So far, 2017 has been a good reading year. I’m even a few books ahead on my Goodreads Reading Challenge. I wanted to post links to some reviews I’ve written for other sites in the past few months (in case you all missed me). Cockroaches, written by Scholastique Mukasonga and translated by Jordan Stump, is a memoir from of a survivor of the Rwandan genocides. What … Continue reading Book Reviews In the Wild
Title: The Diving Pool – Three Novellas Author: Yoko Ogawa Translator: Stephen Snyder Publisher: Picador, New York (2008) ISBN: 978 0 312 42683 5 The quality of mercy is not strain’d. The compassion Yoko Ogawa shows her protagonists, despite their flaws, consistently surprises me. These three early novellas – and novella seems a bit of a grandiose term for what are, essentially, three unrelated short stories – … Continue reading The Diving Pool: Three Novellas by Yoko Ogawa, tr. Stephen Snyder (a #WITMonth post)
The description on the back cover of Kawamata Chiaki’s Death Sentences compares the sci-fi/fantasy novel to the 2002 horror film The Ring (or Ringu, if you’re a purist who only acknowledges the original 1998 Japanese version). The film plot centers on **SPOILER ALERT** a video tape that’s haunted by a murdered girl. Anyone who watches the tape dies in seven days. Of course there’s a … Continue reading Death Sentences by Kawamata Chiaki (translated by Thomas Lamarre & Kazuko Y. Behrans)
The citizens of Japan are dealing with a tragic chain of events. Please consider making a donation at RedCross.org. Or, you can text REDCROSS to 90999 and automatically donate $10. I first encountered Japanese woodblock prints – specifically those done in the traditional Ukiyo-e method – on a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760-1849) print The Great Wave Off … Continue reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel)
READER AT LARGE 