Sweet Bean Paste

Read 02/12/2018-06/12/2018

Rating: 3 stars

My best friend lent me this book. She knew that I would enjoy it, and she was right.

Within the first couple of pages, Durian Sukegawa’s description of the novel’s setting made me yearn for Japan and the holiday adventures my husband and I like to take exploring the side streets and everyday bits of Japan away from the tourist attractions. The description of the dorayaki shop where Sweet Bean Paste is set made me think of the Japanese drama series Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories.

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Six Degrees of Separation: from The Tipping Point to The Heart Goes Boom

 

The Tipping Point is the lead book for June’s Six Degrees, hosted at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It’s not a book that I’ve heard of, let alone read. So which way will my book chain go?

Three Short Reads

 

I slowed down my reading during January, trying to get more depth of engagement with what I read, relishing it more. This includes books of less than 150 pages that I would typically zip through. Recently I read three short books from Penguin, all of them full of big ideas. It took longer than I expected, and I found strong links between the three, so I’m reviewing them together.

Wrong About Japan

Read 20/09/2017-22/09/2017

Rating: 4 stars

My husband noticed this on the non-fiction shelves in the library. I like Peter Carey’s novels, and a memoir of how he and his teenage son became captivated by manga and anime and travelled to Tokyo to meet artists and directors in each industry sounded interesting.

Thousand Cranes

Read 12/01/2017-14/01/2017

Rating: 5 stars

Read for The Reader’s Room Winter Challenge

It isn’t often that I read a book and don’t want to review it for fear of shattering its beauty. Thousand Cranes is such a book. I can talk about what I love about it. I can boil the plot down to mundanities. Or I can tell you to read it and find out for yourself what makes it such a compelling book.

From the very first lines I was hooked.

The Miner

Read 17/12/2016-22/12/2016

Rating: 4 stars

In his introduction to this book, Haruki Murakami has all kinds of thoughts about why it isn’t a novel, and why, if Sōseki had had more time to think about it instead of a looming newspaper serialisation deadline to meet, it wouldn’t have been written at all.

Silence

Read 22/08/2016-28/08/2016

Rating: 3 stars

Read for the Reader’s Room Olympic Challenge

A while ago, I read John Dougill’s book about the Hidden Christians of Japan, in which the author goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to understand the history of Christianity in Japan. Dougill refers to Endō’s novel Silence. I was reminded of it when I read that Martin Scorsese was directing a film adaptation of the novel. And so, I bought myself a copy.