Shylock Is My Name

Read 24/04/2016-26/04/2016

Rating: 3 stars

Read for the Reader’s Room March Madness challenge.

I haven’t read The Merchant of Venice. I suppose this might have put me at a disadvantage in reading Howard Jacobson’s retelling of the play.

I’ve also not read any Howard Jacobson before. When I opened the book, I didn’t know what his style would be. I ended up enjoying it, despite initial misgivings. It’s a cheeky chappy style, but with depth. He put me in mind of Michael Frayn. I enjoyed the way he peeled away the layers of the issues with which he concerned himself in the book.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Read 22/04/2016-23/04/2016

Rating: 5 stars

Read for the Reader’s Room March Madness challenge

I’ve had this book recommended to me a few times, so when it was nominated for the March Madness challenge, I decided it was one of the challenge books I would read.

Random thought: Una Stubbs loves Crime and Punishment too

I love Una Stubbs. Forget those silly boys dashing about London solving mysteries, she makes Sherlock for me.

She’s more than Mrs Hudson, though. She’s the cheeky foil to Cliff Richard who knows how to dance. She’s an expert at charades. Her episode of Who Do You Think You Are is one of the best they’ve ever done.

She’s in The Guardian today doing the Q&A. Quite aside from learning she despises Tony Blair, I love her even more today because she knows that you don’t need a fancy pants education to read Crime and Punishment (have I mentioned that it’s my favourite book in the world? Oh, I have?).

 

The Pursuit of Love

Read 19/04/2016-21/04/2016

Rating: 4 stars

At first, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy The Pursuit of Love as much as I did Love in a Cold Climate. It seemed very frivolous and silly, even bearing in mind it’s by Nancy Mitford. Although I already knew the characters from the second book in the series, I felt they weren’t very well fleshed out at the start of this book. I think I was expecting them to be more clearly defined as characters, as this was the book in which Mitford introduces them.

Book Review: Japanese Society by Chie Nakane

I was reminded of this book today, while discussing Colourless Tsukuru and his Years of Pilgrimage over on The Reader’s Room. Here’s a review I wrote on my Japanophile blog.

Japanophile

Japanese Society by Professor Chie Nakane was a ground breaking book when first published in 1972, and has been cited in many books that followed it. It needs updating to take into account the changes in Japan that have happened over the past 40+ years, but its scope and anthropological investigative style means it’s still worth reading today.

I read the Pelican edition, which came out in 1973. I picked it up because I was interested in the perception that the Japanese are different to Westerners, and in how popular Western tropes of Japanese people being hard working, company loyal, and socially rigid in behaviour and levels of language had become so entrenched in Western thinking. I found the book to be full of interesting background to the development of Japanese society and why the Japanese behave the way they do in comparison to other nations, and found the social anthropology…

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Love in a Cold Climate

Read 16/04/2016-19/04/2016

Rating: 3 stars

LibraryThing review

Read for the Shelfari 1001 group Group on Goodreads – an April BOTM

This was my first encounter with Nancy Mitford. I’ve meant to read this novel for years.

A Trip to a Little Free Library

For the Reader’s Room Winter Scavenger Hunt Challenge, we were asked to find our nearest Little Free Library, within a 30 mile radius.

I had the choice of two libraries, each a short drive from my home.