47. The Niigata Sake Book

The Niigata Sake Book, The Niigata Sake Brewers Association
89 pages, The Japan Times, 2008

Oh man, this was SO DISAPPOINTING. My region is supposed to have the best sake in Japan and I've always wanted to learn more about it, how it's made and the different varieties, so I thought this book would be really interesting. But the translation is total crap--the most irritating thing was the constant use of "gracious" as a way to describe sake flavor (dear translators, just because you are translating between two very different languages does not mean you can just make up new meanings for English words whenever you feel like it), but the whole thing was riddled with unclear statements and bizarre adjectives and "Unnecessary Capitalization and Quotation Marks." The writing style is also intolerably dry and technical, and the book is full of more puffed-up nonsense than actual information. I did manage to glean a little bit of knowledge about the brewing process and different sake classifications, but it wasn't anything that's not in the Wikipedia entry for sake, which is better written to boot. This does make me wonder about what's available in English--I think there's definitely a market for a well-written Sake 101 sort of thing.

46. Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bantam Books, 153 pages, 1864, translated by Mirra Ginsburg in 1974

I put off reading this forever and ever and ever because of Dostoevsky's reputation as a dense, difficult, cerebral novelist, but finally the book challenge forced me to give in because it was one of the few short books I had left to read and now I wonder what took me so long.

I swear to God I read somewhere that the Beat Generation was heavily influenced by Notes from Underground, and now I can't find any reference to it, which is too bad because reading it gave me a new way of approaching the main question I had about On the Road: if Jack Kerouac honestly believes in the Beat way of life (as he seems to), why does it come across as so repugnant? (Or, since he's apparently self-aware enough to realize how destructive it is, why does he believe so fervently in it?) At the time I read it I came to the conclusion that he was just painting a picture of the Beat Generation in the entirety of its glory and despair. In Notes from Underground, though, the underground man prioritizes freedom and self-expression over happiness and well-being, saying that "man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere preferred to act according to his own wishes rather than according to the dictates of reason and advantage." He goes on to portray base, random, irrational acts as a sort of rebellion against 18th-century ideas of human nature as essentially good and rational, saying that "though [human nature] may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive." I think this is what On the Road is getting at--freedom at any cost; putting authenticity and ecstasy and experience above stability and order and well-being.

(This is not all I got out of Notes from Underground, by the way--it's just the only thing I can say that somebody else hasn't already said better.)

45. Hogfather

Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
Corgi Books (UK), 445 pages, 1996

I read this on Susi's recommendation after I mentioned to her that I was disappointed with Small Gods, and she was right--it's much better. It wasn't laugh-out-loud funny or anything, but it was fun and inventive and (I think) a much better example than Small Gods of why people love Terry Pratchett so much.

44. The Time of Their Lives

The Time of Their Lives, Al Silverman
St. Martin's Press, 467 pages, 2008

This history of all the major American publishing houses in the years between World War II and the early 1980s was an impulse buy on Amazon, on a day in L.A. when I had gotten one too many rejection emails from public relations firms I didn't really want to work for anyway, and needed to let myself dream big. (That day I also bought Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, a biography of the legendary Scribner editor.) At the time I had just started to think about book publishing as a career, and didn't really think about the differences between the huge, mostly New York-based mega-publishers covered in the book and the small, independent, boutique San Francisco houses I'd probably be applying to.

The Time of Their Lives is heavily focused on the business of publishing--sales figures, advances, and description after breathless description of bidding wars into the millions for novels by the next Stephen King. (There were a few anecdotes about editors shaping manuscripts into the novels they would become, and even some about publicity tactics, but they were few and far between.) Although I doubt megamillion-dollar auctions figure much into the day-to-day operations at Heyday Books or Seal Press, the book did give me a feel for what publishing is about in a big-picture sense. As someone who can't even name the Big Six (there are six, right?) publishers, much less give an editorial overview, I did spend a lot of the time confused--most of the chapters (each focusing on one company) were non-chronological, jumping back and forth through time, and the author had a maddening tendency to refer to each person sometimes by their first name, sometimes by their last name, and sometimes by a nickname. This probably works if you're already familiar with all the major figures in the New York publishing world, but I constantly had to page back to see who we were talking about. Still, it's a solid (if not 100% applicable to my situation) and engagingly written overview of publishing in America in the 20th century.

43. A Moveable Feast

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Scribner, 188 pages, 1964

The guy who sold me on Tropic of Cancer--some acquaintance of my ex-boyfriend who we ran into in Moe's Books in Berkeley one day--said "It's a great book to read when you're depressed because Henry Miller is broke and cold and hungry and yet half the book is just him wandering around Paris thinking about what he's going to eat next," and I think that also sums up at least half of why I loved A Moveable Feast. The rest of it is Hemingway's approach to his work, his rules for writing--stop when the words are flowing and you know what's going to happen next; don't think about your work when you're not writing; read other books at night to keep your mind off your own work; write one true thing, write the truest thing you know. I love reading about writers' working habits (another example: Jack Kerouac's Belief & Technique for Modern Prose) and I especially love looking into artistic movements and communities of the past, where the cast of characters is peopled with huge names in art and literature, and everyone is constantly exchanging ideas and feeding off of the collective energy. (Not that being part of an artistic movement necessarily raises one above the level of a gossip column; the chapters about F. Scott Fitzgerald, self-absorbed and neurotic as he is, are brilliant.)

42. The Lake

The Lake, Banana Yoshimoto
Melville House, 188 pages, 2005, translated by Michael Emmerich in 2011

It's probably a function of language or translation or some combination of the two, but all the modern Japanese authors I've read--Haruki Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, Banana Yoshimoto, to some extent even Mishima--share certain qualities of style: extreme care and attention in describing discrete physical objects (a carton of milk in Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, grapefruit jelly in Ogawa's Pregnancy Diary, a wire grilling rack in The Lake), combined with a certain vagueness of feeling, told in a voice characterized by colloquialism and familiarity and a very Japanese measure of ambivalence (lots of "you know" and "well, I" and "that's just the way I feel"). I really love this style and it's probably part of why I can read any of the above authors writing about any damn old thing.


The Lake centers around the relationship between optimistic artist Chihiro and oddball grad student Nakajima. Chihiro is strong and independent, but in facing her mother's death comes to realize that she is still in a way trying to escape the small town she grew up in; she enters a tentative relationship with Nakajima, supporting him through his attempt to overcome childhood trauma. I wouldn't call it a brilliant plot--although Nakajima constantly alludes to a terrible secret that is revealed near the end of the book, nothing ever really happens--but Chihiro's inner world is so rich and detailed that there's always something to come back to, something more to explore and ponder. After this book I'm looking forward to reading more Banana Yoshimoto!

Top 5 books I'm dying to read when the book challenge is over

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (a classic of city planning)
2. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (woooo impulse buy)
3. Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray A. Brechin (about San Francisco's elite and the political and environmental havoc they wreaked on California)
4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
5. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

Being on a nonfiction kick is slightly inconvenient when you're in the home stretch of the dumbest New Year's resolution you ever made and trying to finish 6 books in just over a week. Unlike Matt, though, I'm totally willing to sacrifice content for bragging rights and an opportunity to shit-talk. Hello, The Niigata Sake Book!

41. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Alfred A. Knopf (Random House) e-book, 183 pages, 2006

And here's another YA book that I decided to read because I liked the movie. Except in this case, unlike Holes, I actually--don't hurt me--thought the movie was better. True, the book didn't involve Michael Cera, but Norah's character was completely different between the two versions. The Norah in the movie was cool, a little insecure, but just enough to be relatable, and down-to-earth; the book Norah was high-strung, foul-mouthed, and (to put it bluntly) extremely annoying.

I also kind of dislike books (A Great and Terrible Beauty, I'm looking at you) where the female characters are all "frenemies" and spend the whole time stealing each others' boyfriends and stabbing each other in the back but at the same time they're supposed to have a meaningful relationship. I mean I guess that is reality for some teenage girls (?) but it just makes no sense to me and I cannot follow it or remember who is supposed to be friends with who and why. Complex relationships are great but these characters just change their feelings about each other seemingly at random, and as much as I hate to say it I liked it better in the movie when Tris was just a "mean girl" persecuting Norah. At least it was consistent.

The best parts of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist were Nick's chapters, written by David Levithan. I've never read any of his work before but he's supposed to be kind of a big deal in the YA world, and I really want to read his new book for adults, The Lover's Dictionary (which, sadly, is unavailable in Japan).

Next up: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

40. Mockingjay

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press e-book, 288 pages, 2010

Maryann and I had a conversation the other day that clarified my thoughts on the Hunger Games trilogy as a whole, and what I thought was its major flaw: Katniss doesn't change or grow as a character at all throughout the books. She's portrayed as kind of an unlikable personality to begin with--surly, distrustful, far less crowd-pleasing than the kind and honest Peeta--and it works in the first book when she's fighting for survival and sacrificing herself to save her sister. But in the second and third books she remains completely self-centered as the struggle she's caught up in grows bigger and bigger around her, and it's frustrating.

I disagree with Maryann on the ending; I think Katniss ended up with the right guy (trying not to spoil things here although you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway if you haven't read the book and want to). I disliked what they did with Peeta through most of the book, and I think the final chapters had a kind of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows bloodbath thing going on where characters were killed seemingly at random and their deaths were barely noticed (spoilers, highlight to read: FINNICK!!!!!! Plot-wise there was NO reason he had to die, except that he was a newlywed and that's apparently the rule in these situations. Bonus cheap drama points if his wife is pregnant. How boring and predictable.) But honestly, all this is just nitpicking the most enjoyable series I've read in quite a while. Still highly recommended.

39. Holes

Holes, Louis Sachar
Yearling (Random House) e-book, 233 pages, 1998

Holes came highly recommended by Susi, and I'd seen the movie years ago and loved it, so when I saw that it was available as an e-book from the San Francisco Public Library, I jumped on it. (Yes, I also needed a short, easy read to keep up with the book challenge. And by "keep up with" I mean "desperately try to close the yawning gap between the number of books I should have read and the number I've actually read.") Anyway, I'm glad I did because the book was fantastic--tightly plotted, surprising, and full of more poetry and romance and wonder than I would have expected from the author of There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom. (Not, to be fair, that I've ever read it, or any of Sachar's other books, but I'll admit I didn't expect at 24 to enjoy a book by an author that was popular with the boys in my class in the fifth grade. Huh.)

Oh, and as this was my first library e-book checkout, I might as well note that it's extremely strange to me that the library actually links to the Amazon website for checkout, complete with "Customers who bought this item also bought..." links (for purchase, not library checkout). Huh?? Also, when the book is returned, you get an email from Amazon reminding you that if you check the book out again or purchase it for Kindle your notes and highlights will be preserved. I mean, in a sense that's useful information, but it still feels icky for an online commercial giant to be so all over a library book checkout. (That said, it is pretty fucking sweet that I can read San Francisco public library books while living in Japan.)

38. The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Allyn & Bacon, 95 pages, 2000 (originally published in 1959)

Okay, I have two shocking and embarrassing things to admit here. The first is that I've actually never sat down and read The Elements of Style cover to cover. (Yes, despite the number of times I told you to read it instead of directly critiquing your writing. People who worked with me on [X]Press, feel free to draw and quarter me now.) And the second is that now that I have read it in its entirety, I completely understand why many people think it's outdated.

The trick is in knowing which rules to follow and which to ignore--and if you're the kind of person most desperately in need of this book, you probably don't know the difference. Unfortunately, this makes it useless to tone-deaf writers. The Elements of Style is most useful to teachers and editors who are trying to verbalize principles that come intuitively to them. I've seen so many writers fail to follow even basic principles such as "Keep related words together" (not to mention pretty much all of the ones involving comma placement and usage), and White clearly and simply explains the problem and how to fix it where I could only sputter incoherently and/or drink as I edited. Many of the rules in the "Misused Words and Expressions" chapter have become obsolete by descriptivist standards, if they were indeed ever correct in the first place and not just personal quirks of William Strunk Jr. (as E.B. White's preface seems to indicate). But certain sections of the book are pure gold. It is itself an example of the principles it outlines; it's beautifully written, often funny (though always understated), vivid and fresh. It can improve writing at all levels; some principles ("Write with nouns and verbs") involve a bit of finesse, others ("Be clear") are deceptively simple, but all of them make me realize just how far I still have to go. Reading it makes me want to be a better writer and editor.

Oh, and guess what? This is my blog and I can make a post consisting almost entirely of quotations from The Elements of Style if I want to. Suck it.

"It is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color."

Two examples for Principle of Composition #16, "Use definite, specific, concrete language": "He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward." vs. "He grinned as he pocketed the coin."


On parallel construction for related concepts: "The unskilled writer often violates this principle, mistakenly believing in the value of constantly varying the form of expression."


An example of the consequences of not keeping related words together: "New York's first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday with semen samples from eighteen men frozen in a stainless steel tank ... In the lefthand version of the third example, the reader's heart goes out to those eighteen poor fellows frozen in a steel tank."


"Inexperienced writers not only overwork their adverbs but load their attributives with explanatory verbs: 'he consoled,' 'she congratulated.' They do this, apparently, in the belief that the word said is always in need of support, or because they have been told to do it by experts in the art of bad writing." (In English classes from elementary school on up through high school, we received a handout of a list of synonyms for "said" to use in our writing. I think Mrs. Hillesland might have even given us one.)


"When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax." 


"Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable."

37. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Signet Classics, 215 pages, 1876

I decided to read this because after finishing Huck Finn I wanted to hang out with Mark Twain and his wonderful narrative voice for just a little longer, and it was already on my shelf. Mark Twain (like Haruki Murakami) is one of those authors who could write about anything and still have my interest. I kind of wish I had read it before Huck Finn, just for the extra insights into Huck's character, which were really all I got out of this. I wish I had more to say about it but being unable to finish this post is keeping me from posting about other books that I have LOTS to say about, so up this goes.

36. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Google e-book, 313 pages, 1885

Earlier this year, a publisher decided to print an edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that substituted "slave" for a certain infamous racial slur that occurs 219 times in the novel. This is not all that interesting in and of itself, but around the same time, this jackass decided to attempt to turn around a lifetime of violent racism by "apologizing" for it on national television, and a comment on Metafilter decided to pull the two stories together and set a quote from said jackass ("And I found out there is no way I could be saved and get to heaven and still not like blacks") against the climactic scene in Huck Finn, in which Huck decides that he will go to hell rather than turn Jim in to his owner. That comparison alone was enough to make me reconsider the novel I'd read as an 11th grade AP English student and completely dismissed because it was written in dialect and was about a bunch of hicks and, like, slavery was over anyway. (Oh how embarrassing it is to recall this.)

Upon rereading, I still don't think Huckleberry Finn is a watershed moment in the history of American race relations. The climax is a truly life-changing and dramatic moment, but there are so many problems in the rest of the book (particularly the portrayal of Jim as a servile buffoon) that it loses some of its impact, and overall the messages are mixed. I do admire it for other reasons, though. Huck's voice is charming and expressive, and signified a break from proper British prose and the beginning of a genuine American literature. The book works best as a coming-of-age story, the story of Huck's search for freedom and developing sense of right and wrong (not only regarding Jim and slavery but also in scenes like the attempted swindle of the Wilks sisters, from which Jim is completely absent).

Among all the book endings I've read this year (or ever, really), the last paragraph of Huck Finn is one of my favorites:

"Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more.  But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it.  I been there before."

(Note: I read this Google ebook, which seems to be the only free copy in Google Books that is plain text instead of a scanned PDF. I think they used some kind of text-recognition software to convert it--most of it is okay, but there are times when it tries to turn dialect into "real" words [for example, "clumb," the past tense of "climb" in Huck's dialect, becomes "dumb"], and it really, REALLY doesn't like Jim's speech and periodically turns it into sprays of random letters and punctuation marks. I had to consult the print version a couple times to figure out what was going on. Probably worth paying the 5 bucks for a paper copy, if you don't live in Japan.)

34. The Great Night

The Great Night, Chris Adrian
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook, 310 pages, 2011

Holy Shakespeare I am behind on book posts. It's actually been more than a month since I read this now. The Great Night is Adrian's retelling (more of an homage, really) of A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in Buena Vista Park in modern-day San Francisco. Oberon and Titania are recast as supernatural parents who have recently lost their young son to leukemia; the acting troupe becomes a group of homeless people determined to speak out via musical theater about (what they believe is) the mayor's plan to turn the city's homeless into food, and the original play's four lovers are now three heartbroken San Franciscans who become lost in the park on their way to a party. It reminded me a lot of early Francesca Lia Block, after Weetzie Bat but before all the dark confessional stuff, seamlessly and whimsically weaving faeries and magical creatures into a modern-day urban scene--not literary, necessarily, but entertaining and bawdy and a whole lot of fun. On the other hand, my opinion of the book is mixed--I agree with one review (which I can't find now) that said the portrayal of Titania and Oberon as godlike creatures who ultimately cannot prevent or deal with their son's death was by far the best-written and most moving part of the book. The stories of the three human lovers never quite reach a satisfying conclusion, only a threesome.

35. Island Beneath the Sea

Island Beneath the Sea, Isabel Allende
HarperCollins ebook, 419 pages, 2010, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Reading Isabel Allende these days is like, I don't know, going to your favorite restaurant and ordering the steak with fries instead of trying out the hip new Ethiopian place*. It's boring (if satisfying); you already know exactly what you're going to get, which in this case is an enormous cast of characters who evolve slowly and aimlessly over a long period of time, sumptuous descriptions of gowns and French meals and ballrooms, beautiful courtesans, honorable soldiers, and a little bit of political unrest. In that sense it was fine, but the problem was that I actually actively disliked all the characters, except the relatively minor Sancho, and maybe (if pressed) Maurice. It was a little disappointing overall, but I'll probably still read whatever she comes out with next.

*If your immediate, instinctive response to this is "HURF DURF I DIDN'T KNOW THEY EVEN HAD FOOD IN ETHIOPIA," please re-evaluate your life

33. A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare
Project Gutenberg e-book, 53 pages, 1590-1596

I've always rolled my eyes at people who say they can't enjoy books because school ruined reading for them (I mean, seriously? Just grow up and own the fact that you're functionally illiterate), but it wasn't until I read my first unassigned Shakespeare play that I realized I still have the ghost of my 11th-grade English teacher looking over my shoulder and scolding, "Don't read for plot!!" And I mean, if we're talking about ghosts of teachers past then Mrs. Hillesland is probably better to have around than Mrs. Johnson from the 5th grade making me write "I will not read in class" 100 times and chucking staplers at my head, but this has put me off reading Shakespeare for years--I keep thinking I'll do it when I have time to properly absorb it, whatever that means. Anyway, I've come to realize that reading for plot, if you're not sitting the AP English Literature test, is not a bad thing. It'd be good if you could get some understanding of theme at the same time, and get into some of the wordplay, but there's nothing wrong with getting familiar with our literary heritage, even at a basic level. And besides, if you look at Shakespeare as part of that heritage, the play itself is only the beginning--then there are adaptations, movie versions, and all the other works of art that the plays have inspired. Which is why I decided to read A Midsummer Night's Dream in the first place--as a jumping-off point for reading Chris Adrian's The Great Night, which re-imagines A Midsummer Night's Dream in Buena Vista Park in modern-day San Francisco. I'll admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the play itself, but The Great Night (which I'm currently reading) is fantastic, and more so because I understand the source material.

Next up: The Great Night by Chris Adrian

32. The Blue Castle

The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery
Project Gutenberg of Australia e-book, 195 pages, 1926

I kind of hate these covers for L.M. Montgomery's books (the edition of Anne of the Island I read as a kid had a similar one), and because I read it as a Project Gutenberg e-book it doesn't technically have a cover, but I use it anyway to show how fluffy the book was. And yet so good. L.M. Montgomery (in case you don't recognize the name) is the author of the Anne of Green Gables books, which I totally love, I don't care what anyone says. The Blue Castle is one of her only novels written for adults. I actually hated Anne's House of Dreams (one of the later Anne stories where Anne is grown up and married to her childhood sweetheart), and between that and the depressing tone of the first few chapters I thought The Blue Castle would be a disappointment, but I ended up loving it! I thought it would just be a straightforward romance, but most of the book deals with the heroine's rebellion against her stifling family and the social mores of the time. After telling everyone off in a couple of fantastic scenes, she moves out, gets a job as a housekeeper for the town drunk (who turns out to be a pretty good guy), befriends an unwed mother with consumption, and asks a man to marry her (remember, this is rural Canada in 1926). The thing I hated about Anne's House of Dreams is that after all the romantic buildup of the first three novels, once Anne and Gilbert are married they apparently never interact with each other again, because women stay home and have babies while the men go out and work, don't you know. (That, and the story revolves around some "tragic" characters who are everything the first two books poked fun at.) But the relationship between Valancy and Barney is sweet and realistic precisely because it starts out unromantically; they're more like companions than lovers, and because there are no expectations they're free to live the way they want, which involves lots of walks in the forest and hanging out at home (Barney is also a shady character who doesn't seem to have a job of any kind). Of course they really do fall in love in the end and Barney turns out to be a millionaire and everyone lives happily ever after, but it's a really charming story and only a little bit cliche. This really makes me want to read more of L.M. Montgomery's work, particularly the Emily of New Moon series.

Up next: A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

31. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
Borzoi ebook (Random House), 547 pages, 2005, translated by Reg Keeland in 2008

Yeah, I finally read this, and while I think I liked it overall I'm also kind of ambivalent about it. The nice thing about this book is that it has enough different storylines going on that at least some of it will probably interest every reader. I LOVED the media face-off between journalist Mikael Blomkvist and financier Wennerstrom, and I also enjoyed the mystery of the Vanger family and the descriptions of Blomkvist's life and research in Hedestad. On the other hand, I found Lisbeth Salander, the titular "girl with the dragon tattoo," annoying at best. She was fantastic in the few scenes that showed her in her professional capacity as a private investigator, but the rest of the time it was just this "oh, she's so damaged and promiscuous" act and that got old really fast. A lot has been made of the author's supposed crusade against violence against women, but I really didn't like all the descriptions of rapes and murders--they were completely gratuitous and didn't actually say anything about the issue. And the vigilante justice scene with Salander bugged me--there was something similar in The Time Traveler's Wife (although that was even worse because it was Clare's boyfriend going to kick the rapist's ass--really?), and it's just such a pointless male fantasy. So yeah, I would have been a lot happier if the book centered around Blomkvist, but I'll probably still read the next book in the series. Eventually. Maybe.

Up next: The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

30. The Old Man and The Sea

The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Scribner, 80 pages, 1952

I had this on my Kindle already, but I'm not gonna lie, I chose to read it at this particular time because it was short and I'm behind on the book challenge. That said, I'm glad I did because it's an excellent piece of storytelling. Of course it's also a story about pursuit and loss, rich with symbolism. I think it's the kind of narrative that The Alchemist aspired to, which makes it crystal clear that Paulo Coelho is a total hack. This was my first Hemingway, and I've heard all sorts of criticisms of his supposed misogyny, but damn, the man can tell a story.

Next up: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

29. Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
FSG Classics, 238 pages, 1968


First of all I want to say that this book cover is so hip that it's going to be featured (along with my water bottle and San Francisco postcards) in an upcoming magazine article about what gaijin ladies carry in their purses. Okay. Anyway, I had a feeling that this was going to be a difficult book to read, because I have been crazy homesick lately and Didion describes California with a precision that's both photographic and deeply insightful. Surprisingly, the title piece (which is about the Haight-Ashbury in 1967) didn't really bother me at all, since it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the San Francisco I know. Notes from a Native Daughter, though, was every drive I've ever taken up and down the 5 and every summer I spent in Folsom hanging out at supermarkets and dreaming up ways to escape the Central Valley, and I kind of want to make everyone I know in Japan read it so that they understand where I'm from. (But only because I doubt I could get them all to read East of Eden.)


Next up: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

28. Catching Fire

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press, 285 pages, 2009

I've been SO looking forward to reading this ever since I finished The Hunger Games, and it didn't disappoint. I did find the first half of the book less suspenseful than The Hunger Games, since the Games are now over and the story revolves around the victors going on tour and the rebellions that have started in the districts of Panem, but it picked up in the second half for reasons that I can't talk about because it would be a huge spoiler. I don't think I am going to know 100 percent how I feel about this book until I finish reading the third book, to be honest. It did start to seem less like the author had created a complex world and was working within its bounds and more like she was just pulling out all the tricks in the book to create suspense, but shit, it worked.

Next up: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

27. The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Vintage UK (Random House), 519 pages, 2004

I hate to say this, because so many of my friends saw me reading this book and told me they LOVED it, were moved to tears by it, etc, but it was just too damn long. For a story with such an interesting premise it sure managed to be boring. The beginning, when we're still putting together the story of Henry's time-travel, was great, but then it devolved into hundreds of pages of wedded suburban humdrum. Now they're shopping for a house! Now Clare wants a baby! Now they're struggling with infertility! If I found this kind of shit interesting I could just re-friend all the people I hated in high school and read my facebook feed. Something about the characters rubbed me the wrong way too--the princess and the bad boy. I didn't think they really showed any chemistry--the only reason they were together was because, well, they were (thanks to Henry time-traveling to meet Clare in her childhood so that neither of them had any choice; it's FATE!!!1). The last time I read a love story this contrived was, no joke, Twilight.

Next up: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

26. LIAR

LIAR, Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers e-book, 280 pages, 2009

I first heard about this book because of the cover controversy, which you can Google if you like, but it's far from the most interesting thing about the book, so I won't be talking about it here. I expected LIAR to be fast-paced, tightly constructed, surprising, and smart, and it exceeded my expectations by being all those things and also literary. It's the kind of book that's hard to talk about in a review without giving away massive spoilers, but at its most basic it's a murder mystery told by a self-avowed liar. The question throughout the novel is how much of Micah's fantastic story you can believe, and of course I have my own theory, but I won't be sharing it, partly because it contains too many spoilers and partly because there are so many possible interpretations and each reader has to draw their own conclusions.

(please someone else read this book so we can talk about it)

Anyway, what really pushed this from "good read" to "WOW" for me was the subtle but penetrating commentary on femininity that was everywhere in the story. Micah spins the most elaborate lies to alternately hide, explain, deny and justify her sexuality; the author never beats you over the head with it (although one of the characters makes the mistake of pointing it out to Micah), but it makes the book so much more than it would be if it was just a murder mystery.

25. Small Gods

Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins e-book, 343 pages, 1992

This was my first Terry Pratchett novel. I really wanted to love it, and it did grow on me as I went along, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. For one thing, most of the book is a parody of religion, which I can appreciate on an abstract level but have trouble really getting into because the particular kind of straight-laced, by-the-book religion that he parodies is just so far removed from my life. I didn't find it laugh-out-loud funny, either, and it took about two-thirds of the book for me to start getting really invested in the plot. I do plan to give Pratchett's Discworld another try at some point--I've had Hogfather and Going Postal recommended to me, and I think I have both of them lying around my apartment somewhere.

In other news, I've now read 25 books, which means I'm halfway through the 50-book challenge! Yes, I was supposed to have reached this milestone by July 1. I have a lot of books I'm excited to read, though, so hopefully I'll catch up. Best books so far: Revolutionary Road, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Hunger Games, The Left Hand of Darkness and East of Eden. I cannot say enough good things about these books!

24. Gift from the Sea

Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Pantheon Books (Random House), 138 pages, 1955 (with afterword written in 1975)

This was a quick read and a decent one, although I enjoyed the chapters about art and solitude more than the ones about relationships. I used to read a lot of stuff like this and then I started getting old and moving to other countries and getting my heart broken and realized I could learn all this stuff about tranquility and peace and self-sufficiency better that way. Still, this was well-written and insightful. I had it recommended to me as a good book to take on a solitary retreat and that's exactly the way I would recommend it to someone else, I think.

Things that make me glad I live in Japan

500-yen ramen in flavors like tomato, curry, lemon shio and kimchi. Onsen. Words like "虫めがね" (magnifying glass, literally "bug glasses") and "爆発" (explosion). Tiny green frogs. Shiba inu. 100-yen stores. Bento boxes. Cell phone straps. Stumbling upon stone gods in hidden shrines. My students' faces. Yoneyama. Freshly planted rice fields reflecting the snow-covered mountains like mirrors. Ginkgo trees in the fall. Kotatsu. Nabe. Vending machines. Unsweetened iced green and jasmine tea. The ladies in my English conversation group. The moment of silence right after finishing a taiko song. Salmon onigiri, bibimbap onigiri, and yaki onigiri. The coast between Naoetsu and Nadachi. Tea ceremony. Trees right out of a Miyazaki film. Morning glories. Hydrangeas in colors I never even imagined. Crepe paper flowers on posters at school. The goofy pictures on city and ward signs. Sports day. Chorus festival. Military-style school uniforms. My apartment. Cheap tofu. The gnarled black branches of persimmon trees blooming with startling orange fruit. Pineapple chu-hi. Summer storms.

A summer morning in Japan

7:12 AM: Save tiny green frog from certain death on the spokes of your bike wheel. Bike 4 miles past rice fields to train station.

8:21 AM: Listen to earworm-y ring tone from a ten-year-old kid's keitai on the train. Spend the next 5 minutes trying to figure out what videogame it's from before realizing it's Gershwin.

8:35 AM: Stand in line at train station conbini and wonder whether "THE OOLONG-CHA" is a misuse of the definite article or a redundant, accentless use of the French "thé."

8:52 AM: Work Blog posts.

23. The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Scholastic ePub edition, 275 pages, 2008


I know you have heard this from everyone and their mom by now but oh my God this was so good. SO GOOD. In case you live under a rock, it's a dystopian YA novel in which one boy and one girl from each of the 12 districts of Panem are selected as "tributes" and forced to participate in a televised battle to the death. This summary was, I'll admit, unappealing to me, but I read it anyway because of the buzz and I am completely won over. The suspense! The action! The romance! Agjsdlkgsfd! It stays far away from any kind of preachiness or political agenda, which I think was a smart move; instead it explores the choices and the sacrifices made by the tributes forced to participate in the brutal Games, all wrapped up in the most exciting adventure I've read since... I don't know, Harry Potter, maybe, but The Hunger Games sucked me in even more than that. I'm dyyyyying to read the next one but I don't want the series to end so I'm forcing myself to space it out. 


Next up: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

22. East of Eden

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Penguin Classics, 602 pages, 1952


Like most Americans my age, I read my fair share of Steinbeck in school--Of Mice and Men in the 9th grade (which was a total waste of time with the teacher I had) and The Grapes of Wrath in the 11th--but I must have been too young to appreciate it because I don't remember either of those novels being anywhere close to this stunning. Giants like this are hard for me to write blog posts about because I don't feel like I can say anything about a book so great and ambitious, but I can say that it made me so, so homesick for California, and proud to be from a state with such a rich and varied heritage, not to mention its literary tradition (Steinbeck! Henry Miller! The Beats! Just about every Asian American author I can think of!). Steinbeck is a master of the grand and the epic, and I think East of Eden also shows how well he knew and loved California and its history--the towns that sprang up out of nowhere overnight, the whorehouses, the character of its inhabitants. I loved Lee as a character--his insistence on being a servant for the Trask family despite other opportunities makes him less than ideal as a token minority, but what the hell, Steinbeck understood Asian Americans and their place in California history better than most white authors today. As he puts it: "Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil." It is probably a sign that I've been in Japan too long that that is getting me all choked up with patriotic fervor, that or I'm getting sentimental in my old age. 


Next up: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

21. Sex and the City

Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell
Grove/Atlantic Kindle Edition, 240 pages, 1996


This probably would have jived (what is the past participle of jive anyway? Jove?) better with my frame of mind if I had picked it up during my failed attempt at dating in Japan and not right after embarking upon a new, sickeningly lovey-dovey relationship, but either way, it fucking sucked. The unrelenting cynicism was part of it, but it was really just ridiculous navel-gazing. I don't know anyone like the characters in this book and I doubt you do either. In fact, I had a really hard time keeping names straight because they were all just cardboard cutouts and none of them ever did anything interesting. For the most part I was reading the book as a completely separate entity from the TV show (which is loosely--key word loosely--based on it--some of the characters share names, it's set in New York; that's about it), but I was surprised to find that the Carrie in the book is self-destructive and, well, kind of a bitch. I think this whole mess might have actually worked with a likable heroine, but as it is I had to read it in tiny bits and pieces to even be able to stand it. 


Next up: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

20. Tales of the City

Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin
HarperPerennial ePub edition, 358 pages, 1978


Dang I need to catch up. I especially want to post more about Japan, but I have 4 book posts to get through too!


After reading this whole book I still can't decide if I liked it or not. It was originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s, and it is traaaash. It's very dated, I didn't like any of the characters, and it does this thing I hate where it pretends no one is born in San Francisco and everyone moved there to escape a stifling Midwestern upbringing. (Get out of my city, yo.) But it has its moments--the conversation between Anna Madrigal and Edgar Halcyon about how San Franciscans are reincarnations of the people of Atlantis got me right in the chest. And I still kind of love it in the way I love any book (movie, article) that lets me walk the streets of my beloved city and pass all the landmarks in my memory, not the touristy stuff that everyone knows but Mt. Davidson, Seal Rocks, Colma, the Marina Safeway.


This was also the first ebook I read on my new Kindle (more on that later), and while I absolutely love Kindle reading, my caveat for this particular ebook is that the text quality is HORRIBLE. Stray words at the end of paragraphs (widows and orphans for those knowledgeable about typesetting), weird spacing, question marks sprinkled throughout the text in place of various symbols, and at least one or two typos per chapter (and the chapters are like a page long). We're talking really bad typos here. The worst one was at the beginning of a chapter--a character's name, Beauchamp, was supposed to be the first word of the chapter but instead they wrote "eauchamp." With the lowercase "e" as a drop cap. I know I'm a copy editor but this goes beyond the kind of nitpicking I normally do; I think it would be distracting to the average person. I am actually embarrassed for the people who put this ebook together and I would not pay money for it again.


Next up: Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell

18. F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise and 19. Yukio Mishima: The Sound of Waves

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vintage (Random House), 264 pages, 1920

I read this as a pretentious 15-year-old and fully expected it to have failed the test of time eight years later. The only reason I wanted to read it again was because I was reading a biography of legendary Scribner editor Max Perkins before coming to Japan (which I never finished--might try to bring it back with me when I go on my trip home), and this was the novel that launched Perkins's (and Fitzgerald's) career. While rereading it I remembered how much it once meant to me, and discovered that even after college, the coming-of-age story of a self-absorbed, lazy, self-styled intellectual at Princeton wasn't half bad. I think I considered myself a female version of protagonist Amory Blaine when I first read it, and I want to be able to look back and say "Oh God, I was so full of it," but I kind of can't help but admire my teenage self for managing to be so damn earnest about this whole literature thing back when intellect was not considered a desirable trait by my peer group and Thursday Night Market was the closest thing to culture there was in town.
 

The Sound of Waves, Yukio Mishima
Vintage International (Random House), 183 pages, 1954, translated by Meredith Weatherby in 1956

After The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, reading a Mishima novel where both the hero and heroine are good, simple people and virtue triumphs over evil in the end was... strange, to say the least. I really enjoyed it, though! The writing is beautiful and it's full of all the now-familiar little details about Japanese village life (visiting the local shrine, meeting neighbors at the public bath, junior high school kids going on the yearly trip to Kyoto).

Next up: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

今日の単語：やばい

Today's word: やばい (yabai)
Meaning: crap, lame, this sucks
Probably everyone in Japan already knows this one. やばい isn't quite as strong as 災厄--the former tends to be muttered under one's breath, while the latter is screamed and accompanied by wildly dramatic gestures. やばい is used when you forget your evaluation sheet for a speaking test or get so pumped for the test that you slam your textbook down on the teacher's desk and knock over all the evaluation sheets*, and figures heavily (along with 無理, "impossible") in the students' pre-test mumblings. Like many い-adjectives, the ending frequently morphs to create the even slangier やべ.
 
Example sentence: 教科書見ないで？やべ！ぜんぜん無理です！
 
*This happened yesterday and I couldn't stop laughing at the poor kid. Despite his pre-test nerves, he got a perfect score.

17. Paulo Coehlo: The Alchemist

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Harper UK (HarperCollins), 177 pages, 1988, translated by Alan R. Clarke in 1992

A while ago I was obsessed with asking people on Omegle to tell me their favorite book. 9 out of 10 people responded with some variation of "u r gay," and except for one, all of the rest said Twilight. The last person recommended The Alchemist.

So yeah, it's slightly above the intellectual standard of Twilight, but not by much. I can see why it became a bestseller, and it does have its moments, but I don't really have any patience for the kind of vague pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo it puts forth. I got fed up with it around the time Fatima appeared--nothing annoys me like a cardboard cutout love interest (whose love story with the hero is nevertheless supposed to be somehow significant) in a story where all the men are running around dealing with Important Life Questions. Bitch, please. C-- would not buy again

Next up: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
Ace Books (Penguin), 301 pages, 1969

I inherited this book from my predecessor by default, and I honestly had no intention of reading it, but I picked it up randomly off the shelf after deciding I didn't feel like reading any of the (many) books I'd bought in Tokyo. I think I had a vague idea that I should try reading some sci-fi to fulfill my goal of reading a wider variety of genres; I don't know. But outside of the dystopian classics (Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451), it's the first sci-fi I've ever read, and I LOVED it. LOOOOOVED it. It was one of a very few books I've read this year that was completely engrossing (A Wild Sheep Chase was another, and maybe Revolutionary Road), and I know that's such a cliche, but I'm finding that very few books actually fit that description. For hours a day I just immersed myself in this world that the author created. When I finished A Wild Sheep Chase, I was overcome by the urge to see Hokkaido, and when I finished Montana 1948 I added Montana to my Epic American Road Trip 2012 itinerary; obviously no such thing is possible for science fiction, so I just found myself wishing the book would never end.

Since coming to Japan I'm finding myself drawn to stories of cultural isolation, especially if they involve an element of being unable to express oneself through verbal communication (which I think is why I was so moved by The King's Speech). It's kind of crazy to compare my situation to that of a protagonist in a sci-fi novel, but in a lot of ways I related to Genly. The idea of shifgrethor (遠慮？顔を立てる？) The inability of the locals to pronounce your name? The SNOW?? For a while I even wondered if Le Guin had Japan in mind as she wrote it, although I'm sure that's just projection. Anyway, I'll definitely be reading more of her work in the future.

Next up: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

15. Larry Watson: Montana 1948

Montana 1948, Larry Watson

Washington Square Press, 175 pages, 1993

Damn, I'm behind on book posts. I'm on book number 18 now, so I'll try to get through these quickly and get caught up. Anyway, I picked this up at random at the midyear seminar book sale, having never heard of the book or its author before, and was quite pleasantly surprised. The obvious comparison is to To Kill a Mockingbird: small American town, racial injustice, a father taking a difficult stand for what's right, told through a child's eyes. I haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird in about a million years (okay, I can tell you exactly how many years: eight. Oh God.), so I can't really compare the two in any significant way, but I did enjoy Montana 1948. Watson has that kind of writing style that doesn't call attention to itself; it's so easy and transparent that you almost don't notice how well-crafted it is. It's a short read, and suspenseful, but also a good and important one.

Next up: The Left Hand of Darkness by  Ursula K. Le Guin

今日の単語：災厄

Today's word: 災厄 (さいやく saiyaku)
Meaning: calamity, disaster
Commonly used in the following situations:

• Not receiving a sticker
• Being told "No" when you ask if you can wear the ALT's glasses
• Being required to write a sentence in English
• Taking a speaking test
• Breaking a pikopiko hammer

Example sentence: さいやく～～～～～～～！！！！！！！ (Okay, I've never actually heard this used in a sentence.)

I think I might start posting these regularly, using only words I've learned from my students. They certainly make up the most colorful portion of my Japanese vocabulary.

14. John Updike: Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Fawcett Books (Random House/Ballantine), 264 pages, 1960

When I was about 16 and trying desperately to seem intellectual, I pulled this off the shelf at the Folsom Library, read the summary on the back, and put it back because I thought it was about basketball. I'm kind of glad I did because I don't think I was ready to read it then. It took me a while to get into it this time, despite the beautiful prose. What finally gave me an "in" was reading on Wikipedia that Updike wrote it as a response to Kerouac's On the Road (which was the first and only book read by the ill-fated Joetsu book club last year). I have no idea whether that's true, but having spent so much time dissecting On the Road, thinking about the two books together helped me realize what exactly the story was that Updike was trying to tell.

The stories are actually very similar--dumb, misogynist everyman decides that the tedium of American family life is beneath him and that he's meant for something greater, takes off on road trip, eventually is smacked in the face by divine retribution (Dean Moriarty goes crazy; Rabbit's wife accidentally drowns their daughter). But the writers take completely different approaches. Kerouac really believes in the lifestyle he sets forth in his books, and describes it with breathless joy; Updike is more cautious, and makes it clear that what he's describing is an attempt to escape from something that has no escape. There are so many late '50s/early '60s American novels on this theme--if you were a thinking person in America at that time, it seems, you were looking for a way out.

There is one more novel I've read recently that fits this formula: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I read Rabbit, Run the way you take medicine (it's good for you), and On the Road was like a trainwreck (can't look away), but I genuinely enjoyed Revolutionary Road, and I finished it in about 3 days. The difference, I think, is that it tells the story of a married couple instead of a single male protagonist, and so includes a female perspective. In fact, the wife, April Wheeler, is the one pushing for the family's escape to Europe--she's the smart one, the one who acts, causing her husband to react. Rabbit Angstrom and Dean Moriarty can go to hell, but I actually felt for the Wheelers as I watched their lives get torn apart.

Next up: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

Joetsu, one year later

It's that time again--JET placements are coming out, and in the next few days 11 lucky people will be frantically scouring the internet for information about Joetsu. I wrote this post a little over a year ago, before I came to Japan, and apparently it's come up in Google searches about Joetsu, so I figure this is as good a time as any to update those impressions now that I've been here almost a year.

(I also posted these pictures from Google Earth, which I now find hilarious because you know that "OMG, snow" picture of Takada? That's clearly beginning-of-winter snow. That's PUSSY snow. Two months later, shit gets real.)

Um... anyway, I may or may not continue to indulge in this kind of good-natured hazing, but the truth is that I love it here. I was more or less bang-on with my attempt to describe the layout in that old post: there's a town center (Naoetsu is north, Takada is south), and outside that, miles and miles of rice fields and some teacher housing. Joetsu itself isn't total inaka; there's a JUSCO, a Uniqlo, a movie theater, restaurants, a coffee shop, three McDonalds, a nice park, some okay bars (though the regular Saturday night crowd is nothing to write home about). There are also a ton of big box stores, which might surprise you if you've never been to Japan; apparently suburban sprawl and architectural eyesores are not unique to my homeland. It ain't San Francisco, but it has more or less everything you need.

And then there's the rest. There are still vast parts of it that I haven't explored (a project for an upcoming weekend, I think), but Yoshikawa, where I live, is a more or less typical example. It takes 30 to 40 minutes to get here from town. There are a few shops (conbini, pharmacy, gas station) within about 10 minutes' walk, and a bit farther out there's a 7-11, a sake brewery, and a nice little onsen with a restaurant (typical teishoku fare). There are two mountains, Yoneyama and Okamidake. The nearest supermarket is about a 10 minute drive away, in the next ward. Other than that, Yoshikawa consists entirely of rice fields. 

I probably haven't sold anyone on it with what I've said here, but Joetsu can be a great place if you let it. I was never a nature type before I got here but watching the changes in the rice fields throughout the seasons is an awesome thing (awesome as in "full of awe," not "totally tubular"). The mountains, the coastline, the snow--all of them are absolutely stunning. We're no more than an hour away from awesome snowboarding (by that I DO mean "totally tubular"), and Nagano City is a lovely little city (with real shopping, jazz bars, Starbucks, Thai food and a famous temple) that's about an hour and a half away by train. 

It has been a pretty intense year, but Joetsu has been good to me, good enough that I've signed up for another year. Bring on the snow!

Literary homesickness

Here in Japan I'm reading what I can get my hands on, which mostly consists of the piles and piles of books I bought indiscriminately in a kind of feeding frenzy the last time I was in an English-language bookstore in Tokyo. I definitely have enough to keep me busy until July when I go home, but these are the ones I'm aching to get my hands on once I touch down in the U.S.:

The Great Night

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Tales of the City

San Francisco, I miss you.

edit: and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I'm going to stop now before this gets out of control

Book challenge progress

It's been a while, and there's too much to say, and much of it has already been said. (Last year brought two major relocations and the end of a five-year relationship, but after the earthquake and its physical and emotional aftermath, I think I can safely say that this year has already equaled it in insanity. Then there was that date I went on)

Anyway, as usual, the only way I feel like I can dive back into blogging is by talking about books. I'm still behind on the 50-book challenge (I've read 15 books when I should be at around 20), and even more behind with the blogging, and some of these books deserve much more attention than I've given them here, but if I try to do an individual entry for each book I'll never get this done.

6. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Penguin Books, 314 pages, 1928
I was quite disappointed by this, to be honest. I hadn't expected that the controversy would stand the test of time, but I didn't expect it to be downright sexually conservative, either. I did find the social commentary and anti-industrialist themes interesting--more interesting than the characters, to be honest, which is probably why I didn't enjoy the book. (Apparently it's been criticized in the past for being too transparent in its social commentary, at the expense of storytelling.)

7. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Vintage Classics UK (Random House), 337 pages, 1961
This book works quite well into the post I'm writing about Rabbit, Run by John Updike, so I won't say anything about it here except that it is very nearly the perfect novel.

8. The Book of Tea, Kakuro Okazawa
IBC Publishing, 135 pages, 1906
I started taking lessons on tea ceremony recently, and decided to read this as a way of immersing myself deeper into the meaning and spirit behind tea ceremony. The book easily delivered on that promise and really brought the ceremony alive for me, with the unexpected side effect of making me understand finally this aspect of Japanese culture that I have been rejecting for all these years as cliche. I'm a little ashamed to admit that despite all my Asian American studies coursework, I once had a tendency to thoughtlessly consider the Japanese cultural arts (tea ceremony included) to be sort of outdated and inauthentic, something white people tried to push on me without understanding that Japanese America has long since moved on. But after learning and reading about tea ceremony I understand exactly why the Issei generation continued practicing it in the internment camps, and exactly what was lost when subsequent generations abandoned it to become more American. This is all just my personal baggage and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the book itself, but it is a wonderful introduction to the philosophy of tea ceremony.

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
Random House, 349 pages, 2009
This one took a while to draw me in--I didn't find the initial group of characters especially compelling. But gradually McCann brings in more characters and sketches out the connections between them, creating an intricate web of incidental attachments and people passing in the streets. After those slow first pages, it's a wonderful story.

10. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
Vintage International (Random House), 180 pages, 2007, translated in 2008 by Philip Gabriel
When I picked this up, it had been a while since I had read anything; instead, I had been spending a lot of time at the gym, and I thought this book would be a good way to connect all that physical effort back to something mental. I love Murakami's style and would enjoy reading him write about just about anything, but what impressed me with this one was how well he knows himself, how intimate and concrete is his knowledge of his own strengths and shortcomings.

11. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Vintage Canada (Random House), 354 pages, 2001
Life of Pi is just excellent storytelling--funny, sad, smart. I don't know what else to say about it; I avoided reading it for years because of all the buzz and finally became interested in it due to this (really old, major-spoiler-containing) Ask Metafilter thread. It has its flaws, which this review does a better job of describing than I could--the one that bothered me the most was that Pi's religious fervor, so important in the early chapters of the novel, is almost completely dropped as a theme once the survival story begins. But it was still a thoroughly enjoyable read.

12. A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
Vintage UK (Random House), 299 pages, 1982, translated by Alfred Birnbaum
I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this and I can't even explain why. Like I said, I love Murakami's style and would read him writing about almost anything, but this time it was the story that captivated me--following the nameless protagonist deep into the desolation of northern Hokkaido, passing through sad hotels and forgotten train stations, all in pursuit of a magical sheep. It's like the protagonist says to the black-suited secretary who sends him on the assignment: "This all has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. Somehow coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them what happened today."

13. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Picador USA, 321 pages, 1997
The Red Tent re-imagines the life of a minor female character in the Bible; it's a beautiful, rich, sensory novel. My one problem with it was that after spending the first half of the novel with Dinah's four strong, funny, fascinating mothers, the story of Dinah's exile in Egypt (and her meekness and devotion to her controlling mother-in-law and absent son) is almost disappointing and definitely anti-climactic. Despite that, though, it was a pleasure to read.

I've finished two more books since I started writing this post, but I think I want to give them individual entries. Next up: Rabbit, Run by John Updike

5. Irene Sabatini: The Boy Next Door

The Boy Next Door, Irene Sabatini

Sceptre UK, 403 pages, 2009

I grabbed this in Kinokuniya when I was in Tokyo, feeling that I should be reading A) more recent novels (stay up with the current trends and all that), and B) more non-Western and especially African novels. Despite being a lifelong bookworm, the vast majority of the books I've read have been from American or European authors, with a few popular representatives from Latin America (Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and Asia (Haruki Murakami). I don't think I've ever read a single African author.

The Boy Next Door wasn't amazing, but it was enjoyable enough. It reminded me of early Isabel Allende: plucky heroine finds love against a backdrop of political unrest. I did find it hard to understand a lot of the Zimbabwean slang and political references (though that may have had something to do with the fact that I read a big chunk of it on the train on the way back from midyear seminar, when I was absolutely bushed).

Something else worth noting: the cover. It's no secret that publishing companies are weird about putting non-white faces on book covers (recent example: Justine Larbalestier's Liar), so in a way this cover is exceptional. Not much else to say there; just wanted to point it out.


Next up: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

I'm WINNING!

Sunday was a day of trying new things. The list, in order:

1. Snowboarding
If you know me, you're probably thinking "WTF?" I am not athletic, I am not outdoorsy, I am scared of everything to the point where I won't go on most roller coasters, and before this year I had never lived in a place that gets snow. Well, Joetsu, as you might have heard, gets a LOT of it, and everyone here does winter sports as a way to make it bearable. It took me a while to hop on the bandwagon but I went for the first time on Sunday and it was AMAZING. I'm pretty sure they release some sort of chemical in the air at Ikenotaira to make you feel this way. Going up the ski lift and feeling the fear was amazing, getting it right and zooming down the slope was amazing, falling down was amazing, going 3 feet and then faceplanting again was amazing. Snowboarding is something I would never in a million years have considered doing back home. I was so proud of myself just for going, and then to actually have a great time doing it was the icing on the cake! I'm almost disappointed that I got into it so late in the season, but I think this was something I needed right now.

2. Onsen
Onsen are public baths fueled by natural hot springs. They're everywhere in Japan (there's one within a few miles of my house) and I really should have been to one already by now. But man, it was the perfect way to relax after snowboarding.

3. Kimchi ramen!

Enough said.

4. Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
W.W. Norton, 440 pgs, 1997

Wow, what to say. Before reading this I had vaguely held the unexamined notion that popular science was for hacks. I'll be the first to admit that I don't read much in the genre, though, and I think really I have more of a problem with the way popular science books are marketed, as Guns, Germs, and Steel is much more thoughtful and thorough than the buzz around it would suggest.

I still don't really want to read Outliers, though.

Anyway, the book sets out to answer the question of why certain societies developed advanced technology and came to dominate the world, while other contemporary groups were still living as hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Diamond suggests that the ultimate causes lie in the geographical conditions that each of these groups was given to work with--the relative isolation, native flora and fauna, suitability for food production, and ease of travel of each of their environments. It doesn't actually have a lot to do with guns, germs, or steel, but I suppose that was catchier than just calling it Food and Geographical Conditions. One of the more interesting insights, for me, was the idea that food production spread more quickly in continents that are wider than they are tall, because places at the same latitude were more likely to share similar climates and thus be able to adopt each other's crops. In this way, Eurasia gained an early advantage over Africa and the Americas, where varying climates meant that people in different parts of the continent had to discover crop domestication for themselves. Continents that were easier to traverse tended to foster a greater exchange of ideas and technology, as expected, but Diamond also argues that China's rivers and plains (as opposed to Europe's many peninsulas) made political unification so easy that it actually retarded technological growth, since it only took one anti-technology ruler to stop progress for decades. (Columbus went to several monarchs before gaining Spain's support for his voyage; in China he wouldn't have made it past the first appeal.)

I could go on and on--the book is full of elegant solutions to complex problems, but they're never made snappy or dumbed down. It also had the side effect of giving me a brief education in the pre-European histories and peoples of Africa, the Americas, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Polynesia, although there are probably better ways to learn about that.

Next up: The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini