Lilisin in 2009

The new year begins in a few days and I'm getting ready. Now that my hard classes are out of the way I think I should be able to get more reading done. I have an idea of where I want to take my reading in 2009 but obviously being led astray is part of the wonder of reading so my 2009 goals are certainly not set in stone.

Here we go!

So far in 2009:
1) Shohei Ooka : Fires on the Plain
2) Stefan Zweig : Vingt-Quatre heures de la vie d'une femme
3) Amelie Nothomb : Le sabotage amoureux
4) Haruki Murakami : Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
5) Alexandre Dumas : Le comte de Monte-Cristo, tome 2
6) Stefan Zweig : Amok
7) Kyung Ran Jo : Tongue
8) Kazuo Ishiguro : A Pale View of Hills
9) Alexandre Dumas : Les trois mousquetaires
10) Ryunosuke Akutagawa : Rashomon et autres contes
11) Nobuko Takagi : Translucent Tree
12) Junichiro Tanizaki : Le meurtre d'Otsuya
13) Victor Hugo : Le dernier jour d'un condamne

What I read in 2006:
1) Kenzaburo Oe : Nip the buds, shoot the kids
2) Jose Saramago : L'aveuglement (Blindness)
3) Truman Capote : In Cold Blood
4) J.M.G. Le Clezio : L'Africain (The African)
5) Amelie Nothomb : Antechrista
6) Raymond Hesse : Vauriens, Voleurs, Assassins
7) Isabel Allende : D'amour et d'ombre (Of Love and Shadows)

Total: 7 books, 1604 pages

For countries read that comes out to:
Japan
Portugal
USA
England
France
Belgium
Chile

What I read in 2007:
1) Amelie Nothomb : Mercure (Mercury)
2) Ralph Ellison : Invisible Man
3) Luis Sepulveda : Diario de un Killer Sentimental seguido de Yacare (Diary of a Sentimental Killer followed by Yacare)
4) Romain Gary : Les racines du ciel (Roots of Heaven)
5) Yasushi Inoue : La Favorite (The Favorite)
6) Isabel Allende : Ines del alma mia (Ines of my Soul)
7) Emile Zola : Au bonheur des dames (The Ladies' Paradise)
8) Mario Vargas Llosa : Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service)
9) Milan Kundera : La valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz)
10) Guillermo Arriaga : Un dulce olor a muerte (A Sweet Smell of Death)
11) Isabel Allende : Zorro
12) J.K. Rowling : Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
13) Nosaka Akiyuki : La tombe des lucioles (Grave of the Fireflies)
14) Dai Sijie : Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress)
15) Haruki Murakami : Après le tremblement de terre (After the Quake)
16) Yasunari Kawabata : Kyoto (The Old Capital)
17) Fumiko Enchi : The Waiting Years
18) Masuji Ibuse : Black Rain
19) Amelie Nothomb : Acide Sulfurique (Sulfuric Acid)
20) Romain Gary : Les cerfs-volants (The Kites)

Total: 20 books, 6296 pages

For countries read that comes out to:
Japan x6
France x3
Belgium x2
USA
Chile x3
Spain
Czech Republic
Mexico
England
China

What I read in 2008:
1) Amelie Nothomb : Journal d'Hirondelle
2) Alan Booth : The Roads to Sata
3) Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote de la Mancha
4) Fyodor Dostoevsky : Crime and Punishment
5) Amelie Nothomb : Biographie de la faim
6) Luis Sepulveda : Un viejo que leia novelas de amor (The Old Man who read Love Stories)
7) Victor Hugo : Notre-Dame de Paris
8) Alexandre Dumas : Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, tome 1
9) Ian McEwan : On Chesil Beach
10) Cormac McCarthy : No Country for Old Men

Total: 10 books, 4353 pages

For countries read that comes out to:
Belgium x2
USA x2
France x2
Spain
Russia
Chile
England

1) Shohei Ooka : Fires on the Plain
5/5 stars
Japan

Spectacular. Simply spectacular.

"People live only because they have no reason to die."

Fires on the Plain is a tremendous novel of a Japanese soldier's experiences during the 1944 Philippine campaign. In short it is about Private Tamura and his living simply because there is no purpose in dying and because life is simply a collection build off of chance. As a reader we witness an individual battling society which deteriorates into the individual versus his self which further become the individual versus man without humanity/purpose.

The novel builds up through an incredible sense of description, imagery (sense of smell, sight, sound), and a use of language that is beyond description. Ivan Morris is the master of this translation and certainly deserves all recognition for making this work available.

Japanese ideals such as the country before the individual are quickly broken down as soldiers try to latch onto anything that will guarantee their survival. In the presence of other soldiers they try and maintain their Japanese idealism, but when left to themselves they quickly degrade into the survival of the fittest with the fittest finding themselves feeding off the weak.

This novel will stay with me for quite a while. Certain scenes making me shudder, new philosophies on God and life made me ponder, and I will continue to question what makes up life.

Our world is the result of God's wrath and Tamura is the instrument of God's wrath. Truly truly spectacular.

Some quotes that really made an impression:

pg 106 -
"Their hair, tightly glued to their skin by a liquid that had oozed out in the process of decomposition, made blurred borders on their foreheads. I knew then that I could never again look at the vague hairlines of wax dolls in shopwindows without a sense of horror."

pg 223 -
"... if as a result of hunger human beings were constrained to eat each other, then this world of ours was no more than the result of God's wrath. And if I at this moment could vomit forth anger, then I, who was no longer human, must be an angel of God, an instrument of God's wrath."

pg 229 -
"People live only because they have no reason to die."

pg 233 -
"Our spirits are not strong enought to stand the idea of life being a mere succession of chances -- the idea, that is, of infinity. Each of us in his individual existence, which is contained between the chance of his birth and the chance of his death, identifies those few incidents that have arisen through what he styles his "will"; and the thing that emerges consistently from this he calls his "character" or again his "life".

This is the first time I've taken notes on a book while reading since my lit classes in college. I found it to be quite enjoyable and think I will try it again. At least with shorter books. Plus, it'll be easy to go back and see specifically what I enjoyed about a book.

For I know that in high school I read Tess of the d'Ubervilles and I remember it being excellent -- I even wrote two essays about it -- and yet I can't for the life of me remember what it is about. I even read some cliff notes and when I read about the pivotal scene in the book my only reaction was "really? that happened?".

2) Stefan Zweig : Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'une femme (Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman)
5/5 stars
Austria

Can a woman forget all her values and morals and throw herself into an affair without guilt or remorse? Can she go against her character and do something so incredibly spontaneous to which others question her actions and she questions her actions as well? It's the story of what can happen in 24 hours in the life of a woman.

Zweig takes us through an incredible and emotional journey in this novella. We are the ones debating in the hotel garden, we are the ones walking through the casino observing the hand movements of players, we are the ones under the rain. Because Zweig manages to make of us a character; the observer.

Truly marvelous and a great way to come back to Zweig after enjoying Pitie dangereuse (Beware of Pity) so long ago. I will not again let so much time pass before I read another Zweig.

3) Amelie Nothomb : Le sabotage amoureux (Loving Sabotage)
5/5 stars
Belgium

If there is one thing that I just love about Amelie Nothomb it is her uncanny ability of seeing humor in every situation. This little novel (a short 128 pages) is told through the eyes of her 7 year old self living in Peking. What with the piss/vomit/general hazing wars the French kids have versus the Germans of the East, her adventures on her horse, and her reflections on Chinese communism, Amelie takes us on a grandiose (for a 7 year old) journey in 70s China. Truly marvelous is her characterization of every person and object in her neighborhood as she struggles to gain the affections of Elena, a pretty little Italian girl who is just full of herself.

Once again I will mention that Amelie Nothomb's novels about her childhood are her forte and this one is certainly not to be missed.

(This is the 14th book of Nothomb's that I read and so my ratings for her are meant to be against her other novels. So out of all her novels, the ones rated 5 stars are the best.)

I enjoy your reviews! I joined your group of author themed reads. I am looking forward to it.
--BJ

My two favorite quotes from this book literally made me laugh out loud. Thankfully I was by myself when I read them. :)

pg 28 -
"Les seuls bon Allemands sont les Allemands bouches au ciment chinois."

"On lui degoupillera les gonades!
On en fera de la gonadine."

And once the war with the Germans had to end, obviously it's time to make war with the Nepalese!

pg 110 -
"Ces malheureux petits montagnards, a peine descendus de leur Himalaya, ne comprirent rien a la situation."

She is terrible sometimes! Bad Amelie, bad! ;)

4) Haruki Murakami : Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
4/5 stars
Japan

On March 20, 1995, the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo released the poisonous gas, sarin, into a series of subway trains. Murakami conducts a series of interviews with the victims (both direct and indirect) of these attacks. While he explores their stories, more importantly he explores the psyche of those involved and their reactions to the attack and others around them.

The victims' stories, although they begin to become a bit repetitive, provide incredible insight into the Japanese mindset. Why was the victim treatment delayed? What prevented information about the attack from being spread efficiently and quickly? How does the Japanese way of doing things affect their everyday lives? And with major disasters such as this?

As one victim says "Keeping quiet is a bad Japanese habit."

At the end a few interviews are included with Aum Shinrikyo members (some still involved, others not) that also shows an amazing inside view to the cult's inner workings. Some actions you can't even believe both in terms of members actually living such cruelty or performing such cruelty and you're also stuck in disbelief that the police were none the wiser as to what was going on.

At the end, Murakami succeeds in his attempt in understanding the Japanese psyche and how it may have aided the cult in going through with the attacks and making it more successful and how it may have impaired the Japanese from truly comprehending the situation.

As an accompanying read I highly suggest Ian Reader's Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan, an in depth following of the Aum Shinrikyo from their meek beginnings to their rebirth as Aleph.

A few quotes from Murakami's book that I felt really reflected the Japanese psyche and that I found interesting:

pg. 61 -
"The teachings tell us that human feelings are the result of seeing things in the wrong way. We must overcome our human feelings."

pg. 65 -
"Since the war ended, Japan's economy has grown rapidly to the point where we've lost any sense of crisis and material things are all that matters. The idea that it's wrong to harm others has gradually disappeared."

"From now on I think the individual in Japanese society has to become a lot stronger. Even Aum, after bringing together such brilliant mind, what do they do but plunge straight into mass terrorism? That's just how weak the individual is."

pg 71 -
"Pain is invisible and known only to the sufferer."

pg 103 -
"People the world over turn to religion for salvation. But when religion hurts and maims, where are they to go for salvation?"

pg 106 -
I'm making a point of noticing that the trains weren't stopped. The Japanese train system is known for its punctuality. But is it so important as to risk the lives of many? When is duty important and when is it important to drop your duty?

pg 169 -
"Keeping quiet is a bad Japanese habit."

pg. 223 -
"To be perfectly honest, the way things are with us doctors in Japan, it's almost unthinkable that any doctor would go out of his way to send unsolicited information to a hospital. The first thought is never to say too much, never to overstep one's position."

pg 226 -
It's all too easy to say, "Aum was evil." Nor does saying, "This had nothing to do with 'evil' or 'insanity'" prove anything either. Yet the spell cast by these phrases is almost impossible to break, the whole emotionally charged "Us" versus "Them" vocabulary has been done to death.

I also wish to keep note of a reference to another book about Aum Shinrikyo mentioned in the book.

Robert Jay Lifton : Destroying the World to Save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism

A few more notes on this nonfiction work (can you tell I really enjoyed reading this?).

pg. 67 -
"That way you get the best view from the Yotsuya Station platform. Looking out past the roofline you can see the Sophia University soccer field, it's like a breath of fresh air!"

Reading these two sentences was a breath of fresh air for me as well. I couldn't help remembering all the ultimate frisbee practices on that field and going to see the hanami. Oh my how I miss my Sophia days!

Another thing I enjoyed reading about was how everyone had their train routines. Each chapter (each new victim's story) started this way.
pg 55 - "I always take the first car at the front of the train. That puts me nearest the exit, which brings me out by the Hanae Mori boutique building at Omote-sando."
pg 67 - "I always went for the third car from the front on the Marunouchi Line."
pg 75 - "I changed at Shinjuku to the Marunouchi Line, and again I managed to get a seat. I always travel in the third car from the front."

Living in Tokyo you really do get used to your train schedule and how you can minimize the time lost in between transfers by knowing which train car to get in, etc... At Nishimagome I always stood near the post at the far end of the subway near the far end staircase. At Gotanda I would take the stairs going up towards the left after switching from the subway and take the first car at that staircase. At Yoyogi I would go three benches past the transfer staircase and wait for that train car. At Ichigaya that put me right at the staircase to leave the station and go to school. To think, if I were older I could have been one of the victims that day.

One of the most memorable parts of the book for me was the three victims back to back discussing transferring a victim to a hospital via a media truck. One viewpoint was a woman helping, the other media car driver and then one other witness. All their stories revolved around this one "red handkerchief" and it really makes you realize how wonderful it is that we can all observe the same scene and remember something entirely different. The general story may be the same but the details are how we perceive them and no matter what, no one will witness the same thing as you. Truly extraordinary.

5) Alexandre Dumas : Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, tome 2
France
5/5 stars

I'm absolutely in love with this book. If I were one to reread books this would be one of those books I would just read over and over again. All the characters are magnificent and so well portrayed! Blasphemy to all those who read the abridged version.

That is what my daughter says! :D There is going to be a group read of that this summer and I can't wait to read it, too! Thanks for the review!
--BJ

Been really busy lately and just can't get myself to pick up a book.

Right next to my bed I have Pere Goriot which still needs to be finished (60 more pages I think?)

Then I have tried starting:
Oil! by Upton Sinclair
Notes from Underground Dostoevsky

And I want to read another Romain Gary, mostly La promesse de l'aube.

Can't decide, can't decide...

I graduated!
I now have my masters in organic chemistry and am looking for a job. I have much more free time now but I've been in a reading rut since March 9th. I've tried everything to get out of it but nothing is working. Hopefully soon I'll put up book 6. And to think I started off so strong!

Congratulations on graduating!!! Wishing you all the best!
--BJ

6) Stefan Zweig : Amok
Austria
5/5 stars

I knew that if I went back to Zweig my reading rut would end. I just started and finished Amok. As always, Zweig never ceases to amaze me. Short but powerful. Master of the confessional monologue and extreme but raw emotion. I mean, how can you not fall in love with a man who can write sentences such as this:

"J'etais comme dans un bain, ou de l'eau chaude tombe d'en haut sur vous, avec cette difference qu'ici c'etait de la lumiere qui coulait, blanche et tiede, sur mes mains, qui m'enveloppait doucement les epaules et la tete et qui, en quelque sorte, paraissait vouloir penetrer dans mon etre, car toute torpeur s'etait brusquement eloignee de moi." (pg. 20)

My translation:
"I was as if in a bath, where hot water falls from above you, with the difference being that here it was light that ran, white and warm, on my hands, that sweetly enveloped my shoulders and head and that, in some sort, seemed to want to penetrate my being, as all torpor suddenly distanced itself from me."

Two men find themselves on a ship at midnight, trying to escape the weight of the night. One sits, listening, while the other describes the reason why he is there, avoiding the eyes of other passengers, in mourning. It is a story about duty and to what reaches we go to to accomplish our duty. The man reveals the secret he carries from his encounter with a woman in the tropics. And through Zweig's masterful ability to describe human emotion at its extreme through a compassionate and gripping confession, we come to learn why this man is on a ship, at midnight, hiding from the others.

Oh my, Zweig. You titillate my desire to read! Thank you!

There are two more short stories (Amok ran at about 70 pages) in my book: Lettre d'une inconnue and La ruelle au clair de lune. I can't wait to get to those but first to bed so that I may let Amok play with my dreams. :)

On an slightly unrelated note, I loved this 1970 French edition of book by Le Livre de Poche. The edges of the pages are painted red and it has the lovely smell of a book that has been in many a hand and shelf taking a slightly dusty smell. (A good thing!) Reminds me of reading books with the same smell in Quiberon, France when I was maybe 13,14 and first started loving the classics.

Congratulations, lilisin and good luck with the job hunt!

Thanks BJ and spacepotatoes for the encouragement. I must say I'm looking forward to getting a job but not necessarily searching for one. And I'm quite enjoying the time off. Finally some time to read.

Thanks for stopping by. :)

"Lettre d'une inconnue" was very interesting and touching. Highly recommended. A man receives a letter from a woman he doesn't know as she tells a poignant love story. Quite gripping.

"La ruelle au clair de lune" was typical Zweig but was so-so. It didn't add much to the book as a whole. Interesting but the other short story and Amok were better.

Right now I'm reading Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa. I really enjoy historical fiction (especially about Japan) and I haven't read any in a while so this is perfect. At 1000 pages though it'll take me a while to get through it. But I'm enjoying it so far. It's a great read on these rainy days that Colorado has brought in. Plus, now that I'm out of school and without a job and my schedule is becoming more of a night owl type of schedule, I'm awake more at night for reading. Too bad I'm waking up at noon now. Ha....

7) Kyung Ran Jo : Tongue
South Korea
3 and a half/5 stars

I'm supposed to review Tongue since I got it from the Early Reviewer list. I must admit however that I'm not too sure as to what to write. The reviews that have already been listed all say the exact same thing I would say. And admittedly again, I'm better at writing reviews for books that I think deserve highest praise. Although this book was entertaining (not always in a good way though), once finished I fairly quickly put it off to the side and thought about the next one. But I shall do my best as it is required of me.

As a whole, although it had some excellent references to culinary delights it also has some truly bizarre moments and it felt like the author had written an outline and followed it to the "T" instead of letting the writing really flow. I also felt it to be rather predictable from the beginning to the end and just via reading the title. As a "foreign" author (to me, at least), specifically, South Korean, I wished the book had embraced and showed more South Korean nuances. Personally I felt this book could have been written by anyone. But perhaps that is just a reflection of my personal literary tastes.

So, even though I could say I enjoyed reading the book (short and sweet, reads in one evening) and I might recommend it to certain people, I won't say this changed my life. I might look for more translations from this author in the future 'cause I do believe she has promise. I say, take a gander and spend the evening salivating over her culinary references but don't expect glory.

Although, I do now have an excellent looking recipe for tongue now.
Yes, Korean bbq is sounding quite good now.

I'm about 2/3 done in about 5 books but can't seem to finish any of them. They are all great but I get too eager to read a different book that I stop finishing the others.

So, I have nothing to post these days. What a strange mood to be in!

On another note, I'm in France right now which means that I got to do my traditional large purchase of books ('cause I enjoy reading in French most) to bring back to the states with me. And since I haven't been in France in 3 years this was especially fun.

My hoard:
Alexandre Dumas : La Reine Margot and Les trois mousquetaires
Luis Sepulveda : Rendezvous d'amour dans un pays en guerre
Mario Vargas Llosa : Lituma dans les Andes
Shusaku Endo : La fille que j'ai abandonnée
Tonino Benacquista : Malavita
Stendhal : Le rouge et le noir and La chartreuse de Parme
Francois Mauriac : Le noeud de viperes
Victor Hugo : Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné
Guy de Maupassant : Une Vie and Pierre et Jean
Emile Zola : Thérèse Raquin
Flaubert : Madame Bovary

A fun purchase of mostly classics and definitely authors I've read before and very much like. It'll be nice to get to these although I will still have to go through the older books on my TBR shelf. But this is some nice new blood.

8) Kazuo Ishiguro : A Pale View of Hills
England
3 stars

This is the second of Ishiguro's novels I've read and once again I feel a little shorthanded. I'll have to elaborate in the morning when I wrap my head around this a bit more.

With Ishiguro, I really do enjoy his writing style. Can I describe it? No. That would require my own writing style which I don't have. But it is interesting and he certainly has you turning the page to read what's next.

The mix of realities was certainly interesting but, even though I don't require closure with my books, I just felt that this one could have closed a few ends at least. Mystery and intrigue is good but if I wanted to have only that I would look at my own love life. Although I could hardly call it intrigue, I would be curious to see how Ishiguro interpreted it in writing. Would I look over the hills myself pondering who that person on the other side of the river is? Or perhaps I would be that woman in the shadows. Or perhaps I'm the noodle shop lady in all her side character glory. In any case, I guess this shows that I wasn't all that interested in the story.

Sorry Ishiguro. Like I said, I really do like your style.

For those curious, however, this book is about a woman named Etsuko who has just lost her daughter to suicide. This incident, along with the visit of her daughter's half sister makes her look back to her past when she was still living in Nagasaki, Japan. There, while pregnant with her first child, she encounters Sachiko, a woman with a seemingly strange relationship with her own daughter and men. Realities twist, memories fade in and out, and we're left with Etsuko, still questioning her daughter's fate as well as Sachiko's.

Since Ishiguro is Japanese born but identifies himself as being British, I thought I'd look for Japanese undertones in the novel. This is apparently only of two of his books that involves Japan.

A few quotes marked me:
pg 65 -
"A wife these days feels no sense of loyalty towards the household. She just does what she pleases, votes for a different party if the whim takes her. That's so typical of the way things have gone in Japan. All in the name of democracy people abandon obligations."

pg. 127 -
"Furthermore, at that time of night, Jiro (the main character's first husband) was invariably tired and any attempts to converse would only make him impatient. And in any case, it was never in the nature of our relationship to discuss such things openly."

pg 147 -
On this page there is a discussion between a teacher and his former teacher about a comment made in an article about how the former teacher's methods were no longer valid.

These quotes definitely indicate the common Japanese themes of generational gaps and gender roles. A woman becoming independent in her thoughts is seen as dangerous to the Japanese way as she should agree with her husband and not bring up anything "pointless".

There was a time in the book -- I forgot to make note of it -- where Ishiguro makes a comparison between America and Japan, something I felt he wasn't in position to discuss as a self proclaimed Brit. But perhaps that's just me.

In any case I'd be interested in hearing from anybody who read this.

You have me intrigued with this book now. I just finished The Remains of the Day which I loved. This book sounds totally different.
--BJ

BJ -

At my group, Author Theme Reads we are discussing Kazuo Ishiguro as our mini-author for the year. I'd greatly appreciate you sharing your thoughts on The Remains of the Day there. :)

As a side note I think you would actually really enjoy A Pale View. I just happen to be extra cynical these days. ;)

I'm very very bored at work so I'm going to take care of some stats.

This year so far in terms of countries read:
Japan x2
Austria x2
Belgium
France x2
South Korea
England

This includes Les trois mousquetaires.

9) Alexandre Dumas : Les trois mousquetaires
France
5 stars

Love love love. :)

The way Dumas interweaves all of his plots and characters is masterful. It's so exciting following the threads that connect the characters. And what characters they are! D'Artagnana, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, Milady, Richelieu and the myriad others.

This is no Le comte de monte-cristo but it doesn't have to be. It's just pure adventurous fun!

I did say I was bored at work. Just wanted to put together a list of books for the 2010 Reading Globally challenges from my TBR pile. It's a great group that I'd like to participate more in this upcoming year. Months may change according to the group but the categories will stay.

January - Sweden

February - Jungle/Rainforest (I'm hosting this one!)
Already read: Ines del alma mia (Chile); Un viejo que leia novelas de amor (Chile); Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Peru); Fires on the plain (Philippines); Lord of the Flies (Unknown island); The Things they Carried (Vietnam); Going after Cacciato (Vietnam);
TBR possibilities: need to find some!

March - Caribbean
April - Ottoman Empire

May - Mexico
Already read; Un dulce olor a muerte
TBR possibilities: Cambio de Piel; Como agua para chocolate

June - Dictators/Dictatorships
TBR possibilities: Conversacion en La Catedral (Peru)

July - Greece

August - Nature/Living Close to the Land
Already read: Les racines du ciel (Tchad); Nip the buds, shoot the kids (Japan)
TBR possibilities: Out of Africa (Kenya)

September - Russia, 20th century
TBR possibilities: Doctor Zhivago

November - Turkey

Hi lilisin! I love the idea of Reading Globally, what a good way to get variety into your books! I'm not sure how it would suit your tastes but for Nature/Living Close to the Land, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer comes to mind.

Thanks spacepotatoes for stopping by. Reading globally is such a great group especially since I do actually read globally, but I always stay in the same countries. There is a reason for that since that's where my interests lie but it'd be nice to broaden my horizons a bit more.

Also, thank you for the recommendation but you're right, Kingsolver doesn't really suit my tastes. Plus it's an American book which, in the group we avoid US/UK books.

But thanks again.

Oh, sorry about that, I didn't realize there was that restriction. That would be a challenge, at least for me, since I am in Canada. When I think about it, a lot of my reading is US/UK/Canada focused, though not necessarily on purpose. I will have to consider this challege for next year, broadening one's horizons is always a good thing :)

Oh don't you worry! The only reason we have this slight restriction is because we've made the assumption that most of the readers would most likely be from North America or the UK (due to this being an English-based group) so to push us to go further, we've made that restriction. Ironically, I don't read hardly any US/UK fiction and I try to push myself to do that. :)

But yes, feel free to check out the Reading Globally group. Such nice people over there but it is a danger to your TBR pile.

10) Ryunosuke Akutagawa : Rashomon et autres contes
Japan
4 stars

I just finished this a few moments ago while bored at work. My copy contains the four following stories:
Rashomon
Figures infernales (Hell Screen)
Dans le fourre (In the Grove)
Gruau d'ignames (Yam Gruel)

Although I am not usually a short story reader, these were perfect reading for when I had nothing to do at work. Anyone familiar with Akutagawa or Japanese cinema should be familiar with Rashomon and In the Grove. I had already read these during my undergrad studies but I went ahead and reread them.

No matter how many times you read Rashomon, Akutagawa's imagery is just remarkable, and quite harrowing. You are immediately transported and afterward, you can't get the thoughts out of your head while images and feelings from Kubrick's "The Birds" and "Psycho" tend to also stick out.

In the Grove is a classic story deliberating over point of views. How we can all experience the same thing and yet come out with different memories. Who is right? Who is wrong? In terms of memory, can we really be wrong. What we remember is what we believe we experienced thus how can that be wrong. I've always prided myself at being very good at remembering events and details at those events. And it always bothers me when someone remembers it incorrectly. But this story tries to convince me that I might be indeed the person who is incorrect.

Out of the two stories that I wasn't familiar with Hell's Screen was the most impacting. It was remarkable. A painter getting caught up in his art and to what extent he'll go to complete his masterpiece. Remarkable story with quite the horrendous ending.

With Yam's Gruel I kept waiting for a twist, an impacting moment but it was a simple tale basically stating that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Simple. Short. The moral we all know and remember, but this story I probably won't.

11) Nobuko Takagi : Translucent Tree
Japan
3 stars

I'm at 3 stars for now but I need to think about this book for a bit more before I can come up with final conclusions. I kept flip flopping between liking the book and not liking it as I read it which makes for a strange experience. I'll get back to this soon though.

12) Junichiro Tanizaki : Le meurtre d'Otsuya
Japan
3.5 stars

To try and get back into good hard reading I've been reading a lot of short novels including this one at just 125 pages. It starts off simply and surely builds up in dramatic tension. Shinsuke works as an apprentice in O'Tsuya's father's store but has developed feelings for O'Tsuya. She persuades him to run off together when one man, Seiji, offers to help negotiate terms between their parents. However, things change when one night during their fugue, O'Tsuya is taken away and Shinsuke is attacked. Shinsuke is forced to make dire choices to find her again.

It's certainly an interesting premise and we recognize Tanizaki's style immediately. The title "The Murder of O'tsuya" takes on so many meanings as the story progresses while we also recognize the huge changes in Shinsuke's character. It's a page turner as well as we keep wanting to know what O'Tsuya is really up to and where her allegiance truly lies.

If I give it 3.5 stars it's only because this could have been a tremendous character study but I feel that this was cut short. While the plot is allowed to develop slowly at the beginning the end is almost a bit too fast-paced. Yes the pace of the book reflects the character's changes (and very well done so) but I think this is one of those cases where I just wanted more.

But overall this is a great reflection on Tanizaki's style.

For anyone interested I started a thread here that focuses solely on my Japanese reads. I go more in depth there since Japanese fiction is certainly what I could consider a passion.

Otherwise I'm taking a slight break with Japanese fiction to read Victor Hugo's Le dernier jour d'un condamne. I'm already excited about it and I've only read the preface!

13) Victor Hugo : Le dernier jour d'un condamne
France
5 stars

Oh this is very excellent!
I can only translate the blurb on the back of this book because it's perfect.

"Victor Hugo was 26 years old when he wrote, in two and a half months, The Last Day of a Condemned Man.
We willl not know who the condemned man is, nor will we know what crime he committed. Because the purpose of the author is not to enter a debate but to exhibit the horror and the absurdity of the situation in which any man finds himself whose neck we are about to slice in a few hours.
This book - with strangely modern accents - has a great power of suggestion that the reader ends by identifying with the narrator with whom he shares anxiety and vain hopes. Till the last lines of the book, Victor Hugo's genius has us participating in a grueiling wait: that of the screeching noise that the blade will make following the rails of the guillotine."

Part of the genius of the book is how the book begins: two explications. The first, that this book was discovered as a pile of crumpled yellow sheets of paper. The second, that a philospher imagined it all. Victor Hugo lets the reader decide for himself.

We are then presented with "A comedy about a tragedy", a short one act play with characters discussing this new book about a condemned man that has just come out. The characters reactions?
"It's a terrible book."
"At each chapter there is an ogre that eats a child."
"It takes place in Iceland."
"They have no right to make a reader suffer physically."
"It is certain that books are often a subversive poison to social order."

Then comes the actual narrative of the condemned man. Oh how he makes us feel pity and emotionally involved with his situation. We seek his innocence! (Never mind the fact that he briefly states that he has spilled blood.) When he cleverly gets a guard to almost switch clothes with him how we want to laugh in the guard's face.

And then, while the crowd parades around the guillotine waiting for the final chop, a man cries "who needs a spot?" to which our condemned man reflects "who wants mine?".

We ride with the condemned man to the guillotine, we have our hands tied behind our back, our hair chopped, our collar removed and then, reprising our role as the reader we stop to think: if the condemned man is the narrator how can he be relating this to us all? And that is Victor Hugo's final genius.

FOUR O'CLOCK.

Finally posting my thoughts on Translucent Tree.

I had to write a professional review for it so since that review is not out yet I won't paste that but I can reflect on a few of my feelings on the book. What made it hard for me to review this was that my thoughts on the book just kept going back and forth between enjoying it and not. I think this was mainly a translation issue but also a question of personal taste. It's a book about romance and love, no doubt about that. But I don't need to be told that. I don't need the characters to discuss this for me to understand what the book is about. As I mentioned though, that's just a matter of taste on my part.

I did like how much could be interpreted from the book, how she always made us question what was really being shown. Which made for a well apt title for a novel.

I'm interested in getting this in the Japanese since it's a straightforward read which would help me get back into reading. Plus, I really do feel like a better translation would have helped.

The review will be at Belletrista.com. First professional review! I hope it isn't just terrible.

Quotes from the Hugo!

"On n'a pas le droit de faire eprouver a son lecteur des souffrances physiques." - 29

"Il est certain que les livres sont bien souvent un poison subversif de l'ordre social." - 35

"Moi, j'etais la, comme une des pierres qu'il mesurait." - 109
I thought this scene was excellent when an architect comes into the condemned man's cell and starts measuring the room. The architect leaves saying "In 6 months this prison will be much better. But not that you'll get to see."

"Qui veut des places? ... Qui veut la mienne?" - 136

There was also a quote from the Preface that I liked.
"Que l'indicible n'est pas ce que l'on ne peut pas dire (car on peut tout dire) mais ce que le "dire" ne peut pas (car le "dire" ne peut rien)." - 10
Very interesting.

I am afraid that you have set me off on a Hugo tangent. I hope I can find an English translation since I have just spent five minutes with your quotes in #49.

I have no context, but I am coming up with:

One does not have the right to test his reader with physical suffering

Certainly, books are often poison to the social order

Me, I was there, like one of the stones that he was measuring

Who wants the places? Who wants mine?

That it is inexpressible is not that one cannot say it (for one can say everything) but ????

Ha, I think I've sent myself on a Hugo tangent. And thanks to the salon as well of course. This book is super short though so I didn't get to snuggle with it as much as you Les Mis peeps.

The quotes I chose are a bit more situational in that they reflect certain parts of the book that I liked but don't necessarily stand out on their own. Like the quote associated with the architect. But let me help you out. :)

"They have no right to make a reader suffer physically."

"It is certain that books are often a subversive poison to social order."

"There I was, like one of the stones he was measuring."

"Who needs a spot? ... who wants mine?"

The following quote is a bit more difficult but is interesting.
"The unspeakable is not necessarily what we cannot say (because we can say everything) but what the "say" cannot do (because just the act of "saying" can't do anything)."

If someones says "Je n'y peux rien" they're saying that there is nothing they can do.

Thanks for the translations. I really could not understand that last one, although reading it in context might have helped to make more sense.

I find that I understand enough French that it is better to not try to translate unless I don't understand a word at all. When I first read the quotes, for the most part I understood them as you translated them, but then translated them badly :-),

By the way, the reference to the "argot" from Les Mis is Part IV, Book 7. I looked it up on the Gutenberg. The Book is entitled "Argot". So I will be looking forward to that.

Yes, trying to actually do the translation is difficult. That's why I couldn't be an actual translator because I don't have that ease of writing I feel is required to be able to interpret someone's words. It's so nice to find someone using their French to read such wonderful lit so please keep it up.

How convenient that the book is titled "Argot"! Please come back and share your thoughts on that section when you get to it. I might read it myself if it's on Gutenberg since I don't have a hard copy of the book with me.

I'm currently reading Lituma dans les Andes (Death in the Andes) by Mario Vargas Llosa. I loved his Captain Pantoja book and his way of interweaving all the characters and back history. Sometimes you think his book is one thing but you're shocked at how it all ties in at the end. Very unexpected. So it's nice to read a Llosa again. :)

I'm also hoping to just go ahead and finish Taiko so I can have an even 15 books read by the end of the year. Plus it's so excellent it deserves to get a proper finish.

On that note, I bought Yoshikawa's Musashi the other day as my next epic historical fiction. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to making 2010 a better reading year.

Lituma dans les Andes and associated vocabulary!

1) pishtaco
A fantasy figure, a boogeyman, in the Andes region of South America, in particular in Peru. According to folklore, it is an evil vampire-like man, often a stranger and often a white man, who seeks out unsuspecting Indians, to kill them and abuse their bodies in disgusting ways, for instance by stealing their body fat for various nefarioius canibalistic purposes or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones. Pishtaco is derived from the local language quechua word: "pishtay" which mean to "behead, cut the throat or cut into slices"

As a project to get my Japanese back and up at a level where I can read fiction and transition to the post-taking classes level, I started read Read Real Japanese Fiction last night which includes the following stories in Japanese.

1.) 'Kamisama' - Kawakami Hiromi
2.) 'Mukashi yuuhi no koen de' - Otsuichi
3.) 'Nikuya Omuu' - Ishii Shinji
4.) 'Miira' - Yoshimoto Banana
5.) 'Hyakumonogatari' - Kitamura Kaoru
6.) 'Kakeru' - Tawada Yoko

The book is bilingual and very well organized. I'm enjoying it thus far and am excited to be up and running again in Japanese. I'll write more later but for now my lunch break is over so back to work.

And this concludes 2009. Go here for my 2010 thread.