A lovely book full of detail about Heian Japan. I do get the persisent feeling, however, of reading an ancient form of a livejournal. I swear if Sei Shonagon lived on my campus, she'd be catting about the sorority girls with their sweatpants tucked into their Uggs.

I think the interpretation of Shonagon as a bit full of herself, which is the impression I get from the various interpreters, leaves out the sad aura of vulnerability I got from the Pillow Book.

Obviously a must read for anyone interested in the literature of the era, or the history of women's writing in general. ( )

Very fun way to get to know Heian Japanese culture if you don't already.

If you do, then Shōnagon is opinionated and contrary enough that she can really make the world come alive. Her opinions don't always match up to the popular ones at the time, and it's neat to start to recognize when that happens without referring to the endnotes.

The Ivan Morris translation is fully half appendices and notes, which really help in understanding what's going on and what everything means, but they're also skippable if you're not into doing a real deep reading. I only flipped to the end notes about a third of the time, but I was usually happy with what I learned that way.

I also enjoy this translation more than the parts of a different one I read a few years back. I felt the other one over-Westernized it, which is dangerous when much of this writing, not to mention the lifestyle, is based on subtlety and wordplay.

Anyway, recommended if you've got any interest in this period of history. ( )

This is the version of Sei Shonagon I reread most often; the complete too volume is a bit unwieldly, and the Waley selections are only a little taste, but this is usually enough to satisfy me. As I said in my review of Waley, I think Shonagon at her best gives the most vivid picture of Heian Japan, superior even to the Genji. ( )

Much shorter than the Morris version--only short extracts, really, and not as modern in its scholarship, but still this is the version that first made me fall in love with Sei Shonagon -- "a snob and a slut, but a great, great, writer" as I once told a class. No one, even Murasaki, brings the Heian more vividly to life. ( )

The idea of listing things (物尽mono-wa-tsukushi in japanese) goes back to china (find egs in The Art of Writing trans. T. Barnstone + C. Ping) but, it took seishonagon to raise it into a literary artform. This book should be in all courses of world classics, for taste is at the heart of literature and sassy sei shonagon will not let you forget it. i think of oscar wilde as her reincarnation -- what a pity he did not know of her work, for he could have continued it in english.