonfiction I found this a fantastic read for anyone who wants to know more about this almost forgotten war and how the US stumbled into it. Especially interesting to see how ego's and the politics that follow dictate the course of the conflict rather than objective strategic goals.

Snow Country and The Old Capital back to back. Instant favorites; if I prefer the latter by half an obi's width, it's because it does without an element of brewing tragedy.

Possibly relevant to the theory in #264 above: it struck me that both stories derive power from prominently leaving one central character opaque.

BTW, can anyone enlighten me about the meaning of the last lines of the song that Yoko sings in Snow Country? In Finnish translation they come across as a sinister twist ending to what starts like an innocuous children's song — going to Osugi's grave again and again? I suppose it could be just a bad translation. How is it phrased in the English?

Just finished Blue Bamboo by Osamu Dazai the other day. A wonderful collection of short stories, I didn't even think there was a dud among them. A lot were retelling of older Japanese tales, but they definitely have a Dazai about them. My favorite story was probably "Romanesque."

And I just started on Woman in the Dunes yesterday. My first Abe book, loving it so far.

finshed out by natsuo kirino last week. some gruesome passages, overall i enjoyed the read, but i'm not sure if i'll pick up anything else by her. how do her other books compare to this one?

Have just this minute finished 'Lazy Man in China', a memoir in letters, by Helene Chung Martin, who was for many years the (Australian) ABC correspondent in Beijing. A wonderful read.

Here are three I read and enjoyed in 2010. Also, see the other Japan Times critics picks. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20101219a2.html

Really liking The Surrendered.

Reading Five Women Who Loved Love by Saikaku Ihara at the moment.

I just finished reading The Box Man by Japan's Kobo Abe. Fascinating read by the end. Thoughts can be found here.

Just read another Japanese book, Le village aux huit tombes by Seishi Yokomizo. My thoughts can be found here. Seishi Yokomizo is the creator of the famous character, Detective Kosuke Kindaichi. All in all I really enjoyed reading this. It was great entertainment even though I was surprised that Kindaichi doesn't play much of a role.

278

I wonder if Yokomizo's detective novel will make it into English?

I think it could as a lot of contemporary Japanese mystery books are getting translated these days as it seems to be the popular thing to do. But it does require a more target audience and a interested translator, I would think.

Also read Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama which talks about a group of soldiers during the Japanese occupation of Burma in WWII. Not as powerful as Fires on the Plain but still a decent read. Further thoughts can be found here.

Yokomizo seems, at least in English, to romanize his first name as (oddly) Seishi, so you might have missed it at the Amazon five-and-dime, but The Inugami Clan has been translated. http://www.amazon.com/Inugami-Clan-Stone-Bridge-Fiction/dp/1933330317/ref=sr_1_1...

Oh yeah I had forgotten about that. How silly of me to forget considering I almost ordered that book in English. Why do you say "oddly" though as that is the correct romanization?

I was thinking his name was the one usually romanized as Seiji, but of course you're right. It is Seiji, and the romanization is not odd at all.

I am back in Japan with The Sea and Poison, an excellent book (so far) about Japanese doctors performing vivisections on American soldiers. It's been hard to put down. Looking at the last few posts in this thread I'm amused at all I've been posting here! :)

I am currently reading Volume 2 of Outlaws of the Marsh by Shi Nai'An and Luo Guanzhong. I have the Library of Chinese Classics version with Chinese on the left page and English on the right. I'm reading the English side.

I'm enjoying it, but it is so gory. I also have trouble remembering the characters since there are so many and they come and go in various chapters.

I loved The Sea and Poison. Also finished reading Hell by Yasutaka Tsutsui (the author touchstone goes to the book) which was quite good and entertaining. Currently switching to some Chinese history with The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan D. Spence. Thoughts on Hell can be found on my Club Read thread.

Geoff Dyer has noted that, thus far, the best accounts of the ongoing wars in the Middle East are non-fiction, while the most successful accounts of World War II (from the allied side) are novels. With the publication of Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical work recounting his service in New Guinea during World War II, one sees that another form will have to be taken into account: comics. Brilliantly drawn and told, Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deathsgives those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced anything like such horror a powerful draught of the pain and futility of war.

Yesterday was one of those days where I just sat down and read Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X all in one day. It was fun! Haven't done that in a long time either. Like being a kid again where all you do is sit and read.

I'm just about half way through reading Storm Rider by Akira Yoshimura about a young boy who is lost at sea and winds up in North America, most his life. It's a story about being torn between two cultures and never really fitting either. So far I find Yoshimura to be really good author and the story is really compelling. It's made my desire to read Shipwrecks, once I breack down and buy a copy from amazon, all that much stronger.

Sounds great! I just got a copy of Shipwrecks myself after making my ex get it for me at Powells! I can't wait to read it myself after all the recommendations.

I just read The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto and am still composing my thoughts on it.

I love Yoshimura, and wish that more of his books were translated. I found Shipwrecks to be very different from On Parole and One Man's Justice, although each is so good I want to reread it. I have Storm Rider on my shelves, and am looking for a treat when I get to it.

Finished Storm Rider, but didn't find it very compelling as novel. Great for an insights into the opening of Japan, but feels unfinished/edited and a bit dry in translation. I'm still eager to read Shipwrecks which even from the amazon preview seems like a better translation and has tighter plot structure.

On my flight to Paris I read Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura and absolutely loved it. Can't wait to write my comments on it although first I really should take a nap. I read it cause I didn't want stretch to beat me to it. Kidding!!!

Reading Hala's Sattasai, interesting collection of 700 short poems originally written in Prakrit of Maharashtra, with some themes parallel to Kama Sutra - recommended only for married folks.

Just read Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. A retelling of the Hindu Epic Mahabharata though the eyes of Draupadi, (probably) the most important female character in the epic.

>295 lilisin: I loved Shipwrecks when I read it a while ago too. Whenever I think about that book, it seems so visual as if I have seen it as a movie but I am pretty sure I haven't.

297 - It's imagery and it's feeling of being a movie is exactly what I was planning on writin about. How delightful that we both came up with the same feeling.

297

I also just recently read the Palace of Illusions and enjoyed it. I had posted in Reading Globally, but forgot about here. It was a very absorbing read. I do agree that Draupadi (also named Panchaali) is the most important woman in the Mahabharata epic. This was also the first time I had read anything by Chitra Divakaruni.

I read about half of the Kisari Ganguli translation of the Mahabharata (12 volumes) before I was distracted by a house move about 5 years ago (!) Palace of Illusions has inspired me to try it again (soon) (ish).

That edition of the Mahabharata is now not available from BN.COM for $250 in a four volume set. They do say that their partner sellers have them starting at about $90. I have been spoiled by the J.A.B. van Buitenen edition, but I think I have to turn to somebody else's complete translation if ever I am to finish it. The Clay Sanskrit Library's edition may have run aground on fiscal shoals. I was not much impressed by Palace of Illusions, but I am still interested that you intend to go back to the Kisari Ganguli edition.

Robert

I thought the Ganguli edition is in the public domain already, no?
It is ashame that Clay Sanskrit Library stopped mid-stream like that ...
I recall someone is continuing the van Buitenen edition ... maybe I can read that when I retire.

If you dig around on the Chicago University Press web site, you'll find plans with dates. Those plans have not borne fruit.

Robert

Earlier this week I finished The Artist of Disappearance, the new collection of novellas by Anita Desai, which was very good.

Just finished Japan: Its History and Culture by W. Scott Morton, which is brief cultural and social history of Japan from its earliest prehistory to the modern day. I think it was an excellent way for me to dive into the complexity that is Japan, and will hopefully prove to be insightful resource while I read more of Japanese fiction. While this book cleared up much of my ignorance I still have so much to learn.

Created a new thread for our reading here as this one has already gone past 300 posts.