Member: lilisin

A fav japanese mystery writer is Masako Togawa, Kiss of Fire, etc.
The "psychological" depths of her stories is interesting.

posted by tros at 7:45 am (EST) on Oct 14, 2012

Hi Lil,

Thanks for the info. I have read Beyond the Curve a long time ago,
so, evidently, I read it back in '91 when it came out. I'll have to look at
Beyond the Curve again.
Currently watching a russian tv production of "The Master and Margarita".
I love it. Read the book and watch the movie. Guaranteed you'll love it.

posted by tros at 1:17 am (EST) on Jun 1, 2012

The Teshigahara film of Face of Another is great. The cinematography adds to the story. Worth tracking down.

posted by tros at 1:41 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2012

I'm glad you enjoyed his book. There are a few more and they are all good.

posted by catarina1 at 11:29 am (EST) on Oct 10, 2011

Not at all - I am glad you enjoyed it! I have got his 'One Man's Justice' which I hope to get to this month.

posted by wandering_star at 11:56 pm (EST) on Oct 9, 2011

Congratulations on your hot review! :)

posted by Bcteagirl at 9:30 pm (EST) on Oct 9, 2011

Apologies, Lilisin, i just saw your question to me re learning JApanese writing. In short, i wrote kanji in thick black ink on cards with the pronunciation/s on one side and translated meaning/s on the other and as i did so made stories to help recall them utilizing the components and, THIS IS WHAT MATTERS, as I wrote I used various colors of rubber bands to divide the cards into those i needed to review in 5 minutes and 15 minutes and an hour and the end of the day and the next day. The repeated reviews at gradually increasing intervals is what made them sink into my far-from-photographic memory. A couple months of doing this all day long will save years of learning and forgeting. By the way, if you go to Google Books, all of my bks are 100% viewable and most have alot of japanese with both the original and pronunciation, so that would give you some variety in your reading.

posted by keigu at 12:43 pm (EST) on Oct 6, 2011

Thanks, lilisin! I was fascinated by your review of Victor Hugo, but to see your varied library contents, specifically of European and Japanese books is especially inspiring.

posted by FemmeNoiresque at 5:59 am (EST) on Jul 12, 2011

Hi, thanks for your message. I am still interested in Japanese literature, but have put the project on the back burner for a while, as I will not be able to travel to Japan this year as I had hoped. Once I know when I can travel, I will start reading the books - hopefully in 2012. At that point, my plan is to make a list from suggestions I have already had, then ask for more - you will be my first port of call, for sure!
thanks,
Janet

posted by JanetinLondon at 11:38 am (EST) on Jun 6, 2011

Have a safe and enjoyable trip to Asia. I'm sure you'll add many Japanese books to your library. :)

posted by booksontrial at 4:15 pm (EST) on Dec 22, 2010

What got you interested in Japanese?

posted by booksontrial at 2:07 am (EST) on Nov 9, 2010

Have you been travelling lately? I see you're still reading Stendhal.

posted by booksontrial at 1:34 am (EST) on Nov 9, 2010

I just read your review of The Road. It was a great review of a terrible book.

posted by Citizenjoyce at 2:20 am (EST) on Oct 14, 2010

I wish I could read Hugo's poems in French. But for now, I have to settle for his novels translated into English.

posted by booksontrial at 8:47 pm (EST) on Aug 25, 2010

Hi lilisin,

Just let me know when you get a copy of the book. Most likely, I won't finish it by then, and we can still read it together.

Have a nice trip to France! If you get a chance, post some photos of Notre-Dame, will you? :)

posted by booksontrial at 1:45 pm (EST) on Aug 14, 2010

Hi lilisin,

I finished Notre-Dame de Paris and am starting The Man Who Laughs. Would you like to read it together?

posted by booksontrial at 1:34 am (EST) on Aug 14, 2010

Well, not just because of them. I did just lose a lot of interest, my dream of going to Japan to teach Eng. after college just stopped being a dream and I kept reading up on bad experiences with their cultures, how their businesses operate, how employees are treated, &c. However...I went to a huge Japanese bookstore and grocery and it diiiiiiid make me miss learning a language. That was fun.

Anyway, I'm on this trip right now and it sorta fell apart. I just got done ordering plane tickets that'll have me back in TX on Tues. My old friend I went with I guess was a lot like me a few years ago. Big dreamer, just discovered the beats, wanted all these perfect experiences, peace&love fo' ever'body, all working together; just wanted the trip to be like the pleasant segments of On the Road. We went on a short hike (3-5 miles) yesterday to give him a taste of the much bigger hikes we'd be doing, and he liked it a lot less than he imagined, stopped responding after about 10 minutes of "My gawds, it's so beautiful" and went the rest of the way in silence. Then we woke up today to find his car gone and nothing but a note apologizing and making excuses. Haroomph.

posted by rickybutler at 2:33 pm (EST) on Aug 12, 2010

Wow, yeah, that'd be awesome! Been a long time, eh!

I, ahmmmm, errr, regret to say I, ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (I don't want to say it), no longer, ehm, study...Japanese. :| Nope. I've quit, giving myself over to a hopeful career studying geog. and geol.

I like to console myself on the failure by blaming all the otaku that populated the classes and feeling smug, pointing in particular to the girl with the fox tail forever a-swish behind her step.

Wellll, I don't come up to Austin too often, and won't be for a while yet (leaving within the hour on a 3-week road trip), but once I come back and once I start school, we should meet sometime. I mostly come up there every 3 weekends or so to either go to concerts with the one friend I have up there, or to stop by and have some drinks with my brother and sister and their families that live in town.

Wot's been going on with you in the forever since we spoke? Take care! I gotta go prepare!

posted by rickybutler at 12:04 pm (EST) on Aug 7, 2010

Beware of Pity, another marvelous Stefan Zweig book, his only full-length novel, I've heard ... and almost too long, as intense as it is.

posted by copyedit52 at 4:38 pm (EST) on Jun 8, 2010

thanks for the comment about my review of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Glad it has inspired you to start it. Hope it inspires you to finish it though too!

posted by arukiyomi at 5:14 am (EST) on Jun 1, 2010

Hi Lilisin--

I'm following you over from Enriquefreeques's place re the discussion about what to read next. You were concerned because [Life in the Cul de Sac] had only 3 1/2 stars. I think I'm the one who gave it that rating, and though I didn't do a formal review of it, there is a discussion of it of my 2009 75 book challenge thread. I just wanted to let you know that I highly recommend that you read it. I really liked it. However, my rating system may end up a little lower than many people's. For me, 3 stars is a very good book and 3 1/2 stars is a very good book with something a little extra that stood out for me. 4 stars and up are those books that I think deserve to be reread and reread in various degrees. So you can see when I rated the book 3 1/2 stars I didn't mean to scare people off from reading it. My bad.

If you do read it, I really look forward to reading your thoughts on it. I occasionally look in on your Japanese reading on the Japanese Literature thread, as I love and read a lot of Japanese literature.

Hope this helps.

Deborah

posted by arubabookwoman at 12:59 pm (EST) on Mar 17, 2010

You're welcome, lilisin ;

posted by akeela at 11:49 am (EST) on Mar 4, 2010

Your comment about your review not being exactly how you wanted it to be made me laugh - mine, too, never end up being quite how I envisage them! Anyway, I enjoyed reading it.

Get well soon!

Rachel

posted by rachbxl at 11:59 am (EST) on Jan 12, 2010

Don't do Faulkner in 2010!

Or do him and tie it in to the new Salon offshoot dedicated entirely to Faulkner! I'm trying to get a group read deal going of his books chronologically as I'm currently reading them. It's a brand new group, though, so I have no idea if we'll get enough people to take part etc.

(P.S. You should join and take part. :D)

posted by rickybutler at 1:06 am (EST) on Nov 19, 2009

Hey! you have the very same Read Real Japanese book I have! Neat! I picked that up as well as a bunch of H. Murakami novels in Japanese at a shop in Seattle last summer. It was pretty neat, but also humiliating. The Japanese folks working there kept fucking with me, because the last semester I was an awful student, entirely ignoring the Kanji we were studying, and so when trying to find just the regular old literature section, I was completely lost. One employee directed me to the Chinese section, where I thought "Man...a little too much Kanji here, huh?" but wasn't wise enough to catch on to what should have been obvious until I asked a Chinese fellow, who directed me down to the Japanese section on Christianity where I stayed for 15 more minutes before asking another employee, whom I annoyed the hell out of for an hour for translations.

Hooray!

I've gotten a few mangas in Japanese off of Sasuga's online shop. I'm really, really not a fan of manga, but with furigana included, it seemed like a great way to practice. I'm sure you loved all this valuable information.

(Sorry.)

posted by rickybutler at 12:28 am (EST) on Nov 19, 2009

Psh, interesting library? Screw that!

Share your knowledge of Japanese literature! now! (please?)

(I'm studying Japanese and am thus very interested! Do you know Japanese? or just enjoy their literature thru translation?)

posted by rickybutler at 11:55 pm (EST) on Nov 18, 2009

Thanks for the invite to the author theme read group. I have too many reading projects on the go at the moment, and want to leave some free time for more 'random' reading. I will keep an I an the group though, and would like to get involved in the future.
Cheers,
Andy

posted by depressaholic at 7:22 am (EST) on Jan 22, 2009

no problem, good to have u back. i hope the skiing was superb -- it seems this year's snow is making up for last year's...

we seem to have a good group going...i'm quite excited myself :-)

posted by deebee1 at 5:39 am (EST) on Jan 19, 2009

hi, to get some more to join us, i've sent out individual invitations, based on the 999 challenge categories and the thread about wanting to read all the author's works in book talk. i hope we'll get a few more joiners and then can start choosing our author to read ...

posted by deebee1 at 11:41 am (EST) on Jan 17, 2009

ok then. just send me a link once the forum's up, and we can start working on getting joiners from there.

posted by deebee1 at 3:22 pm (EST) on Jan 16, 2009

i guess opening a new forum would be the best way to go, but i wonder if it should be done now or later, till we have more indications of interest. polotropus is also interested in an author theme read, perhaps u can ask his opinion. about getting people to join, we can post invitations in or send out feelers to the number-challenge groups, and elsewhere we're active, and just spread the word around.

posted by deebee1 at 3:14 pm (EST) on Jan 16, 2009

hi lilisin,

i just didn't want us to hijack the thread over at Reading Globally, so i'm responding here instead to ur latest post. i was thinking it might be a better idea to start a totally new group or perhaps, in order to get more people in, introduce it in one of the bigger group challenges, say the 50 or the 75-book challenge forums?

i'm all for it, mind u, wherever it may be taken up. it's just that perhaps the R Globally group is not really the most appropriate one, after all, the challenge there is to read as many countries/authors as possible. quite different from ours which aim to have a more "in-depth" look.

what do u think?

posted by deebee1 at 2:09 pm (EST) on Jan 16, 2009