猛スピードで母は
長嶋有, 2005
110 ページ
2020.07 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 家族ドラマの短編集
✔ 少女視点の親の離婚と少年視点のシングルマザーの二本
✔ 子供のリアルな心境の動き
★★★★☆ ドラマチックではないし、ふんわり系でもない家族ドラマ。リアルな日常と人には伝えにくい心情の動きや行動がそこにはある。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽 二本の短編。 ふんわり系と思っていたら、違う。 最初のストーリーには、少女の目線からの親の離婚とその愛人のことが、 もう一つには少年から見たシングルマザー母のことが。 ドラマチックではないし、ふんわり系でもなく、リアルな日常と人には伝えにくい心情の動きや行動がそこにはある。 初めての作家で女性かと思ったら男性だった。 なのに女の子の心の動きや強い女性のちらりと見せる弱さの背景の動きなどが心地よい。
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
猛スピードで母は (文春文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
A Pale View of Hills Kazuo Ishiguro, 1982 183 pages Read in 2025.02 check price on amazon.com✔ Memories of the post war chaos of Nagasaki ✔ Struggles of mothers ✔ Mother daughter relationship 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ Ishiguro's stories always have some subtle sarcasm and slight malice of seemingly "normal" kind people. Here you get some madness. It's quiet but it squeezes out our bad intentions we'd like to hide. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 His debut novel. Actually they just released a Japanese film based on this book as I write this post. As always his books are both so Japanese and so English at the same time and there is nobody else in the world who can write with this mixed sentiment. His stories are always slightly twisted with a hint of evil of ordinary people. Here there's a small madness of Sachiko and her daughter always hanging in the air, while everyone else is perfectly polite, but all slightly selfish. Brilliant, I mean that's how we all are, aren't we. The struggle of loss and the post war, past and present. Women with regrets. Women trying to close their past, Etsuko trying to come to terms with her past. True, like Etsuko the narrator says, memories are not reliable. Her memories are vague, for her sanity, to comfort herself. And what is wrong with that, she hurt herself enough, she struggled enough. A book by Ishiguro, always a pleasure to read. They are quiet, but they squeeze out who we are deeply inside.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
A Pale View of Hills Paperback
Amazon.co.uk (UK)
A Pale View of Hills: Kazuo Ishiguro Paperback
Amazon.it (Italy)
Pale View of Hills Paperback - English
Un pallido orizzonte di colline Paperback
Nanisama Ryo Asai, 2012 何様 朝井リョウ Japan Read in 2025 .03 Not available in English✔ Japanese society for teens and 20 somethings ✔ Mass employment culture ✔ Akwardly funny 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It's a collection of short stories of regular people in Japan, you know one or two of these people. So diligent, awkward and unintentionally funny. I should have read the previous book in the series though 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 My first time reading Ryo Asai. 6 short stories, but who know there was a book before this in the series, called Nanimono. Both titles meaning something along the line with "who do you think you are" It's mainly about job hunting, and in Japan they still mass recruit college students in their last year, so that if they successfully graduate, they can work directly from April of the year (if you don't get expected grades, they can cancel their offer) In winter, you see all the 21, 22 year olds going around Japanese cities in their "recruitment suits" with the same hairstyles, same bags, same nervous faces, memorising the perfect answers to what they know their recruiters will ask. Anyway so the protagonists are at the verge of new challenges; just got recruited, new start at college, instructor of recruitment. Their struggles are so normal, they are awkward, but aren't we all a bit awkward? You want to do thing correctly but end up unintentionally funny, loveable ordinary people.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
何様 Paperback Bunko Japanese Edition
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
-
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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Not available but the prequal "Nanimono" is here;
Voglio essere qualcuno
Hunted Abir Mukherjee, 2024 468 pages Read in 2025.05 check price on amazon.com✔ Unusual friendship to save their kids ✔ Organised terrorist attacks using kids ✔ Thrilling and gripping 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It demands you to keep reading. Kids "seeing wrong people" and become extremists. A Muslim dad whose life turned upside down but would still run, to save his daughter. Adrenaline full throttle. A page-turner. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 Action movie type of book. Parents chasing after their each of their kids before police catch them as they're "misled" to join terrorist actions. Police officer who is also a mother also joins the chase from her own perspective. Probably the most interesting character is the father, Sajid. A Muslim dad whose life turned upside down but keeps running for his daughter. But I was right to pick this as a partner of the long flight. A page-turner.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Hunted: A Thriller
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Hunted: Discover the new pulse-pounding, twist-packed thriller
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Hunted: Discover the new pulse-pounding, twist-packed thriller
とりつくしま
東直子, 2011年
224 ページ
2020.07 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 歌人の著者の死後の世界
✔ 残した人を想うそれぞれの主人公
✔ 家族や友達に会いに行きたくなる
★★★★☆ ふんわりと包み込むような世界。死んでしまってちょっと後悔はしてる。後悔していいんだよ。大切な人の元に戻って言いたいことがある、うまくは伝えられない。それでもいいんだよ。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽 東直子のふんわりとした包み込むような世界。 とりつく、とはちょっと怖いイメージもあるけど、優しく受け入れるという表現が近いと思うというか、それでいいんだよ、という感じがいい。 死んでしまってちょっと後悔はしてる。 後悔していいんだよ。 大切な人の元に戻って言いたいことがある、うまくは伝えられない。 それでもいいんだよ。 視点が面白くて、死者の世界だから正義とかじゃなくて、ただそこにあるのは、想い。
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
とりつくしま (ちくま文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
暮らしの哲学
やったら楽しい101題
ロジェ＝ポル・ドロワ, 2001
101 Experiences de Philosophie Quatidiene
Roger-Pol Droit
213 ページ
2020.07 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ フランス人哲学者の著書
✔ 具体的な行動を起こすための哲学書
✔ 難しいことではなくユーモラスな一冊
★★★☆☆ ここに書いてあることをやってみて、哲学とは、生とは、みたいなことを体感してみよう的なもの。比較的に簡単にできるのもばかりだけど、全部やってたら絶対に気が狂う。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
ここに書いてあることをやってみて、哲学とは、生とは、みたいなことを体感してみよう的なもの。
比較的に簡単にできるのもばかりだけど、全部やってたら絶対に気が狂う。
切り落とされた腕や脚が山積みにされた光景を浮かべる、見ず知らずの人に美しいと言う、墓地でジョギングする…確かに書いてあることが理論的にわかるけど、実践はできない、少なくとも私は。
どこかで、この文庫版はかなり内容が削られているとか。
さらっと読めるけど、変なあと味。
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
暮らしの哲学: やったら楽しい101題 (ヴィレッジブックス N ト 1-1)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Yellowface
Rebecca F Kuang, 2023
319 pages
Read in 2025.06
check synopsis and details on amazon.com✔ A satire and critique of media and publishing industry
✔ Asian American women
✔ Thrilling and grippin
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ I knew it was super popular, and I agree, it's an absolute gem. Facts are not important here, just like over here in the society we live in. It's like I'm watching (peeking) something I shouldn't, and addictive, can't stop it.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I knew it was very popular but I didn't know anything about the story, and it was not what I expected from the title (not that revealing except it's to do with Asian) and definitely better than what I expected.
I thought it'd be more simple, more like a story from Athena's point of view, but no, it's June's story, how the white average girl envied the beautiful and talented Asian girl, and went too far and caused such a mess.
It's exciting, it's difficult to pigeon hole, and it's so now, so true and so entertaining.
It's a story of a bunch of narcissists bitching about everyone else, the facts are no longer important but that's life and life moves on.
And I know Kuang's new book, Katabasis, is out, and I have to reduce my tsundoku (tbr) to at least 100 to get even more books... if I can resist.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Yellowface: A Reese's Book Club Pick
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Yellowface: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from author R.F. Kuang (colour may vary)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Yellowface - Italiano Mondadori
(メアリ・シーコール)
ロン・ラムディン, 2005年
Mary Seacole
Ron Ramdin, 2005
2020.07 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
日本語未出版
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ ジャマイカ出身の看護婦の伝記
✔ クリミア戦争で活躍した、ナイチンゲールと同じ時期の人物
✔ 近年その活動が再認識されている
★★★★★ ジャマイカ出身の混血の看護婦。クリミア戦争で肌の色を理由に英国ナイチンゲールに拒否されるも自費で向い戦線で兵士たちの心と身体の傷を癒す。「混血版ナイチンゲール」ではない。彼女はシーコールという一人の独立した英雄である。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
ジャマイカ出身の混血の英国人の看護婦の伝記。
幼少期から医療や看護に携わるも混血であること、女性であることで大きく差別を受ける。
クリミア戦争のとき英国のボランティア看護師を志願するも、白人でないことでフローレンス・ナイチンゲールに拒否される。
それでも自分の経験と知識は役に立つと信じ、自費でクリミアに入り、ナイチンゲールたちが後方の安全なエリアで看護をしている中、戦場にかぎりなく近い場所で看護施設を設ける。
食堂のようなビジネスを立ち上げ資金稼ぎにするという偉業。
戦場で兵士にとってのくつろげる場所を提供し、その売り上げを兵士の身体的な傷を癒す。
拒否られようが差別されようが、とにかく怯まない、自分の能力を最大限に使って人を助けるために生きる、すごい。
英国人、白人である兵士たちを「息子たち」と呼び、彼らからも信頼され愛される存在になる、これはのちに彼女が破産したときに当時の兵士たちが助けたということでも証明されている。
逆に神経質で有名なナイチンゲールの暗い部分を浮かび上がらせる話でもある。
人手が足りないのに人種差別を優先したあとも、戦線で生き生きと兵士たちの心と体の看護に徹したシーコールを、兵士に酒を飲ませた、うるさい、と非難。
そして英国という国もシーコールの偉業を100年近く闇に葬り、ナイチンゲールのみを全面的に「天使」化した。
決して忘れてはいけないのはシーコールは「混血版ナイチンゲール」ではない。
彼女はメアリ・シーコールという一人の独立した英雄である。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
“Mary Seacole” Ron Ramdin (2005) Review | Determination to help her "sons"
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
Mary Seacole (Life & Times) 英語
●●● 楽天 ●●●
--
🔽 log 🔽
No one is too small to make a difference
Greta Thunberg, 2019
68 pages
Read in 2024.1
check price on amazon.com✔ A collection of her speeches
✔ Her words but different dynamics when written
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ When written it makes it even clearer that her claims are constant, simple and strong. She did make a difference, and we listen.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A collection of her speeches.
When written it makes it even clearer that her claims are constant, simple and strong.
She did make a difference, more young people are conscious and they're aware they too have power to change, and also shown the world the power of people with Asperger Syndrome and Autism.
It's also shown the world there are these people, of the olden times, who think it's ridiculous to listen to her, and these adults personally bully her, not her claims but her appearance etc - completely off the point.
But her aim is crystal clear and she will continue to fight, whether the old men are scared of her or not.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference Paperback
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference: Greta Thunberg Paperback
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Nessuno è troppo piccolo per fare la differenza (Italiano)
Tea, the drink that changed the world (Tea: A History of the Drink That Changed the World) John Griffiths, 2007 373 pages Read in 2024.2 check price on amazon.com✔ History and facts on on tea ✔ Written by a British politician a son of tea garden manager 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ A very thorough book, about tea and all about tea. Very British, it's just like how they know how to dissect wine, but tea is a lot closer to their hearts and pride. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A very thorough book, about tea and all about tea. As the author is a British politician as well as a son of a tea garden manager, it's detailed, and definitely well researched, it goes into a lot of politics and figures, rather than sensibilities of tea as a culture. It talks about tea by topic per chapter, which somehow made it difficult to read for me but it's justifiable because it touches a lot of aspects. Very British, it's just like how the British know how to dissect wine, but tea is a lot closer to their hearts and pride.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Tea: A History of the Drink That Changed the World
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Tea: A History of the Drink That Changed the World
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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Gouman to Zenryou (Arrogance and Virtue) Mizuki Tsujimura, 2019 傲慢と善良 辻村深月 Read in 2025.7 check price on amazon.com ✔ Japanese take on Pride and Prejudice ✔ Society's expectation on young people ✔ Marriage in Japan 🔽 Review summary 🔽 ★★★★★ "Pride and Prejudice" in Japan, where the society has a very strict "standard". And you realise you also measure people with those yardsticks. The reality of everyone who has ever been told "you should be married by now" 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 I had never read books by her, but glad I did. Japan has a very strict "standard". Be a good boy, a good girl, listen to your parents, don't like, don't stand out. This is how you get educated since you are little - "when I was young this is how it was, so you should do the same" It seems to be a modern love story, at least at the beginning, then his fiancée disappears completely. Slowly we learn about her way of thinking and her past, and I'd dare say any Japanese young people "at the marriageable age" will understand both sides, that THIS is the reality they are forced to live in. Until our parents' age, it was not unusual to have arranged marriage in Japan, but today they have to go on their "konkatsu" a marriage hunting (rather than a job hunting), using websites, seminars, or apps without help from family or community - what exactly are we looking for in someone you wish to marry? It might be difficult for people who grew up in the West to completely understand, because they did not receive the similar education when they were 14, or 8 or 5 years old. Or it might be difficult for people from other Asian countries where arranged marriage might be still normal, because you have a backup from both families. In Japan, it doesn't belong to either. You cannot stand up for your opinions, or you cannot reply on the safety your family provides. Konkatsu is a lonely battle. I can't say much without revealing the plot, but just one thing, no you don't need to give up.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
傲慢と善良 Tankobon Hardcover (Japanese)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
傲慢と善良 Tankobon Hardcover (Japanese)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
傲慢と善良 Tankobon Hardcover (Japanese)
The Paying Guests
By Sarah Waters, 2014
595ページ
Read in 2024.3
check price on amazon.com✔ 2 women in love and in crime
✔ Gripping suspense
✔ Life in London after the war
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ As expected, it's gripping, exciting, and a great storytelling. A woman lives quietly with her mother falls in love with a beautiful young wife of the tenant, they're in love in crime, all in secret.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
As expected, it's gripping, exciting, and a great storytelling.
The story is more straightforward than Fingersmith, but definitely not less curious.
It has all the good female characters.
After the war a woman now lives modestly with her mother, they decide to rent out a room but she falls for the young beautiful wife. And yes we'll have a crime scene and it all goes wrong.
They're in love but who manipulates who? But is it manipulation or true love?
They find a tiny corner in the hostile society where they love blindly.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Paying Guests
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Paying Guests: shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Gli ospiti paganti (Italiano)
Rethinking Japanese History
Yoshihiko Amino
日本の歴史をよみなおす(全)
網野善彦 2005 (1991-)
Read in 2024.3
check price on amazon.com✔ Japanese history
✔ What they don't teach you at school
✔ Unknown diverse society
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Also in Japan, they teach you that "Japan was always isolated and agriculture was the main industry". This book teaches you instead that how that "common sense" is wrong.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I started reading this thinking it's just another history book.
How wrong I was.
This book is actually about how you should forget what they taught you as "common sense"
We have always been taught in Japan that it's made up of islands, thus isolated, and we only focused on agriculture.
But when you stop and think about it, how is it possible that Japan was surrounded by the sea but we only ever made rice and vegetables?
And of course, Japan had culture and technology to go beyond the sea to have trades.
Japanese culture (or cultures, anyway it was only recently united) was complicated, very liberal with sophisticated technologies and commercial power.
Oh yeah.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Rethinking Japanese History (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) (Volume 74)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Rethinking Japanese History: Volume 74 (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Rethinking Japanese History: Volume 74 (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) (English)
Zen and Japanese culture
Daisetsu Suzuki, 1940
Daisetz T. Suzuki
禅と日本文化
鈴木大拙
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com✔ Classic book introducing Zen to the US and the West
✔ Academic and religious take on Zen for non-Japanese
✔ A starting point for those serious about learning Japanese culture
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ A classic book on Japan and Zen. Zen is so ubiquitous in Japan that being Japanese means Zen. It was written for the Western audience so it's explained logically. A real starting point to study Japanese culture.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It was a collection of lectures on zen by Daisetsu Suzuki in 1938, first published in English and in 1940 it was translated to Japanese.
This book remains as a very important source for anyone who's interested in Japan and zen - in a serious way.
Today, "I love Japan" is something I hear so much that it basically has no meaning - unless they can name a few real Japanese things.
Anyway, it might be difficult to read in a sense that it's old, but because it was for the Western audience explanations are logical so in that sense it's easier to understand, even for Japanese today.
It's not an introduction to zen as such, but if you are truly interested in zen and Google search won't help you much, then this is the book to turn to.
When a book on zen is for Japanese audience (and if it's translated to other languages) it tries to make you "read the room" to grasp the idea of zen.
On a separate note. Interestingly, there's an argument (elsewhere, not this book) that because in Japan, zen or Buddhism is indeed "in the air", you cannot shut it off so that is why Japanese people don't need to feel strongly about being Buddhist or religious or spiritual it's part of their lives anyway, many Japanese will declare that they are not religious.
However, in places like US, Christianity is not "in the air", you must go to the church to feel it, so they feel strongly about being Christian or religious, or not.
Zen is intuitive, it is not something you explain through theories, but with ink painting or haiku, even tea ceremony or garden.
Minimalism and the love of the nature, that spirit is naturally in Japanese arts and lifestyles, therefore being Japanese is being zen.
It's true, I do feel that it's true, I want to it to be forever true, but, I am not sure if it continues to be true.
It is the Japan that hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists fantasise, but isn't it the Japan that only exists in our naïve imaginations?
The rapid economical growth of the 90s is in the past, and the people of that generation worked hard to aim for better lives, more luxury, better education for their kids - admittingly something that is far from zen.
Today, young people in Japan do not believe that their lives would get better when they grow up.
Frankly they are not interested. They don't want more stuff, and they don't need more.
So, are we going back to zen?
Does that mean, after all, we come back to the statement that, yes, being Japanese means being zen?
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton Classics)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Lo Zen e la cultura giapponese (Italiano)
ブッダが教える愉快な生き方
藤田一照, 2019年
111 ページ
2026.02 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 禅僧によるわかりやすく楽しい仏教の教え
✔ 仏教を使って生きやすさを求める
✔ 『現代坐禅講義』の予習になる
★★★★☆ 学ぶことは変わること。藤田老師のあの笑顔で優しく、でもきっぱりと語りかけられているかのような一冊。次に『現代坐禅講義』を読むので予習に最適。さっと読めるのに深いです。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
学ぶことは変わること、の一言に衝撃を受けた。
小さい「自我」と、大きな根本にある「自己」。
何事も、自分の意思ではないところの大きなものの意思で動くから、しがみついていても仕方がない。
よく聞くことだけれど、でも確かに何度も何度も自分を言い聞かせることで結構効いてくる。
自分の考えや感情は変わるもの、自分は感情のなかに生きているのではない。
そういうことを、ただ単に分かりやすく書いてあるだけでなく、ロジカルな説明で書いてある。
次に同じ著者の有名な『現代坐禅講義』を読む予習としてパーフェクトな一冊。
読みやすいけれど、わかりやすく、深い。
苦しむことを美化しない。
これはやっぱり老師がアメリカで禅を教えていたことに由来すると思うけど、アメリカ人や欧米人は感覚だけでは納得しない。
日本人なら雰囲気でわかるでしょ、ということも、そこを曖昧にするときちんとコミュニケーションが取れない。
藤田老師のあの笑顔で優しく、でもきっぱりと語りかけられているかのような一冊。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
tag ; 仏教
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
NHK出版 学びのきほん ブッダが教える愉快な生き方 (教養・文化シリーズ NHK出版学びのきほん)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
パパは家出中
ハニフ・クレイシ, 2001
Gabriel’s Gift
Hanif Kureishi
2020.06 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ ロンドンが舞台のミュージシャンの父と息子
✔ 父と息子と家族のずれ
★★★☆☆ ロンドン、ロックンロール、そこで大人になっていく少年。ロックな両親の元に生まれ、両親のロックな環境で育ち、そういう感じが好きな人はきっと楽しめる一冊。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
ロンドン、ロックンロール、そしてそこで大人になっていく少年。
『マイ・ビューティフル・ランドレット』の脚本家なのであの素敵な青春を予想していたけれど、ここはほぼ純粋にロック音楽への賛歌。
ロックな両親の元に生まれ、両親のロックな環境で育ち、でも小さいときに双子の兄弟を失った主人公。
そういう特殊な子供時代を少年の目で見つめる、という感じで、そういう感じが好きな人はきっと楽しめる一冊、ただ私はその辺については鈍い。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
“Gabriel’s Gift” Hanif Kureishi (2001) Review | Rock and London
tag ; 音楽 ロンドン
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
パパは家出中
●●● 楽天 ●●●
ーー
🔽 log 🔽
Beauty is a wound
Cantik Itu Luka
Eka Kurniawan, 2002
480 pages
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com✔ Violent history and society in Indonesia
✔ Mother and daughters strong female
✔ Spirits, ghost and customs
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ The mixture of history and race, religions and politics and power, and living among men abusing all above. Mother's only hope is the ugly, blessed daughter. An epic drama of strong beautiful women.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It IS a book full of violence, love and curse of the beauty.
A great storytelling, of drama, an epic, of strong beautiful women who are, as it always happens, cursed by their men.
One day the town's dead prostitute comes back to life see her daughters.
She cannot leave this life until she sees them, especially the ugly one, who is leading a happy life, because the outer beauty is nothing but a wound, wound that cannot be healed.
Survived the colonial past and the invasions, their story and history are so unique that this book could have only emerged from Indonesia.
The mixture of history and race, religions and politics and power, and abuse of all above. Full of stories, my first Indonesian novel, and an epic.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Beauty Is a Wound
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Beauty is a Wound (Pushkin Press Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
La bellezza è una ferita (Italiano)
Power Systems Conversations with David Barsamian on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire Empire. Noam Chomsky, 2013 178 pages Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Collection of conversation, interviews ✔ American politics 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ Power is systematic. We live in a society that's governed by selfish people. But, we have democracy, it's a system that's made by us, for us and we can and should use it effectively. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A collection of conversations from 2010 to 2012. So some things are old, like the use of the Internet has changed completely, the US president has changed twice since, but fundamentally not much changed, we're stil living in the same era. It's a lot about American politics that I wouldn't pretend to understand but his position is constant. He is empathetic to the others. He is very much against anything and anyone selfish, and the fact is we are ruled by these selfish groups of people. He still spoke of hope, that a government is owned by the people and we should recognise it and use it. But 10 years on, did things get better? No. What we can do, or what we can hope for, is even more limited.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽 ●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (American Empire Project) ●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●● Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire ●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●● Power Systems: Conversations with David Barsamian on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (English)
The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith, 1955 252 pages Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Modern classic psychological thriller ✔ Tension between 2 men and a girlfriend ✔ Gripping series 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ We've all watched or heard of the movie. I watched it, but it still got me. He's cold and nervous, and on the contrary the Italian sky is so blue and open. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The famous Mr. Ripley. As expected it's a great story, which of course I already knew, but I didn't know it was written by a woman, the same writer as Carol, and it was a series. It focuses a lot on what's on his mind, how he's cold and nervous, contrary to the blue sky of Italy. Japanese title is "Full of the sun", this alone doesn't make sense, but you get the idea behind it once you finish reading the book. The sun was so bright, too bright. There is a remake on Netflix (yet again!) that I should watch too, it's a story that can be told again and again.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽 ●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●The Talented Mr. Ripley ●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●● The Talented Mr Ripley: Patricia Highsmith: 1 (A Ripley Novel) ●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il talento di Mr. Ripley
Demian Hermann Hesse, 1919 135 pages Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Boyhood and friendship ✔ Bildungsroman ✔ Duality of good and evil, Spirituality and Self 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ Boyhood and growing up, away from the safety of parents' arms and the light, and eventually he becomes a man. It's short but goes deep into the self awareness of the boy, so it's universal, that should be read especially by young people. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 It's a story about boyhood and growing up, away from the safety of parents' arms and the light, and through discovering evil - and eventually he becomes a man. It starts with realistic touch and ends with the ultimate reality, the war, but by then Sinclair has discovered himself through friendship with Demian, his influences and departing from these influences, and a bit of magical experiences. The world was clear for him, like it was clear for all of us when we were small, divided into good and evil. But he discovers that the world is both, and there's a meaning for you to be there... It's short but goes deep into the self awareness of the boy, it's been over 100 years since it's published but still loved, so it's universal.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (Penguin Classics)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (Penguin Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
HESSE - DEMIAN - HESSE - DEMIA
Spectacles a memoir Sue Perkins, 2015 377 pages Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Biography of TV personality and comedian ✔ Part travel journals ✔ LGBTQ community 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ My favourite TV person in UK, definitely the best in BBC. The book is full of love that she is full of love, though she would not say it. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 I even went to an event about this book at South Bank and queued to get it signed, and only reading it now. Maybe one of the few of my favourite people on British TV, one of the few gems of BBC. She's funny, clever but silly, honest, uncomfortable, a bit reckless but mostly humane. A lovely human being. Who didn't love her on GBBO, the Bake off? And you get all that in the book, it's full of love that she is full of love, though she would not say it. And what surprised me is she's older than I thought, but was still doing all that crazy stuff.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Spectacles
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Spectacles: Sue Perkins
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Spectacles: Sue Perkins
Sushi & Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
Michael Booth, 2009
307 pages
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com
✔ English journalist tavels to Japan with family
✔ His discovery of Japanese food, often unusual
✔ Insightful, travelling before the current Japan boom
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ A great and fun book. It's also nice that although very obviously he fell in love with the food, he's not religiously admiring everything. He's British, he's composed.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A great and fun book for foodies who are into Japanese food.
Of course as a Japanese, it's not like I didn't know these things but I didn't know them that deeply with all the facts, because, an average Japanese cannot have access to many things.
He travels around Japan with his wife and 2 small boys, though he'd spend a lot of time working, it is true that kids are passports to kindness from locals. So it's both travel journal and food journal.
It's also nice that although very obviously he fell in love with the food, he's not religiously admiring everything. Or too geeky or too disgusted.
He knows he had access to special places and with privileges but he's curious to know, see eat everything, what can he do? He went for it and sharing the story here.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking (English)
🔽 log 🔽
Carol
Patricia Highsmith, 1952
The Price of Salt
307 pages
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com✔ Written originally under pseudonym
✔ Lesbian love story and coming of age
✔ Bittersweet
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ An unusual love story; a girl and a woman fall in love, they run away, but there's the tension you wouldn't expect from people in love. And it's bittersweet, as ever.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The movie was with Cate Blanchette, I haven't watched it yet so didn't know the story much but i can see it's a perfect casting.
It must have been a shock when it came out but not as much as it would have been if people knew it was written by her and not was pseudonymous.
I only recently read The Paying Guest by Sarah Waters so I cannot help myself comparing them but it's not so obviously a suspense or mystery.
An unusual love story; they fall in love, they run away, but there's the tension you wouldn't expect from people in love.
Is it a dare? Is it more about a girl growing up to become a woman. Like there are many stories for boy becoming a man, this is one of those.
And it's bittersweet, as ever.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Price of Salt, or Carol
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Carol
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Carol (Italiano)
The Legends of Tono REMIX Kunio Yanagida Natsuhiko Kyogoku Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Classic on Japanese folklores ✔ Recognisable monsters and yokai 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Tono, a small area in Tohoku, is well known by Japanese for their memorable legends, thanks to this book. If you are interested in local or Japanese ghost and yokai stories, this is where you should begin your quest. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The original version by Kunio Yanagita was written in 1910, this version I read was "remixed" in 2013 by a mystery writer Natsuhiko Kyogoku. Tono is in Tohoku region in the north of Japan, not far from the area destroyed by tsunami. It's not a vast area geographically, but incredibly rich in folklores and probably the only village associated so strongly with their local legends, because of this book. In other words, we must consider ourselves lucky that Tono's legends are preserved by the folklorist Yanagita, and can't help but wonder how many hundreds of thousands of local stories and legends have been wiped out in history, disappeared like they had never existed. Even kids outside of Japan know words like "yokai" thanks to a popular anime, and if you are familiar, you recognise many "characters" or concepts in this book. Monsters or ghost in the mountains, or by the river - you find similar themes in stories of the brothers Grimm, because it is universal. Anything outside of your village is dangerous, so is any wider knowledge than what they give you. It's not written to scare you, it's just a collection of the legends... but I admit it's pretty scary. It doesn't help the fact that I live in a countryside. The original book was written in 1910, since then there have been many versions, including a manga by Shigeru Mizuki but this version I read was "remixed" by Kyogoku, using more modern Japanese language for today's readers. When you think about it, Yanagita also collected folklores that were already pretty old then, so it's not unusual that it gets modernised or re-translated time to time, especially if what you are interested in is the actual stories from centuries ago and not the language of 100 years ago.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Legends of Tono
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Legends of Tono
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
The Legends of Tono (English)
"Representative men of Japan" from Japan and the Japanese
Kanzo Uchimura, 1894 and 1908
代表的日本人
内村鑑三
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com✔ History and biography of Japanese individuals
✔ Nationalism at the turn of the century
✔ Christian Japanese author
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ At the turn of the century the wave of Westernisation was unstoppable. This book was a resistance from this Christian Japanese author, to claim that Japan was also great. A bit too subjective but the real value of this book is the intention of the author.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It was originally written under the title of "Japan and the Japanese" in 1894, then released again as "Representative Men of Japan in 1908.
You get the idea how nationalistic the intention was.
Important fact is that he was a Christian evangelist, who founded Non-church Movement, seeking to reconcile Japan and Christianity.
At the turn of the century, the West has ruined Asia and the wave of Westernisation was unstoppable.
This book was a resistance from this Christian Japanese author, to claim that Japan was also great.
As it turns out, a lot in this book is subjective.
Each chapter starts off by introducing how Japan is doing in the particular field, and goes on to say how each man is great and Japanese are wonderful.
The first man in the book is Takamori Saigo, and the book goes a bit extreme to praise his idea that Japan should conquer Korea, Seikanron, which I felt uncomfortable, but then I read in the afterword that Uchimura soon later became anti-war so those comments were just left over from his older belief.
Today he is remembered as a pacifist (so it feels weird he had agreed on seikanron, but there you go people can change)
So, it is a bit too subjective and very specific to this particular period of time in Japan to actually learn any history of Japan or these Japanese men.
However what's more important and interesting, indeed the value of this book, is the intention of the author, why he wrote it in this way, how he wished Japan to be equal to European powers and how that was the aim of many intellectuals from this period.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Representative men of Japan
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Representative Men of Japan Kindle Edition
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
--
Animal Farm George Orwell, 1945 124 pages Read in 2024.4 check price on amazon.com✔ Classic fable on politics ✔ Every time you read you learn something new ✔ Russian revolution and totalitarianism 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Classic of the classics. I knew more or less the content but was surprised how short it was. It's short, with clear messages, but have we learned? No. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The classic. It's more or less as I expected but much shorter. With a very clear and obvious message, it would be easy for even younger readers to understand. This edition had a lot of explanations like a textbook, which compares the characters with the historical figures. Do we learn? No, we don't, we keep making the same mistakes.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Animal Farm: 75th Anniversary Edition
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Animal Farm: New Edition of Orwell's Brilliant Political Satire (Polygon Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
La fattoria degli animali (Italiano)
Gramsci's Political Thoughts Carlos Nelson Coutinho, 2012 198 pages Read in 2024.04 check price on amazon.com
✔ Biography of Gramsci
✔ How he cultivated his political philosophy
✔ From his humble birth to cruel death
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ "We must prevent this brain from working for twenty years" but even after arrested by Fascist government, he didn't stop writing. A book about his life, from poverty in Sardinia, student life in Turin, exile in Russia, prison and death.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It follows his life from when he was a child, lost father early, poor, physical disability, scholarship to Turin, involvement in politics, forms Communist party, arrest, life in prison, non stop writing even in the prison, even with malnutrition and torture. His insistence on the power of workers.
Difficult read as I had little background to Gramsci, and naturally, it keeps referring to his Prison Notebooks, and of course no true knowledge in Marxism.
He’s a back-to-basic Marxist.
“We must prevent this brain from working for twenty years”
“Domination without leadership.
Dictatorship without hegemony”
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Gramsci's Political Thought (Historical Materialism)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Gramsci's Political Thought: Historical Materialism, Volume 38
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
-
Aphorisms of love and hate (Extract from "Human, All Too Human") By Frederick Nietzsche, 1878 55 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ Extract from "Human, All Too Human" ✔ Selection of aphorisms on human relationship ✔ Strangely entertaining and uplifting 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ A very short book from Penguin (extract from Human, All Too Human) Everything here is something we'd all recognise but maybe not able to put into words. e.g. "Love must be learned, so must be hatred" 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A very short book from Penguin (extract from Human, All Too Human) It contains short phrases, sometimes just a line, on a lot of points about human relations. From revenge, pity, marriage, love to hatred, and to my big surprise it has a lot of humour. Everything here is something we'd all recognise but maybe not able to put into words. "Love must be learned, so must be hatred" or "marriage will work if they don't live together" "Shared joy makes a friend" - if I were to underline all the interesting points, the whole book will be underlined. Now I want to read the actual book, one day soon.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
[(Aphorisms on Love and Hate)] [Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Aphorisms on Love and Hate (Penguin Little Black Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
ー
Klara and the sun Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021 307 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ Dystopia, life with an AI friend ✔ Challenges concepts of family and friendship ✔ Sad, heart breaking 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ As always his stories are sad. Not too dramatic but subtly and surely sad. Artificial Friends; are they friends, or pets or toys? Surely not just things? 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 As always his stories are sad. Not too dramatic but a bit sad. Artificial Friends are there, maybe a bit like pets, puppies, except they are things, regardless of their intelligence. A lot happens around her but we only see it from her point of view. So we're not able to see the intention behind the actions from human. Are they selfish? Maybe not so much, it's just how things are, and for us how things will be soon. She has her mission and asks the Sun for guidance and eventually in order to pursue she is willing to be violent simply because that is her mission. So is she a threat? But really, it seems like she's the only one to remain innocent, or "human"
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Klara and the Sun: A GMA Book Club Pick: A novel (Vintage International)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Klara and the Sun: The Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Klara e il Sole (Italiano)
良寛 旅と人生
松本市壽, 2009
274 ページ
2026.02 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 江戸時代の禅僧、良寛の伝記
✔ 良寛の残した漢詩と和歌を通じて彼を知る
✔ 漢詩や和歌の現代語訳
★★★★☆ ストレートに彼の伝記ではなく、彼の漢詩と和歌を通して考える禅僧の彼の人柄を伝える。托鉢そっちのけで近所の子供たちと遊んだ「今生きること」を実感して生きた人なんだろうな。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
子供と手まりで遊ぶ姿が有名な江戸時代の禅僧、良寛。
この本はストレートに彼の伝記ではなく、彼が残した多くの漢詩と和歌を通して考える彼の人柄、生きざま、そして、なによりその人間臭さを伝える。
彼の人生のステップのそれぞれで書かれたものを一つ一つ現代語訳とともに解説。
和歌はもちろん漢詩については私は完全に無知なので枕詞の説明の箇所などは申し訳ないけど頭に入ってこない。
でも少しでもわかる人は2倍は楽しめます。
まめに手紙を残した人のようで誰かにあてた詩が多い。
人里離れて静粛な生活を送るも、その人懐こさから世話をする人や一筆書いてくれと寄ってくる人が多く、何重にも重なったその人柄が魅力。(重なる人柄で、矛盾、ではない)
一人だから自然の季節の動きも敏感に捉え、冬の足の寒さなどの自分の体感も、待ち人は無事だろうかという心境も書き残すし、こんなぼろい家ですがあなたと一緒に飲むお酒は美味しいですね、という暖かさに溢れてる。
その上、托鉢そっちのけで近所の子供たちと遊んだ、なんていう詩もあるほど、なんというか、今生きること実感して生きた人なんだろうなと伺える。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
tag ; 仏教
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
良寛 旅と人生 (角川ソフィア文庫―ビギナーズ・クラシックス 日本の古典)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
マイ仏教
みうらじゅん, 2011年
192 ページ
2026.02 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ みうらじゅん流の仏教の入門書
✔ 仏像や地獄など普通の入門書は教えないマニアックさ
✔ 現代らしい仏教との関わりとは
★★★★★ 彼も特撮から仏像からの仏教への興味になったし、ポップな側面から気軽に仏教に興味を持つのもオッケーなのでは。「地獄ブームと後ろメタファー」の章には納得。私も何兆年も焼かれる地獄に行きたくない。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
『日本仏教史』の知的なアドベンチャーから、マイ仏教という、個人の内側を覗くかのような本へ。
実際はみうらじゅん氐を詳しく知らないので失礼ながら彼の普段の活動も知らないのですが、仏教との関係でいうととても納得する点が多い。
ただ私はそこまでハマってはいないんですが。
「地獄ブームと後ろメタファー」の章には納得。
庶民をビビらせないと宗教の力は発揮できないですよ。
何兆年も焼かれる地獄に行きたくない、と思う人が増えれば自ずと効果が出てくる。
地獄の話は前の「日本仏教史」にも出てきたんですが、イタリアではダンテが有名で地獄のイメージが何世紀も受け継がれているのに日本でちょっと弱いので、ダンテに対抗してそこも勉強したい。
この本が出版されて十数年たち、彼のいうように、愛嬌のある僧侶もどんどん出てきた。
音楽を通じて、ツイッターを通じて、同じ目線の若い僧侶たち。彼だって特撮や怪獣などから仏像に渡って仏教そのものに興味を持つようになったし、そういうポップな側面から気軽に仏教に興味を持つのもオッケーなのでは。
今後も上下関係ではなく、同じ目線のお坊さんの活躍を期待。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
タグ 仏教
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
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マイ仏教 (新潮新書 421)
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🔽 log 🔽
The Other Middle Passage:
Journal of a Voyage From Calcutta to Trinidad 1858
Ron Ramdin, 1994
62 pages
Read in 2020.06
check price on amazon.com
✔ History of "coolie" trades
✔ Diary of the wife of caption onboard
✔ Devastating facts and numbers
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Though the slavery from Africa was by then banned the labour was much needed in the Caribbean. Written by a friend who is a descendent. Slave trade has only changes the name.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Written by a friend, who himself is a descendent of the emigrant of Coolie Trade, the system established by Europe after abolishing the Slave Trade, though they are very similar.
The first part is written by Ron to introduce the background and go through the conditions of these journeys that the Indian emigrants had to make were.
He focuses on this particular ship that lost 124 lives out of 324 during the 108 day journey in 1858.
Though the slavery from Africa was by then banned the labour was much needed in the Caribbean, so it continue to be a very important "trade", to eradicate the freedom from fellow human beings and the Europe solely focused on the profit.
And the second part is the actual journal and writing from his wife. Every day somebody died.
Not a surprise for anyone, as the physical conditions and the distress made them prone to be sick and eventually die.
If you are interested in getting a copy, I might be able to help as they are not easily available.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Other Middle Passage: Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Trinidad, 1858
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Other Middle Passage: Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Trinidad, 1858 (Coolie Odyssey)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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The Hours Michael Cunningham, 1999 230 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ A "remake" of Mrs. Dalloway ✔ Unchanging female struggles 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It's about 3 women, who want something else than what they have. Don't we all. I really should have read Mrs. Dalloway first. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 I knew I had to read "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf first, but went ahead, which is my fault, I'm sure it'd have been much better if I knew the story first. It's about 3 women, who want something else than what they have. It is normal to be not normal, to want to run away, turn away. But as it shows in the case of Mrs Brown, it affects others, and the stories get tangled up. Some hours are so significant in life. Small actions made in these hours will haunt you.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Hours, The (Picador Modern Classics, 1)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
THE HOURS: Michael Cunningham
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Le ore (Italiano)
Otherwise pandemonium Nick Hornby, 2005 64 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ 2 short stories ✔ 90s kids 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Small book of 2 short stories. 2 very different stories but I liked the second one with the mum. My first Nick Hornby. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 2 short stories. I think it's the first Nick Hornby book. It's entertaining, the first one is a bit of Sci-fi but I preferred the second one, "Not a star" where a mum finds out her son's secret but the family is eventually alright and she actually appreciates the effects it brought. Nice little stories.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Otherwise Pandemonium (Pocket Penguins)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Otherwise Pandemonium (Pocket Penguins)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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Tokyo Redux
David Peace, 2021
480 pages
Read in 2024.5
check price on amazon.com✔ Historical fiction based on the real unsolved case
✔ Post war Japan between domestic and US politics
✔ Mystery from a point of view of an American occupier Japan
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ A fiction based on postwar Japan's most mysterious unsolved case from 1949. Nostalgic and mysterious like Japan and hardboiled-cool like America. You too will catch "Shimoyama disease".
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
What is “Shimoyama case”?
It’s a fiction based on Japan’s most mysterious unresolved case from 1949.
It’s full of masculine romanticism, throughout Japan’s Showa era, basen in Tokyo that everyone fantacises.
Nostalgic and mysterious like Japan and hardboiled-cool like America.
As they say, you catch “Shimoyama disease”.
The writer is not Japanese, but precisely because of that it is good and is such a page turner, I now need to find the other 2 of the trilogy.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Tokyo redux
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Tokyo Redux
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Tokyo Redux (English)
Think Like an Anthropologist
Matthew Engelke 2017
368 pages
Read in 2024.5
check price on amazon.com✔ Different approaches to anthropology
✔ Different point of view on the world, as-is
✔ Insightful and important
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ I've always been interested in Anthropology and this is why. We are all different, but not because of biological difference or difference in capabilities. So we're not that different.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I've always been interested in Anthropology and this is why.
It is a study to look at the world from the native's (or local's) point of view or points of view.
We are all different, people in European city and in a small island in the Polynesia are different but not because of biological difference or difference in capabilities.
They're certainly not "backwards" or "barbarian".
If anything, I'd say colonialists were barbarian and backwards.
Starting with curiosity, move on to going there (most of the time) and live with the natives, think like them and rationalise like them, but always with critical eyes.
It's different from psychology because it focuses more on the communal value and those thoughts might sound traditional, but we do not live without them.
We're not that modern.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
How to Think Like an Anthropologist
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Think Like an Anthropologist: Matthew Engelke
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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Storm in a Tea Cup The physics of everyday life Helen Czerski 2016 282 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ How physics can be seen in a mundane actions ✔ Book for anyone interested in science 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It really makes you feel small in this place full of orderly wonder. A book by a physicist, she shows you how you can apply physics in everyday life. Nothing is by chance. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A book by a physicist, she shows you how you can apply physics in everyday life. It really makes you feel small in this place full of orderly wonder. As you stir a spoon in your tea, the liquid moves according to the law of physics, and nothing is by chance. Though it is interesting to read, not that I understood all, and will ever be curious enough to try to understand more.. Happy to live in ignorance that I'm just a small creature in this vast wonderful world.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life [Lingua inglese]
Lavish are the Dead, Prize Stock and other stories
Shisha no ogori, Shiiku
Kenzaburo Oe, 1958
死者の奢り 飼育
大江健三郎
Japan
Read in 2024.05
check price on amazon.com
✔ Short stories about war and corpses
✔ Relationship between a captured solder and the village people
✔ "Conversation" with corpses kept for medical purposes
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ The feeling of confinement, hopelessness, and the raw human connection that exists there. If you remove everything other than what you'd need to live today and maybe tomorrow, what kind of humanity are we left with? A strong message of anti-war and hatred towards hypocrites.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I kind of avoided reading it because I knew it'd affect me strongly especially if I was unwell.
And it did.
Tragedies of a war obviously mean the death and physical injuries or destruction but it takes away people's spirits, scrape off anything that define us as human.
Lavish are the Dead is a story of a student who does a day job cleaning corpses at university, and how he connects with the bodies floating in a pool for preservation.
Stock Prize, which is probably more well known, tells a wartime story of a village and their "catch", a black American airman whom they found and kept. Fed like an animal by locals and their kids, he is kept in the village (Shiiku means "breeding")
It's a short story full of racism, xenophobe, cruel innocence of kids, violence, and it makes you sick reading it, but, what's more disturbing is that, right or wrong, you as a reader do understand their point, too.
Reading these stories, it feels like your world is becoming so small that it almost chokes you.
Remove all the wonderful things about being human, like humanity, social interaction, fraternity or benevolence, and you face another human with the raw cold iron feeling - you're barely a human at this point.
Oe's message is clear, anti-war and anti-hypocrites, but he exposes our own hypocrisy while sending out that message.
If you are not well mentally or physically, it's a book to avoid.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Catch and Other Stories (English and Japanese Edition)
(contains Catch a.k.a Stock Prize)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
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●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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The First Man Albert Camus 1994 (1960) Le Premier homme 282 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com
✔ Last but incomplete work from Camus
✔ Strong relationship with female family members and teacher
✔ Based on his own life
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Incomplete work published decades after his death in 1960. It's half his biography half a novel and is fully touching.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Incomplete work published decades after it was found at his death in 1960.
It's half his biography half a novel and is truly touching.
It talks about the life in poverty in Algiers but it's full of love for those he was close, his mother, grandmother, uncle, friend and teacher.
Without father and without tradition, split between France and Algeria, living in the poverty, there was nobody to rely on, nobody to teach him about life, other than how to survive in the poverty, until, he met his teacher at the elementary school.
How sometimes in life, people connected not by blood but pure love can raise you.
This section of the teacher is the most moving.
Then as he grows older, it abruptly ends where he is in love.
True, this could have been a masterpiece.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The First Man
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The First Man (Penguin Modern Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il primo uomo (Italiano)
日本仏教史
思想史としてのアプローチ
末木文美士, 1992
412 ページ
2026.02 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ その時代、その地域に合わせた仏教の思想の変化
✔ 学校で習う出来事の本当の背景と意味
✔ 思想を辿って知的アドベンチャー
★★★★★ 仏教はその時代その時代に形を変え、その都度「日本の仏教」として存在してきた。仏教と神道とキリスト教をも平然と受け入れる理由にも通じる日本の強み。思想を辿って知的アドベンチャー的な読書。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
日本にやってきた仏教が、どう「日本の仏教」になったのか。
とにかく脳みそ刺激されまくり。
裏表紙にもある通り、知的興奮に満ちた旅、そう、知的アドベンチャー。
偶然手に取った本が自分の想像以上に興味のど真ん中に命中することがある。
私は仏教に興味があるし、その考えで気分がふっと軽くなることがあるので本を読んだりするけど、信者かと問い詰められたら答えに困る。
そんな典型的日本人である私が興味を持つ理由は正にこれ、ここにじっくりと紹介されている。
なぜ、どう「日本の仏教」になったのか。
祈祷の仏教、先祖のための葬式仏教、ルール重視の仏教、いま浄土確定のコスパのいい仏教、そして神道と仏教がどちらも文化として存在する日本。
そういう観点から日本における仏教の江戸時代くらいまでの歴史を紹介するのがこの本。
仏教史に詳しくない私は次々と出てくる名前や文献に唸ってしまったけれど、知らなくても大丈夫、この本が重視するのは思想史であり仏教史の暗記じゃない。
終章で遠藤周作の『沈黙』が出てくるけど、日本という土地の特徴は結局はこれ。
(読んで最後に納得してもらうためここでは「これ」としか書きませんよ)
仏教と神道とキリスト教を平然と受け入れる日本。
日本以外の国の人にはわかりづらいし国内外で批判だってされる。
でも私はこれは考えようによっては日本の強みだと思う。
仏陀の教えを「日本の仏教」に変えた強み。
その後の明治以降の日本の仏教の流れも気になる。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
tag ; 仏教
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
日本仏教史―思想史としてのアプローチ (新潮文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes, 1966 256 pages Read in 2026.02 check price on amazon.com
✔ Modern classic about happiness
✔ Environment and sentiments around mental handicap
✔ Heart breaking
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ What is happiness? I am certain he was happy when surrounded by all the wonders of the world and knowledge, but if life is a cycle, nothing is permanent. Forgiveness and salvations.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
This book is too personal and can't help to think in my surrounding situation, but let's try not to be objective.
This book asks the big question, what is happiness?
As Charlie gets smarter, a girl at the bakery mentions the garden of Eden, that God doesn't want us to go beyond what's given to us, quite frankly, she's saying it's wrong to be smart.
Was he happy that he got a lot smarter than everyone around him, was it a good thing?
I think he was happy, to be surrounded by the wonders of the world, he absorbed all the knowledge that almost all of us cannot reach.
Then he struggles as he lose the super power, but like any of us who get old and old enough to go sinile, I don't think it's a bad thing to return to our simple selves, it's a cycle.
You gain something, you also eventually lose that something.
Knowledge is power, sometime too powerful and harmful if we only focus on the power, but like the cycle of life, knowledge in a person is temporary, and he understood it, he decided to live every stage fully.
It also made me thing of one's role in a community, and coming from the US where they focus on the individualism, it's even more interesting that he finds peach in the given role.
Then, at the end, was the mother a bad person?
Was she bad to wish he was "normal"?
It's easy to say she was evil if you have been taught correctly at school, but if you have never experienced the desperation to realise that your child would never have "normal" conversations and "normal" work like other kids, you cannot dismiss her as bad.
She forgot to love her son, she was too focused on her unhappy self, the despair made her blind.
In the end, we are all selfish, but this book is a reminder that we always mean well and we don't want to hurt people around us, it's just it's difficult to juggle it all.
Glad that this book is full of salvations and forgiveness.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Flowers For Algernon
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Flowers For Algernon: A Modern Literary Classic
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Fiori per Algernon (italiano)
アルジャーノンに花束を
ダニエル・キイス, 1966
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes, 1966
2026.02 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 知的障害を持つ主人公の頭脳へ起きる変化
✔ 彼の書いた日記として進む物語
✔ 幸せとは何かを問う感動作
★★★★★ 幸せとは何か。素晴らしい知識の中でチャーリーは幸せだったと思いたい。私たちは何かを得てもその何かを失うサイクルからは逃れられない。許しと救いに溢れたストーリー。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
あまりにもチャーリイの障害が身近過ぎて客観的に感動できなかったところはある。
逆にいうと、だからこそ痛いほどよくわかるところもある。
なんというか、感動で涙は出ないけど、ただただ痛かった。
でもできるだけ客観的に。
小説の感想はいつもはできるだけ内容に触れないようにしているんですが、今回は少し内容に触れているので全く何も知りたくない人は読まないでください。
この本が問うことは「幸せとは何」というとてつもなく大きな問。
チャーリイの手術後すぐに、同僚の子が呟いた話にヒントがあるように思う。
神様は私たちが与えられたもの以上のものを得ようとすることを許さない。
彼女の考えでは、賢くなることは悪いこと。
チャーリイは果たして周りの誰よりも賢くなることで幸せになったのか、そして良いことだったのか。
世界中にあふれている素晴らしい知識を体いっぱい吸収できて彼はきっと、いや間違いなく幸せだったはず。
それでも超能力がなくなるように、もっと言うと年を取って誰もがそれぞれ呆けたり遅くなっていくかのように、生きていくうえで避けられないサイクルとして、何かを得ても人は必ずその何かを失う。
知識は力、たまに力が強すぎて害を及ぼすけれど、間違いなく失うものと思えれば、その山と谷をしっかりと自分のものにすればいい。
得て、失って。
広い目で見れば失うことだって、不幸と一言では言えない、そんなに狭い視野の話をしていない気がする。
失ったと思った友情も、いつか戻ってくるかもしれない。
人は大きな共同体、コミュニティの中での持ち場があるということも考えさせられる。
（特にアメリカのような超個人主義の中でそれぞれの共同体ということも）
そして、母親の存在。
母親は悪い人間だったのか、自分の息子が「普通」であることを望むのは悪いことか。
道徳の授業で差別はいけませんと教えられていると、他人ごとでは簡単に言える。
自分の息子は他の子と同じように会話したり仕事をしたりすることはないと絶望した母親には、そんな他人事は通じない。
それでもチャーリイのことを第一に考えることができればよかったのに、彼女は自分の不幸に集中するあまり息子のことを愛することを忘れていた。
みんな、自分が一番大切。
でも周囲の人間を傷つける気持ちもない、ただどちらもこなすのが難しいだけ。
許しと救いにあふれているストーリーで本当に良かった。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
“Flowers for Algernon” Daniel Keyes (1966) Review | Forgiveness and salvations
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
アルジャーノンに花束を〔新版〕(ハヤカワ文庫NV)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
Germany
144 pages
Read in 2024.5
check price on amazon.com✔ Classic of German literature
✔ Broken heart and friendship
✔ Sorrowful, self destructive
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ A classic that everyone has heard of, and it is more than I had imagined, full of sorrows yes but the self pity is full on. A universal feeling of despair we all feel at some point in life.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A classic that everyone has heard of, and it is more than I had imagined, full of sorrows yes but the self pity is full on.
Maybe it feels different if you read it when you're young, or definitely if you read it in the 18th century.
This is the original version of all the sad love stories that came about since.
You're in love, you misunderstand the affection, you suffer, you're in love with your suffering and it is far stronger than yourself and you can't take it any more.
A universal feeling of despair we all feel at some point in life.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Sorrows of Young Werther
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Sorrows of Young Werther
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
I dolori del giovane Werther (Italiano)
Chasing a blazing fire in the Himalayas A brief sketch of the (un)noticed Kalimpong Pentecostal revival Anmol Mukhia, 2020 146 pages Read in 2024.5 check price on amazon.com✔ History of Kalimpong, West Bengal, India ✔ History of Pentecostal Christianity in the region 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★☆☆☆ It was interesting for the first half, exactly what I hoped, about Kalimpong and its history. Then, it gradually changes the tone and he starts to preach. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 It was interesting for the first half, exactly what I hoped. (Though I didn't really know when I bought it) It actually talks about the history and the background of the Christianity in Kalimpong and the area. Then, it gradually changes the tone and he starts to preach. The conclusion chapter has nothing to do with Kalimpong but just how to be a good Christian. Not what it says on the tin, I skipped through towards the end.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Chasing A Blazing Fire In The Himalayas
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Chasing A Blazing Fire In The Himalayas
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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🔽 log 🔽
The French art of tea
Mariage Frères, 2006
L’Art Français du Thé
104 pages
Read in 2024.6
check price on amazon.com✔ History and facts of tea and product catalogue
✔ Historical tea house in France
✔ French point of view on the value of tea
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★☆☆ A bit of history, tradition and geography of tea. Interesting aspect from French to see what they value in tea. Then the rest is their catalogue with brief explanations. Full on Orientalism.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Just a bit of history, tradition and geography of tea, which sometimes is incorrect (like, we use chunky steel pot for tea) but interesting aspect from French to see what they value in tea, that is, its colonial history and its fanciness. (Box of tea can be carried by native youths because the road is narrow and steep, etc.)
Full on Orientalism.
I do buy the tea but their selling point is the fanciness and Orientalism so maybe that's just how it is.
Then the rest is their catalogue with brief explanations.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The French Art of Tea
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The French Art of Tea
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
The French Art of Tea
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Peter Frankopan, 2015 657 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ One of the best world history books ✔ Interesting and detailed history that reads like a great novel ✔ Rejects to be eurocentric 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★+♥️ This got me interested in history. How the Middle East had a wonderful history and traditions, and how Europe has always been greedy. Frankopan is so serious that it's funny. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 An epic. This got me interested in history, a lot more than before, it has that charm, it doesn't just give you knowledge, it is entertaining. It is a book about the whole history of the silk roads (plural, because it's not just one road) but surprisingly it's not boring, it is very entertaining and exciting as a book, like a big intertwined story. It illustrates the magnificent and rich history of the Middle East, and how greedy Europe has been using the religion as an excuse, and how Europe faded and in came the US, the new Empire, with its selfish democracy as their weapon. And after reading this, you know why the Middle East being rich is not a new thing, it's not merely the quick money as the West wants to portrait it. They have a looong history, long and rich. Maybe it's just the end of the European and American empires, and could be just the return of the Silk Roads.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Bloomsbury Paperbacks)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Le vie della seta. Una nuova storia del mondo (Italiano)
The incendiaries R. O. Kwon, 2018 214 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ Poetic writing ✔ Novel about friendship and family complexity ✔ Cult worship 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★☆☆ He follows the mysterious beautiful Korean girl. The dark and raw story about youth and there's a bit of punk a bit of cult. The writing style is refreshing. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The dark and raw story about youth and there's a bit of punk that leads to cult and terrorism, but everything seems to light and superficial, thus, contemporary. It's new in style, a bit like reading a poem and it's refreshing. But it lacked depth, you can't go deep into the characters, neither the girl or the boy, so it doesn't make you feel lost in the story. But maybe that's the point, and I didn't get it.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Incendiaries
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Incendiaries
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Gli incendiari (Italiano)
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813 367 pages Read in 2025.01 check price on amazon.com
✔ Classic love story that's constantly referenced
✔ Jane Austen's masterpiece on womanhood
✔ Love story and class struggles
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ How to humiliate a rich guy and to marry him in the end. What a girl. It's such a classic that it's difficult to find a love story that's not influenced by this.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The classic of the classics.
The story is well known, but it is true the humour in the dialogues makes this the "best loved book"
So very English, both in the lifestyle and humour.
The characters are lively, the story simple but curious and anyone can easily engage with it.
It's so iconic that it's now difficult to find any love story that has no reference to this book.
I should also watch the movies properly one day.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics) Paperback
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen (Penguin Clothbound Classics) Hardcover – Illustrated
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Pride and Prejudice Paperback – English edition
Orgoglio e pregiudizio - Paperback
Robinson Crusoe The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe, 1719 384 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ Classic story for children and grownups ✔ Victorian Englishman's sentiments ✔ Adventures on a remote island 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Classic of classics. Mr. Crusoe is so English. He's tidy, proud and concerned, and determined to make this barbarian land his home (English style home, of course) 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 This was a period I was reading as many "classics" as possible, and here it is. It's amazing how English the protagonist is. He's so well organised and no compromise to make the island his (English style) home, and he doesn't hide to show how proud he is. This is supposed to be one of the first story written as if it was a biography in spoken English, and indeed many thought it was a biography, a diary. Because of the historical background you cannot get away from the discriminations but within the boundary he made a sincere friend of Friday. Today's reader would be uncomfortable, and when recommended to kids I hope there's a note mentioning it. Whether you like it or not, you'd have to conclude that it is a great story, written 300 years ago, and still read today.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Robinson Crusoe: The Original 1719 Edition (A Daniel Defoe Classic Novel)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Robinson Crusoe
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Le avventure di Robinson Crusoe (Italiano)
Midlife crisis A philosophical guide Kieran Setiya, 2017 186 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ Self help, midlife crisis ✔ Philosophical and practical advices ✔ Uplifting and perfect gift 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It's not a usual self help book, it's not easy to read, a quite demanding guide which forces its readers to familiarise with the philosophical thinking. Overall, enjoy life, guys. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 It's not a usual self help book, it's not easy to read, a quite demanding guide which forces its readers to familiarise with the philosophical thinking. So the midlife crisis is real, and inevitable, but you can live with it by changing HOW you think about your life. "What I could have had" is usually not better than what you've got. But it does give practical guide, like how diverting your focus away from results and goals, from actions that have ending, but turn to actions for actions' sake and enjoy them. And of course what is self help without Buddhism and meditation.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
Ten Italian Folktales Italo Calvino, 1956 Fiabe italiane 96 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com
✔ Extract from a bigger collection
✔ Some are cruel and violent folktales
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★☆☆ Extracts of a bigger collection of the folktales, "Fiabe italiane" written originally in 1956. A lot of misfortunes and a fair amount of cruelties, just like any folktales. Need to read the main book one day.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Extracts of a bigger collection of the folktales, “Fiabe italiane” written originally in 1956.
They are short and some have moral teaching, like the last one Jump into my sack.
But the rest are tales and some just justify rapes, like sleeping with an unconscious queen and he becomes a king…
A lot of misfortunes and a fair amount of cruelty, just like any folktales.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●● Ten Italian Folktales (Penguin 60s S.) ●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●● Ten Italian Folktales Paperback ●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●● Fiabe italiane (Italiano)
The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532 Il principe 128 pages Read in 2024.11 check price on amazon.com
✔ Guidebook to be a ruler in 1500s Europe
✔ Machiavelli, Renaissance man
✔ Still read by many leaders today
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★☆☆ A "quintessentially Renaissance man". This is a guidebook on how to be a good ruler in 1500s Italy. Focus, be cruel, rule. Scary this is still loved by many.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Alma classics, a version that was translated and published in 2009
So this is a guidebook on how to be a good ruler in 1500s Italy.
It has many connotations but clearly it is wrong to try to apply this to all leaders or all societies.
It does recommend to focus on the ruling and go cruel, but it was probably what was needed back then.
And the words are straightforward, and references a lot to the history especially the Roman empire.
And gives practical advices on how to behave.
As they say, a quintessentially Renaissance man.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Prince | Niccolò Machiavelli
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Prince: Niccolo Machiavelli
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il principe
Amsterdam Ian McEwan, 1998 224 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ Friendship and rivalry ✔ Booker prize winner 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★☆☆ Two middle aged men who had loved a same woman, and their friendship, if you can call them "friends". So dark so English. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 I think I got it from someone, that's why I had it in Japanese. Not a long story, of 2 middle aged men who had loved a same woman, and their friendship, if you can call them "friends". So dark and so English. It'd have been different if I read it in English, so it's my fault I put less stars.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Amsterdam: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Amsterdam: Ian McEwan
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Amsterdam (Italiano)
A season in hell Arthur Rimbaud, 1873 Une saison en enfer 96 pages Read in 2024.6 check price on amazon.com✔ Collection of poem ✔ Masterpiece from the great French poet ✔ LGBTQ, heart broken 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ He wrote it after the hellish travel with his lover, a self destructive man, a full of self pity and frustrations. True you should read this while drunk and preferably in the night. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A poem of youth in pain. It's true you should read this while drunk and preferably in the night. Not in the Mediterranean summer daytime. He wrote it after the hellish travel with his lover, a self destructive man, and this is as the title suggests, a full of self pity and frustrations. Would have felt differently if read in different occasions for sure. Penguin classic 60, this version translated in 1962.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
A Season In Hell
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Una stagione all'inferno
🔽 基本情報 🔽
きよしこ
重松清, 2002
291 ページ
2020.06 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 吃音に悩む少年の成長物語
✔ 著者の少年時代をもとに書かれた
✔ 勇気をくれる心温まる一冊
★★★★☆ どもりのせいで殻に閉じ籠ってってしまう。笑い者にされ可哀想と思われ、それでも大人になっていく。小さくまとまっているように見えて力強いメッセージを送っている。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽 著者のどもりをテーマにした彼の経験を元にしたストーリー。 笑い者にされ、可哀想と思われ、それでも大人になっていく。 どもりのせいで意見を言えず殻に閉じ困ってしまう、こういうことはどもりを持つ本人じゃないと分からないし、逆に同じ境遇の人は皆感じてることだと思う。 小さくまとまっているように見えて力強いメッセージを送っている。
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
きよしこ (新潮文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
The Other Middle Passage:
Journal of a Voyage From Calcutta to Trinidad 1858
ロン・ラムディン, 1994
Ron Ramdin, 1994
62 ページ
2020.06 読了
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 奴隷制度廃止後のインドからのクーリー貿易の一例
✔ 労働者の輸送中のコンディションなどを解説
✔ 1858年のとある船長の妻の日記を含む
★★★★★ いわゆる奴隷制度がなくなっても、当時のカリブ海では全く人手が足らない状態で、アフリカではなく今度はインドから過酷な状況下の労働に人々を輸送。その子孫の著作。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
インド系トリニダード人の友人の著作。
インドから西インド諸島、カリブ海地域に送られたクーリー貿易(苦力貿易)といわれる新しい形の奴隷制度のついて。
冒頭は輸送された労働者のコンディションについて、特に一つの船の状況を詳しく書いている。
1858年に出向したその船は、108日かかった輸送で324人中124人が死亡。
奴隷制度がなくなっても、当時のカリブ海ではサトウキビなどの栽培で全く人手が足らない状態になり、アフリカではなくインドから自由を奪って過酷な状況下の労働のためだけに人々を輸送。
後半になるとその船内の様子や船長の奥さんの日記などによって当時の状況が詳しく書かれている。
といっても、つまりは病気になって当たり前の環境で毎日人が病気になり、毎日人が死んでいく様子が綴られる。
友人の彼も、クーリーとして送られて来た人の子孫で、白人の下に黒人、その下にインド人がいるという子供時代を過ごす。
日本ではこの本は手に入りにくいので、もし興味があればご連絡ください。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
“The Other Middle Passage” Ron Ramdin, (1994) Review | Another slave trade
tag 植民地主義 インド
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
The Other Middle Passage: Journal of a Voyage From Calcutta to Trinidad 1858
●●● 楽天 ●●●
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Numero Zero
Umberto Eco, 2015
208 pages
Read in 2024.6
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Book about the journalism of our time – conspiracy theories and fake news.
Eco’s 7th and last novel.
It’s not ask mind provoking as his other classics but nice and short-ish.
We live in the world where nothing can be trusted to be real, and real can be fabricated.
A warning to the Italian society today.
It’d have been more fun if I knew more about the modern Italian history around Mussolini time.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Numero Zero
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Numero Zero
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Numero zero (Italiano)
(Wild Soul) Ryosuke Kakine, 2006 ワイルド•ソウル 垣根涼介 2006 1040 pages (512 + 528) Read in 2024.6 (Not available in English)✔ Novel about Japanese immigrants in Brazil ✔ Struggle and poverty of people dumped by the government ✔ Revenge 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ After WW2, 40,000 Japanese people crossed the ocean to Brazil to start better lives promised by Japanese government. Instead, they lived and died at the bottom of the society and jungle. Let the revenge begin. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 1000+ pages in Japanese, but it's nonstop explosion of excitement that you can't put the book down. After the second world war, Japanese government encouraged people in villages to move to Brazil, assuring them they would have land and work guaranteed. Instead the 40,000 people were left in the amazon forest to survive alone. Those who did survive and escape, lived at the bottom of various south American towns and cities. That's the first book, then, we move on to the second book where they start their revenge. Today's Japan, you meet 3 wild men, their faces look like Japanese but their eyes are dangerously bright; they have one mission, one target, the Japanese government. You spent one chunk of a book following their horrible lives so you are 100% on the side of these men, and you've also learned that this really was how many of those Japanese lived in Brazil. The book also reminds you how small we are in the huge endless nature of the amazon, one person is nothing. The nature would easily swallow you. Yet, we still live, we still regret the actions we did in the past, we still love. It's an epic and 1000 pages full of drama, action and love. A must read (if it becomes available in English!)
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Wild Soul [1] [In Japanese Language]
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
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●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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🔽 log 🔽
Afterlives
Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2020
288 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com✔ Colonialism in Africa and world war
✔ Love story and friendship
✔ Nobel prize winner
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ A beautiful story in a cruel and violent environment; war and colonisation. They must cling to little happiness or sadness that are their own. By a Nobel prize winner.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A beautiful story told in a cruel and violent environment; war and colonisation.
It's a reminder that people's loves get messed up by the external horrible business of war, like African lives affected by wars that are happening in Europe, "nothing to do with us"
But importantly, their lives can continue they can have little happiness or sadness that are their own, they must cling to them.
And a little magical and personal relationships with the coloniser and colonised makes the story hopeful, despite the violence that's surrounding them.
BY THE WINNER OF THE 2021 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Afterlives: A Novel
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Afterlives: By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Afterlives: By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
White Teeth
Zadie Smith, 2000
464 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
White Teeth: A Novel
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
White Teeth: The iconic, award-winning modern classic celebrates its 25th anniversary
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Denti bianchi (Italiano)
The spy who came in from the cold
John Le Carré, 1963
464 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
So this is the famous spy book.
And I admit I have almost zero interest in this genre it didn’t draw me into it as much as it should or could but it was a good story that you van easily imagine it being made into films.
It’s stone cold and stylish and stylised, but has the human struggle of the protagonist. And of course clever.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley, 3)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: John le Carré: 61 (Penguin Essentials, 61)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
La spia che venne dal freddo (Italiano)
Tokyo Island Natsuo Kirino, 2008 東京島 桐野夏生 Read in 2024.7 check price on amazon.com✔ From Japan's popular female author ✔ 31 men and 1 women left on an island ✔ Challenging and female desires 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ 31 men and 1 woman on a remote island. She makes sure to take advantage of being the only woman, but it's not that simple, she gets old and fat, and gets greedy, too. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 31 men and 1 woman on a remote island. She makes sure to take advantage of being the only woman, but it's not that simple, she gets old and fat, and gets greedy, too. As time goes on, 5 years, 6 years, they slowly start to fall apart and form their own communities. I only recently read Robinson Crusoe, and I'm not sure if he'd prefer years alone, or with these people. Men are not to be depended on, but she's so used to be treated like a queen by now, what should she do now that she's getting old and fat? It's not a beautiful story, it's the real woman with real problems, even if she's on an island with dozens of men alone.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
L'Ile de Tokyo (French Edition)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
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●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, 1929
464 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com✔ American classic
✔ Various points of view of the same incidents
✔ Life of Southern US at the turn of the century
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ A difficult read, difficult to understand what's actually happening, but once you get a hang of it, and with a bit of research it's gripping. Must read this again, now that I know the plot.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A difficult read.
The first chapter is written from the perspective of a disabled man, who is the fourth child of the family and it's not chronological, things come up as they come up in his mind, jumping around the time and repeating the same things, repeating his love for his sister.
Then it goes to the first son's perspective, then the second son's, then ends with no first-person narrator and concludes how the family has collapses.
Throughout the book things go back and forth and there is little explanation of what's actually happening or who's speaking, as if you are reading from the character's mind so you're supposed to follow with no description of events.
Though it's difficult, and I needed a synopsis from Wikipedia, it is gripping once you get a hang of it.
Unique, for sure, and it's a sad story of a proud but dysfunctional family.
Must read this again, now that I know the plot.
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Sound and the Fury (Vintage classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
L'urlo e il furore (Italiano)
An Artist of the Floating World
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1986
UK
206 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
An Artist of the Floating World
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
An Artist of the Floating World: As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Un artista del mondo fluttuante (Italiano)
Dracula
Bram Stoker, 1897
352 pages
Read in 2024.8
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Dracula (Penguin Classics)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Dracula: Stoker Bram (Penguin Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Dracula (Italiano)
一次元の挿し木 松下龍之介 2025 (Labyrinth of Hortensia and Minotaur) Ryunosuke Matsushita 256 pages Read in 2024.8 (Not available in English)✔ Currently not available in English ✔ SF mystery ✔ Gripping 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ What's so fab about it is that you know it's impossible, but it's so good that it doesn't matter. Exciting and entertaining, definitely the most loved mystery of 2025 in Japan. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The author is in his mid-20s and it was only his debut novel. It's so entertaining that all bibliophiles have read it in Japan. The DNA of an ancient bones found in India matches the DNA of his missing sister. And there are evil organisations and scientific secrets that are bigger than life; so you know it's impossible, there is no reality to it, but, but! you let that go because the story is so good. Who cares if it's the story is unlikely, but not even SF, if it's entertaining, people will read and get addicted to it. The protagonist is a beautiful lone young man who never smiles, his younger sister is a quiet pretty girl, there are also a bored housewife and poor students and Greek mythology, Frankenstein's monster, then the sound of mysterious liquid splashing - all the good ingredients are there. We're all waiting for his future books now. (And I'm sure it will soon be available in English)
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
One-Dimensional Cutting (Japanese Edition)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
One-Dimensional Cutting (Japanese Edition)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
One-Dimensional Cutting (Japanese Edition) (Giapponese)
Criminal Islington The Story of Crime and Punishment in a Victorian Suburb Islington Archeology & History Society, 1989 90 pages Read in 2024.7 check price on amazon.com✔ Local history ✔ Victorian London just off The City 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Record of crimes, policing and prisons in Islington, my home in London. This is when British Empire was at its peak, yet, citizens of London lived in poverty. Hypocrisy.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Collection of essays related to criminals, policing and prisons.
Being so closed to the City, Islington, especially Clerkenwell had a pretty bad history.
It’s interesting that there was no “police” outside of the City, and at the same time people realised that the petty crimes are born out of poverty so the policing and the housing improved the situation.
Crazy to think that the alleys in London were so poor yet they had the Empire.
In any case, interesting to know the area I know so well has such an interesting (but not very proud) history.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Criminal Islington, The Story of Crime and Punishment in a Victorian Suburb
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Criminal Islington: The story of crime and punishment in a Victorian suburb
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn
Sally J Rogers, etc, 2012
342 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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🔽 log 🔽
Autismo. Cosa fare (e non)
Guida rapida per insegnanti. Scuola primaria
Marco Pontis, 2021
150 pages
Read in 2024.8
Check price on amazon.com✔ Italian language only
✔ Guidebook for teachers who have autistic kids
✔ Practical advices
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Written for assistant teachers at school, so not home or therapist, but useful even for parents.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
For Italian teachers.
Written for assistant teachers at school, so not home or therapist, but useful even for parents.
Nothing new specifically to note (it doesn't go deep, and assumes it's for a classroom) but good to read in Italian and normally what they suggest is consistent in various books.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Autismo - Cosa fare (e non): Guida rapida per insegnanti - Scuola primaria (Italian Edition)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Autismo - Cosa fare (e non) - Scuola dell'infanzia: Guida rapida per insegnanti (Italian Edition)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Autismo. Cosa fare (e non). Scuola dell'infanzia. Guida rapida per insegnanti
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 2011 580 pages Read in 2024.8 check price on amazon.com✔ History of humans ✔ Focuses on the struggles and greed 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ It is scary to think just how we continue to demand to be strong, stepping on all the other animal and the ecosystem that surrounds us - and, on other fellow human beings. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 One of the most talked about books in the last decade. As I was warned, it is interesting, clever, provoking but above all scary. It is scary to think just how we evolved to be the most powerful being on the planet, and how we continue to demand to be strong, stepping on all the other animal and the ecosystem that surrounds us - and, on other fellow human beings. If you stop and think, it's crazy how we're destroying our world by selfish. As he says, the earth is a big shopping centre. We love to consume and want more - but what exactly do we want? What is the happiness that we want? And in future, when we evolve to something new, what new things will we want? Another scary part is, he doesn't seem to criticise this aspect of our greed and seem to just speak about it, which might be alarming. So though interesting, I don't like it, and I kept it with 4 stars only.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Sapiens [Tenth Anniversary Edition]: A Brief History of Humankind
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: The multi-million copy bestseller
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Sapiens. Da animali a dèi: Breve storia dell'umanità (Italiano)
Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami, 2008 乳と卵 川上未映子 Read in 2020.05 check price on amazon.com
✔ A new wave of Japanese female author
✔ Challenging the expectations of patriarchy
✔ Women and their bodies
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Women looking at each other, women being looked at by each other. This is everyday stuff, a mundane, but why does it have to be a taboo to talk about women's normality? Sharp and warm.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
There's no other stories like this.
3 women, 3 days.
What does it mean to be a woman?
It goes on about sexual "tools" and about reproduction "tools" and menstruations that just happen in between
Women looking at each other, women being looked at by each other.
This is everyday stuff, boring, a mundane, but why does it have to be a taboo to talk about women's normality?
In the original Japanese it's written in a way that's not easy to read mixed with Osaka dialects, there was nothing like this before Kawakami, a story that talks about the truth in everyday life. Her theme and storytelling is sharp, but her writing is warm.
Today her books can be found in English and many other languages, but naturally I wait to get them in Japanese!
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Breasts and Eggs: A powerful and intimate novel about what it means to be a woman in modern Japan
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Breasts and Eggs: A powerful and intimate novel about what it means to be a woman in modern Japan
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Seni e uova
Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore, 1910
48 pages
Read in 2024.7
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Gitanjali (Pocket Classics)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Gitanjali
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Poesie: Gitanjali-Il giardiniere (Italiano)
The Room on the Roof Ruskin Bond, 1956 184 pages Read in 2024.08 check price on amazon.com✔ Novel based on the life of the author ✔ Struggle as a white Indian ✔ Friendship and coming of age 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ His adolescence, friendship and first love, like any stories of this kind, but the sense of not belonging was too real and obvious, he really did not belong. A bittersweet love for his home, India. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 First long novel I read of Ruskin Bond, and his first novel when he was still a teenager. It talks of his own youth, of being a white English boy raised in India and not belonging anywhere. His adolescence, friendship and first love, like any stories of this kind, but the sense of not belonging was too real and obvious, he really did not belong. Bittersweet, under the Indian sun the boy is undeniably in love with India, his home.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Room on the Roof (The Originals)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Room on the Roof (The Originals)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
La stanza sul tetto (Italiano)
乳と卵
川上未映子, 2008
144 ページ
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 主人公と姉とその娘の3人の3日間
✔ 女であること、女の身体のことを新鮮な文体で描く
✔ 世界的にヒットした芥川賞受賞作
★★★★★ 女であること、というテーマから、具体的にツールになる身体のパーツ、女同士を見る事見られる事。実は日常茶飯事だけど、タブーになる女性の普通を、不思議な文章で表す。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
こんな作品は他にない。
女3人の3日間。
女であること、というテーマから、具体的に性的なツールになる胸、生殖のツールになる卵子、その過程である生理、女同士を見る事、見られる事。
男の役割はなんなのか。
そういう実は日常茶飯事だけど、タブーになる女性の普通を、不思議な文章で表す。
読みにくい長文と入り混じる大阪弁で読者を惹きつけて離さない。
本には実は2作品が収められていて、もうひとつの方は繰り返す日常の中で女性が抱く淡い希望について。
二作品とも地に足がついていて、日常の真実を語っていて、テーマや物語は鋭いのに、文体は優しく温かい。
世界中でファンが多い著者、私もロンドンで知って日本語で読む機会を待っていました。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
"Breasts and Eggs" Mieko Kawakami (2008) Review | Women's normality, society's taboo
tag 女性主体
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
乳と卵 (文春文庫 か 51-1)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Black Narcissus Rumer Godden, 1939 258 pages Read in 2024.8 check price on amazon.com✔ Nuns in the Himalaya ✔ Controversial novel about nuns ✔ Tension within the convent and with the locals 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ Nuns with good intentions in the isolated hills out of Darjeeling, which used to be a harem. If that doesn't promise the hysteria and darkness. As expected they slowly went mad. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 Nuns with good intentions in the isolated hills out of Darjeeling, which used to be a harem. If that doesn't promise the hysteria and darkness, I don't know what does. As expected they slowly went mad. It's in a way stereotypical, how can they dare to go out to someone else's back garden to preach, when the locals have been living perfectly fine. How could the women, with different tempers expect to live peacefully, when they're not welcome. It's the dark side of living in Darjeeling hills, as the young General said, people go mad when they stay too close to the mountain Kanchenjunga, God. Sexual tensions, the struggle between white supremacy and Christian philanthropy, the end of British Empire. And it did make it into a rather successful film and series. In the final days of the Imperial rule, some British also thought it was good and made a film out of it, too. I must watch it.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Black Narcissus: A Novel
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Black Narcissus: Now a haunting BBC drama starring Gemma Arterton (Virago Modern Classics Book 158)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Narciso nero (Italiano)
The Maids
Junichiro Tanizaki, 1963
台所太平記
谷崎潤一郎
Read in 2024.8
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Maids
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Maids
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Le domestiche (Italiano)
Submission
Michel Houellebecq, 2015
Soumission
Read in 2024.8
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Submission: A Novel
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Submission: Michel Houellebecq
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Sottomissione (Italiano)
The Anarchy
The relentless rise of East India Company
William Dalrymple, 2019
576 pages
Read in 2024.08
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A great book, definitely the top, the best.
It's the topic I've always been interested in; how in the world could small England colonise India, a great power?
So is it like, Mughal Empire was a lion, and EIC a hyena?
A handful of gang, a mob, disrespectful, aggressive, opportunist, deceitful and selfish, who only thought of making quick money, took the gamble for their own profit.
They were hardly truthful to their employer, government or Crown either.
But East India Company was too big to fall, Britain was too dependent on the wealth India brought, so they nationalised it, and took over what EIC had, ie the power over the subcontinent, the start of the British India.
History is definitely more interesting and exciting than fiction here, the facts are fascinating but then you have Mr Dalrymple writing about it with his compassion, passion and humane sensibility, it becomes such a force, it's so powerful, and utterly important.
This careful yet brave book focuses on the fall of Mughal Empire and how EIC took all the opportunities with aggression and lies, because that is what it was, and it's hardly to do with the ability of EIC as merchants.
It contains endless anecdotes and references taken from the writing of the time that had been buried in the cluster of materials in India, so they are the facts that we were never aware of.
And facts are scary, truth hurts, historical facts almost always hurt Britain.
No wonder, sadly, some people don't like Dalrymple's books, history hurts them.
One particularly interesting character that I didn't know about was Warren Hastings who loved and cared about India, unusual for EIC employee but had nasty enemies.
Again a great book, I'd even go as far as saying an important cultural treasure, and an instant classic.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Anarchy
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Anarchia. L'inarrestabile ascesa della Compagnia delle Indie Orientali (Italiano)
The Gurkha's daughter
Prajwal Parajuly, 2013
280 pages
Read in 2024.09
check price on amazon.com✔ Collection of short stories
✔ Nepali living in different places in the world
✔ Disaspora
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Nepal and Diaspora, sense of not belonging where they live. Far from home people's tradition and customs are distant memories while the feelings for home gets stronger.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A collection of short stories of people who have different ties to Nepal.
It's about lives of people living in diaspora, sense of not belonging where they live.
To begin with,
Nepalese people in Darjeeling area have a different sense of home, and not necessarily uniformed.
And how about Nepalese in Bhutan who got kicked out to Nepal?
Or Muslim from Bihar in Kalimpong?
A guy from Darjeeling in New York who's never been to Nepal?
The stories are subtly harsh and sad but not exaggeratingly dramatic, just like real lives of real people, they carry their own inevitable drama and the longing, between tradition and practice and sense of home.
Nice short stories.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Gurkha's Daughter: shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas prize
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Gurkha's Daughter: shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas prize
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
--
水銀灯が消えるまで
東直子, 2010
224 ページ
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 歌人でもある著者の作品ー
✔ 事実や順番に重点を置かず雰囲気でストーリーが進む
✔ 小さなファンタジー
★★★☆☆ 廃れた遊園地をちょっと舞台にしながら、そこに集まって行く人達のそれぞれの人生、生き方。雰囲気や流れに乗ってストーリーは進む。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
短歌の人、が書いた小説。
たしかにそういう感じ。
事実や順番、人間関係なんかに重点を置かず、雰囲気や流れに乗って次のページへと続く。
ある廃れた遊園地をちょっと舞台にしながら、そこに集まって行く人達のそれぞれの人生、生き方。
ちょっとミステリアスな世界で起こる小さなストーリーたち。
好みかと言われるとそうではないけど、一気に読んでなんとなくその世界に数時間、迷い込んでしまうようなそういう読書の時間。
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
水銀灯が消えるまで (集英社文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain, 2000
576 pages
Read in 2024.09
check price on amazon.com
✔ Autobiography by a popular chef
✔ His life and relationship with food and cooking
✔ Funny and heart warming
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ It's a biography but not about him, it's about the love of food, love of cooking, of his colleagues and kitchen. It's really how he was, foul mouth, brutally honest, caring guy. A classic.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Yes, no wonder this is considered a classic.
It's a biography but it's not about him, it's about the love of food, love of cooking, of his colleagues and kitchen, and as he says, it's universal.
Kitchen is a heated place, I have worked briefly at a small restaurant so I had a tiny preview of the kitchen life.
It's a difficult job and it's all about working as a team, not a team, a military.
What your chef says is absolute, you only say "yes chef".
Bourdain was such a loved character from TV shows, and it's nice to read that it's really how he was, foul mouth, brutally honest, caring guy.
Funny he mentions Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, that I recently ready.
And this books is only second to that classic.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Kitchen Confidential: 25th Anniversary Edition
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Kitchen Confidential (Italiano)
The Trial
Franz Kafka, 1914
Der Prozess
Germany
Read in 2020.05
check price on amazon.com
✔ A masterpiece from Kafka
✔ Philosophy and absurdity
✔ Struggles and humiliation
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Absurdity, humiliation, resistance, Kafka's world. We get little explanation throughout. Death is unceremonial, his death is nothing but a humiliation.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Absurdity, humiliation, resistance, Kafka's world.
I only read Metamorphosis when I was a student, but I do remember it's the same absurdity.
Out of blue he's arrested, out of blue he's turned into an insect.
He suffers from the humiliation and irrational world around him.
The protagonist is a serious man, he struggles to accept illogical thinking, but we don't get to know where the court would be, or even why he was arrested, we get little explanation throughout.
Death is un-ceremonial, his death is nothing but a humiliation.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Trial: Franz Kafka (Penguin Modern Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il processo
審判
フランツ・カフカ, 1914
The Trial
Franz Kafka
Der Prozess
394 ページ
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ カフカの描く不条理の世界
✔ 途中が断片的な未完の作品
✔ なぜ逮捕されたのか分からないままの主人公
★★★★☆ 理不尽、屈辱、抵抗、カフカの世界。なんの罪に問われているかもわからず、セレモニアルでない呆気ないのあとに残るものは恥辱のみ。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
理不尽、屈辱、抵抗、カフカの世界。
「変身」は学生時代に読んだきりで、ああこういう感じだったと思い出す。
突然逮捕される、または突然虫になる。
周りの人間の侮辱に似た言動を堪えて過ごし結局は野垂れ死に。
真面目な男である主人公はロジカルでない事や物へ理解に苦しむも、結局どこに裁判所があるのかも、誰が助けてくれるのかも、そして読者は彼がなんの罪に問われているかもわからないまま、最もセレモニアルでない形の呆気ない死、その死のあとに残るものは恥辱のみ。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
審判 (岩波文庫 赤 438-2)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Shehan Karunatilaka, 2022
368 pages
Read in 2024.09
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: Winner of the Booker Prize 2022
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Le sette lune di Maali Almeida (Italiano)
The History of Mr. Polly
H. G. Wells, 1910
Herbert George Wells
318 pages
Read in 2024.10
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It was mentioned in the mid life crisis book (my review here), and yes it is exactly about that.
You have a boring life, you don't make decisions but things just get decided and time passes and one day, you want to end it all.
You want to "change it" but you are so tired that you just want to end it - but THAT is when the life starts again.
The first half of this book is boring to read because his life was boring, but weirdly when he tries to end it the words in the book also gets more exciting and enjoyable, just as he enjoys the view of the countryside - then comes the tranquility of life, satisfaction, of letting it all go.
It was worth reading the boring bits because that is life, it's unpredictable.
Also worth knowing that the author is actually a popular SF writer.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The History of Mr. Polly
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The History of Mr. Polly
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
The History Of Mr. Polly (English)
Blood wedding
Federico García Lorca, 1932
Bodas de sangre
Spain
80 pages
Read in 2024.09
check price on amazon.com
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Blood Wedding: A Play (Faber Drama)
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Lorca: Three Plays (Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba) (NHB Drama Classics) (Drama Classic Collections)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Nozze di sangue (Italiano)
Shattered Lands Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia Sam Dalrymple, 2025 UK 528 pages Read in 2025.09 check price on amazon.com✔ History of Asia and British empire ✔ Partitions around Indian empire ✔ Colonisation, independence and new tragedies 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ 5 Partitions, not just one. From Yemen to Myanmar, The British India was one entity where cosmopolitan people had lived in a sort of harmony. An important history that was until now "forgotten", and an important book. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A great book on the topic that is shamefully unknown to a lot of us, even though it's not so long time ago and even though it totally shaped Asia today. All the problems in Asia that we see on the news today are not simply because the local people are "naturally" violent, of course not, there is always a cause. And the cause is, this. The British Empire had ruled and gained much from the British India and local Princely States (so very wide, from modern day Yemen to Burma, to Qatar. Qatar! And British Empire had 25% of the world population back then) until one day they couldn't financially support it so they dropped the ball, without thinking of the very probable consequences, namely, the shattered lands and shattered people. The book carefully follows 5 Partitions, rather than only the more widely known THE Partition between today's India and Pakistan. Myanmar, Arabian peninsula, India-Pakistan, Princely States, and Bangladesh. People like me who knew so little would be surprised at how everything fell apart quickly, and be utterly shocked how millions of people crossed newly drawn borders each time. And every one experienced some horror; the violence, looting, rape, and many killing. The consequences of the relocation, the migration, and of course of refugees like Rohingya people still remains as huge problems.
Stereotypically, British officers’ works were full of lies and betrayals, their selfishness with their strong interesting in keeping their hands clean.
As a predicable result, people who lived in cosmopolitan societies, were suddenly put in various corners of Shattered Lands, and they turned against their neighbours because they now became their enemies.
What got me thinking most throughout my reading was how pre Partitions era things were more secular, and as the lands got divided it firmly became a matter of religions and ethnicity, it was all about nationalism, of the new nations that were born out of the shattered lands – again and again in the each phase of the Partitions.
Not that the colonisation era was good, but you cannot stop wondering, if we now want to end the fighting in Asia would we have to eliminate the notions of religion and ethnicity?
Letting go of the sense of community or tradition? The peace of mind it provides?
Is it really a dangerous thing to have a tradition?
I heard somewhere that people who experienced the Partitions, probably just like our grandfathers in Japan who were sent to the war, have preferred to keep quiet.
They chose to take the horror, errors and shame to their graves, and their children also kind of hesitated to insist.
However, now that it’s their grandchildren’s generation, things are now becoming uncovered and dusted off because they are finally opening their mouths to tell us.
And this might be one of the reasons why this book is written now at this moment in time, by this brilliant author who is in his 20s, and this is one of the reason this book will remain in the history to come.
The book has great details with wonderful storytelling skills, and most notably it has the marvelous sense of humanity, just like his father, Sam Dalrymple is such a humane human full of compassion and passion, with giggles – but he is already on his own feet, and how exciting is it that two Dalrymples are on the chart? Very.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Shattered Lands: INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AND PRIZE SHORTLISTED NEW HISTORY OF FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE RESHAPING OF MODERN ASIA
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Shattered Lands: INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AND PRIZE SHORTLISTED NEW HISTORY OF FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE RESHAPING OF MODERN ASIA
The Overcoat Nikolai Gogol, 1842 Шине́ль Russia 112 pages Read in 2024.10 check price on amazon.com✔ Russian classic tragedy ✔ Life of a simple officer ✔ Russian bureaucracy and frustration 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★☆ Life is not fair. A tragedy but also a sad comedy. Russian literature is bottomless. A man saves money for ages and buys a new coat, and it gets stolen. Regardless of time and society we live in, we share the anger and desperation. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 Short stories of the famous Gogol. You do see a lot of Dostoyevsky in his stories, that the life is unfair, and stories are tragedies yet sadly comical. Written in this period in Russia, the stories are critical of the bureaucracy and of higher ranked officials. A regular official saves up to get an overcoat and gets robbed, it's simple as that, and though it's keeping it subtle it is fully miserable, and universal, we totally understand how the protagonist is feeling at every stage of the story. The story is ridiculous yet believable, and again universal. Russian literature is bottomless.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Overcoat and Other Stories
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Thrift Editions)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il cappotto (Italiano)
Ikigai
Ken Mogi, 2017
茂木健一郎
208 pages
Read in 2020.05
check price on amazon.com
✔ Essay on Japanese way of life
✔ The term "ikigai" became known in English
✔ By a neuroscientist
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ A book about how to live a life with "ikigai" which is a Japanese notion of "little happiness". Written by Japan's favourite neuroscientist, it's both logical and entertaining.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A book about how to live a life with "ikigai" which is a Japanese notion of "little happiness" in a very broad sense.
It was originally published for UK readers, so it's a lot about introducing Japanese culture and traditions while showing how the notion of "ikigai" is born and appreciated there.
It'd help non-Japanese to solve mystery of the mindsets of Japanese people.
Ridiculously detailed work by craftsmen and (apparently) uniformed lifestyle of salarymen - behind all that there is the "ikigai" to keep them going.
After reading this people would definitely like Japan more.
It is in a way a PR for Japan, but because it is written by Japan's favourite neuroscientist, it's both logical and entertaining.
p.s.
I love how US title is different from the UK title, American version focuses more on purposes, while British more on "little" happiness.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Little Book of Ikigai: The secret Japanese way to live a happy and long life
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il piccolo libro dell'ikigai. La via giapponese alla felicità
生きがい
茂木健一郎, 2017
Ikigai
Ken Mogi
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 脳科学者がイギリスで出版、その後日本語に翻訳
✔ 欧米人に向けての日本の生きがいの紹介
✔ 日本人にとっても発見のある一冊
★★★★☆ イギリスで出版された本を数年後日本に逆輸入。心持ち日本の宣伝になってるのは仕方ないけれど、確かに当時ロンドンではどこの本屋にもあった。Japanese books人気の先駆け。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
もともとはイギリスで出版された本なのでターゲットはイギリス人ではあるけれど、結局逆輸入されたのは面白い。
日本人ではない人たちが、日本人の考え方の謎を解くカギになる一冊で、細かい作業を続ける職人や同じような生活をするサラリーマン、そんな日本人の裏には「生きがい」という概念がある、と。
心持ち日本の宣伝になってるのは仕方ないけれど、今の日本現代文学ブームの前に書かれたこの本は確かにロンドンではどこの本屋にもあった。
まだまだ日本の本が今のように流行になる前に、ひっそりと本屋の入り口に並んでいたし、直後には似たような本が日本人じゃない人が書いたり。
もちろん茂木先生の職業などは知らない人たちが、当時はまだミステリーだった日本人のことを知るきっかけになったはず。
日本人にとって発見があるかどうかは別ですね。
それを逆輸入して、「見て、日本って素晴らしいでしょ」となるのは、さすが。
イギリスにいるときに英語で読んだので★4つだけど、日本で生活してて日本語で読んだらたぶん★3つになる。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
生きがい (新潮文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Grave of the Fireflies Akiyuki Nozaka, 1968 アメリカひじき 火垂るの墓 野坂明之 Japan Read in 2024.10 check on amazon.com (movie, not book)✔ Made into a Ghibli movie ✔ Effect of the war on children ✔ Collection of short stories 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ I still cannot watch the Ghibli film. Guilt disappears, but your hunger doesn't. You can visualise the horrible views the kids are seeing, and smell the death. They cannot live without help and death is too familiar. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The Ghibli film is too well known, but I still cannot watch it and even less now that I have kids of my own. Poverty, but extreme poverty where the war took everything and there's no other way than eventually die. There are no beautiful things like family or childhood, it's about how to survive that day, and if possible saving the little sister also. The book also contains other short stories, about kids who did survive - but it doesn't mean they are not struggling. A vivid complex about the victorious Americans, or the guilt they carry because you are the only survivor among the siblings, or their will to do anything to live in the post war period. Guilt disappears, but your hunger doesn't. What would you do to survive the day, or what can you do if you are only a child? The most unexpected thing about the book is the description of sex and female body. America Hijiki talks about sex shows, yes that's an obvious one, but in one of the stories it talks about menstruation that starts even if your whole body is burned and wrapped, or they talk about removing ovary, or about pregnancy and raising children in general during the war. All the things that's absolutely normal, especially if you are a woman, but never talked about in the history, which is more often written by men.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Grave of the Fireflies Steelbook (bluray)
I couldn't find English book link so adding a link to the Ghibli film
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Grave of the Fireflies: Akiyuki Nosaka
book
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Una tomba per le lucciole (Italiano)
book
In Praise of Shadows, 1933 Junichiro Tanizaki Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 陰翳礼讃 谷崎潤一郎 288 pages Read in 2024.11 check price on amazon.com✔ Essay from Japanese master Tanizaki ✔ Japanese aesthetics ✔ Eastern aesthetics against the Western convenience 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ Obsessively white tiles cannot give the warm beauty that old wood could. Japanese sentiments find beauty in shadows and in old. Masterpiece essay from Tanizaki, I mean he even writes beautifully about toilet. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A masterpiece essay from Tanizaki to praise the shadow, darkness and old. He's not just saying how darkness is good; he talks about the sentiment Japanese people have to feel that the cleanliness of white tiles cannot give the beauty that the old brown wooden board could give. Japanese are used to living in the dark rooms and they don't force the room to be brighter but they find beauty in the darkness. Women's clear skin is beautiful because the room is dark, and the custom of ohaguro (women paint their teeth black) also emphasises the pale skin. Same for some Japanese traditional art, like kabuki, the costumes are so bright, because back then the stage was darker. Now, almost 100 years on, I'm not sure the Japanese living today still have the same feeling towards darkness. But it's not completely gone, so hopefully this very Japanese sentiments stay with us. The book is a collection of his essays, so it talks about various things like traveling and how he hates guests, or about toilets. It's fun reading the grumpy Tanizaki whining about how he hates having guests, the book overall is not too serious. When he goes on and on about toilet, in his wonderful way of writing, you just have to smile - ah granddad!
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
In Praise of Shadows
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
In Praise of Shadows (Vintage Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Libro d'ombra (Italiano)
Breakfast At Tiffany's
Truman Capote, 1958
176 pages
Read in 2020.05
check price on amazon.com
✔ Popular film with Audrey Hepburn
✔ Capote's masterpiece
✔ A young woman in New York
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Everyone has seen the film, or at least recognise when they see a picture or scene. The free spirited Holly is fragile, she's only 20. Everyone loves her but does anyone care about her?
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Everyone has seen the film, or at least recognise when they see a picture or scene.
But I didn't remember it being so dark towards the end?
Probably it isn't in the film.
As many reviews say "you will fall in love with the book", and yes you do.
The free spirited Holly is actually fragile, especially in the book, she's 20.
She makes mistakes, yes, but she moves on, quickly.
Everyone loves her but nobody really cares about her.
The iconic romantic story.
There are 3 more short stories and they kind of share the same feeling of bitter romance.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Breakfast at Tiffany's: Truman Capote: 4 (Penguin Essentials, 4)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Colazione da Tiffany
ティファニーで朝食を
トルーマン カポーティ, 1958
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Truman Capote
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 華やかな若き天才作家と呼ばれた著者
✔ 田舎から出てきてニューヨークで自由に遊ぶ日々の女の子
✔ 村上春樹も翻訳
★★★★☆ オードリーヘップバーンの映画はみんなが知ってる。確かにこの物語に恋をする。主人公ホリーは自由奔放で実は繊細。恋するけれど、誰か彼女のことを大切にしてくれるだろうか。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
オードリーヘップバーンの映画はみんなが知ってる。
でも映画はこんなに暗い感じだったけ？
たぶん映画はもっと明るくしてたと思う。
確かに、この物語に恋をする。
主人公ホリーは自由奔放でありながらも実は繊細。
まだ20歳の彼女は間違いを犯しながらもさっさと次へ次へと進んでいく。
みんなが彼女を愛する、でも誰か彼女のことを大切にしてくれるだろうか。
短編集なんだけど、日本語は村上春樹の訳とは、それは贅沢。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
ティファニーで朝食を (新潮文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Absent in the Spring
Agatha Christie, 1944
Mary Westmacott
UK
Read in 2020.04
check price on amazon.com
✔ Written as Mary Westmacott
✔ Female struggle as a mother
✔ Travel journal from Baghdad
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ It's the struggle we all go through, especially if you are a mother, imagining that you are a victim. I sacrifice my life for the family, I prepare everything for you so you don't have to make a mistake.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott.
I didn't really know about this when I read it, though it's not a crime story, the brilliance of her writing is there.
On her way back from Baghdad, she thinks back about her family.
It's the struggle we all go through, especially if you are a mother, imagining that you are a victim.
I sacrifice my life for the family, I prepare everything for you so you don't have to make a mistake.
Her husband is kind so he lets her do her way, that is, do what she thinks he wants, which is, what he really wants.
But that, is her happiness.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Absent In Spring
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Absent in the Spring
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Absent in the Spring: A Captivating Historical Novel of Self-Discovery by Agatha Christie, Written Under the Pseudonym Mary Westmacott―Perfect for Summer Reading (English)
春にして君を離れ
アガサ・クリスティー, 1944
Absent in the Spring
Agatha Christie, 1944
イギリス
336 ページ
2020.04 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ アガサクリスティーの別名での作品
✔ 家族のために犠牲にしていると思う女性
✔ 背景はバグダットから英国への帰国の旅路
★★★★☆ 多くの人、特に母親が歩む道である被害者妄想というか。家族のために自分を犠牲にして、過ちを犯さないようレールを敷いてあげているのに。当時の彼女の別ペンネームの作品。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
いわゆるアガサ クリスティのミステリーではない、当時の彼女の別ペンネームの作品。
何も知らずに読んだけど、途中からなぜこの本が面白いのかだんだんわかってくる。
それは、多くの人が歩む道であり、たぶん母親となる女性に多いのかもしれないけど、これは被害者妄想というべきか。
バグダッドから一人帰国する旅の途中、彼女は自分の家族について考える。
家族のために自分を犠牲にしてやってあげてるのに、過ちを犯さないようレールを敷いてあげているのに。
そういう独り善がり。
さらには、夫はたしかに優しいし、優しさから、主人公が好きな事をしてもらう。
でも最終的にそれは彼女にとっての幸せか。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
春にして君を離れ (ハヤカワ文庫―クリスティー文庫)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Black skin white masks
Frantz Fanon, 1952
Peau noire, masques blancs
224 pages
Read in 2020.05
check price on amazon.com
✔ Thoughts on racism from a psychiatrist
✔ French colonisation and Martinique
✔ Political philosophy
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ What does it mean to have black skin and live as if you were a white? Or better, live wanting to be white, eternally? Today the racism is regarded with contempt. But are we free?
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The classic on postcolonial psychology.
What does it mean to have black skin and live as if you were a white?
Or better, live wanting to be white, eternally?
Fanon is a psychiatrist, he deals with unconscious, that is, a suppressed desire, that is, sexual desire /fear.
A black person becomes black only when he encounters the white world and the white world equals the colonisation.
The black will always have to live in denial or at best reactionary. And the white will always have to live in fear of the image they collectively created - primitive black, who is always more sexually potent.
Because any phobia is actually an anxious fear, he suggests that a racist person has, deep inside, a desire to be invaded.
Another interesting point was that he talks of French only, for the slaves did not win their freedom through struggles with their blood, it was given by the kind white masters.
To a certain extent it can be said to people of other ethnicity, that as long as we live in the West we are conscious of the colour of skin, and the white remains the absolute superiority.
But, Japan was not colonised by the white.
The colour of our skin doesn't immediately remind them of sin.
The colour black constantly appears in the white culture as evil, and it's thus collectively imagined as evil.
He concludes saying that he would refuse to be colonised by the colonisation, and the black must be free from the inferior complex and the white from the superior complex, it must be both ways.
It was written over 70 years ago.
Today the inter-racial communications and relationships have become normal, and the racism is regarded with contempt.
But are we free?
Fanon was fully aware, that his intellectual discoveries will not make the life of 8 year old boy in cane field any easier.
For there are issues in different levels, those of middle class living in the West, and those who are facing the very survival.
It's complex, we might not find a way to truly free ourselves. But we should not look down, keep questioning, and reading this book is a path.
🔽 Related pages 🔽
Orientalism
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Black Skin, White Masks
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin Modern Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Pelle nera, maschere bianche
黒い皮膚・白い仮面
フランツ・ファノン, 1952年
Black skin, white masks
Peau noire, masques blancs
Frantz Fanon, 1952
2020.05 読了
アマゾンであらすじと詳細を見る
🔽 本の紹介と一言レビュー 🔽
✔ 人種差別の裏にある心理的構造と恐怖を説く
✔ 植民地マルティニーク出身の精神科医
✔ 留学中の当時のフランスにおける人種差別に向けて
★★★★★ 黒人は白人社会に身を置いて初めて黒人となる。その植民地主義の世界で黒人は常に自らを否認しながら生活する。複雑で解決方法がなくても、目を背けない、そのためにこの本を読む。
🔽🔽 読書記録 🔽🔽
ポストコロニアリズムの古典。
黒い皮膚を持ちながら白人として生きるとはどういうことか。
いやもっというと、白人としていきたいと思うこととは、どういうことか。
著者ファノンはフランスの植民地マルティニーク出身の精神科医。
精神科医ということは潜在意識の専門家であり、つまり制御された欲求、つまり性的欲求、もしくは恐怖の専門家。
黒人は、白人社会に身を置いて初めて黒人となる。
白人社会とは植民地主義の世界であり、黒人は常に自らを否認しながら生活する必要がある。
自己否定を避けることができても、主体的にはならない。
逆に白人は、自分たちが勝手に作り上げた黒人像に怯えながら生活する必要がある。
野蛮で、なにより性的に強力な黒人像。
面白いのは、恐怖症という怯えは実は深いところにある欲求から生まれるという論点。
つまり、差別主義者は心の奥では黒人に脅かされたいという欲求がある、と。
もう一つ面白い点は、彼はフランスの植民地主義について語るという点で、奴隷制度の廃止はアフリカ人が戦って得たものではなく、白人のご主人様から与えられたものだという観点。
もちろん、黒人だけでなく私自身のように白人社会で生きる白人以外の人間は常に自分の皮膚の色がもたらす余計な意味について意識しながら生活するわけで、どこにいても白人が一番優位である事実は避けられない。
日本は植民地化されていないので、日本にいる限り自分の肌の色から生まれる原罪を意識することはほとんどない。
むしろ日本人特有のコンプレックスでアジアにおける「黄色い皮膚・白い仮面」というちょっと違う側面もあるが、それはここではさて置き。
あと、上記にもちょっと書いたように、もちろん映画や娯楽、アート、文化において黒い皮膚というのは悪と描かれるので、アジア人を含む共同的なイマジネーションにおいて、その歴史を知っていなくても「黒＝悪」という方程式が植えつけられる。
ファノンは、植民地主義に植民地化されたくないという。
黒人は劣等感から解き放たれ、白人は優越感から解き放たれるべきだと。
そして70年以上たった今。
人種を超えたコミュニケーション、友情、恋愛関係は普通になって、人種差別をする人間は見下される世の中になった。
でも、私たちは本当の意味で人種から自由になったのか。
ファノンの苦悩はなくならなかった。
例え知識人として知的な発見をしたとしても、サトウキビ畑で労働を強いられている8歳の子の生活は変わらないと。
問題は単純に皮膚の色だけでもない。
白人社会で生きるミドルクラスの黒人の苦しみと、その日の生活がやっとの黒人の苦しみ、二人の問題は同じものではない。
人種の問題は多くの段階を含み、層を含み、複雑である。
でも、それでも、たとえ複雑であっても解決方法がなくても、目を背けない、そのためにこの本を読む。
🔽 関連ページ 🔽
English review
tag 植民地主義
🔽 買えるところ / あらすじ、詳細 🔽
●●● アマゾン ●●●
黒い皮膚・白い仮面 【新装版】
フランツ・ファノン『黒い皮膚・白い仮面』 2021年2月 (NHK100分de名著)
●●● 楽天 ●●●
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf, 1925 240 pages Read in 2024.10 check price on amazon.com
✔ Stream of consciousness
✔ Female struggle
✔ English literature classic
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ In the room nothing seems to be happening, but in their heads their worlds are turning. Things that happen in the day seem like unrelated but they are within their consciousness. Story about her mind ready to explode.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
My first ever Virginia Woolf.
As expected it was a hard read, in terms of the timeline it happens all in a day, but in the meantime the main characters think and remember a lot - ”Stream of Consciousness”.
It's very internal, this is continuous flow of what they are really thinking while the time passes, and what they think is a lot more than what it appears in the very English society.
Nothing really happens in the day, but a lot happens in their heads, a big storm.
(warning; revealing a bit of the plot, but I assume it's well known after 100 years)
Clarissa is on the verge of falling apart, she's physically unwell but holds it together, very well aware of potential mistake of letting go the man she truly loved but also her duty as a wife. and Septimus, who had little to do with the party until his name is mentioned, had been at the verge and he eventually crosses the line.
By showing his death and his tension that was accumulated to the point of death, the book shows the nervous environment, or the consciousness of Clarissa, of what seems to be a boring, pretentious evening.
Definitely must read more of her books.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Mrs. Dalloway: The Virginia Woolf Library Authorized Edition
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf (Wordsworth Classics)
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
La signora Dalloway (Italiano)
Power, Politics and Culture Interviews with Edward W. Said, 2001 US 512 pages Read in 2024.11 check price on amazon.com✔ Collection of interviews ✔ Palestinian professor in the US ✔ Problems in Palestine 🔽 Review summary 🔽★★★★★ A Palestinian academic in the US, prof. Said. Many admire and are inspired by his passionate humanism. The second half is about political conversations. Two state solution. Geography rather than history or myth. So we should and can coexist. 🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 Collection of interviews with 2 sections, first focuses on arts and culture, about literature, music or arts, then the second is more political. I must be honest, the first part was difficult as I have little knowledge in the field, but the second part is something very, very real to us, who doesn't see what's going on in Gaza? "They can't possibly eliminate us all" - what he and many thought impossible is happening today. Genocide of Palestinians was out of question for anyone with common sense, yet, it's happening. He calls himself an incurable optimist. Some consider him an enemy or a terrorist. Many admire and are inspired by his passionate humanism. He was not an advocate for Islam, and was not rejecting the right of Jews. What is clear and consistent is that he was interested in coexistence of contradictories, he detested the idea of "pure" he dismissed the myth and focused on the lives of people now. Geography rather than history or myth. Two state solution. He knows that people are more complicated than we seem, exactly as he argues in Orientalism where the Other is depicted in a simplified way, that is simply not true. No, we are human, we live, we are complicated, and we must try. The curse of the powerful U.S. is that it hates to admit the mistakes and misunderstanding of the past. Rather than admitting their error they keep on depicting Arab as terrorist, probably as long as they physically can, because, as we all know, it brings a lot of money to a few in the US. It's been more than 20 years since his death, since we lost the lighthouse of compassion and common sense. He said, "Israel can't keep on kicking us, they have to admit we exist, not like they can kill off all Palestinians", well, the unimaginable is happening in front of our eyes. Can't we hear the voices of calm and humane intellectuals any more? Of common sense?
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=14492868&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F8295%2F9784480428295.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=19607182&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F2444%2F9784144072444.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=13179190&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F2063%2F9784044072063_1_14.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=14661226&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F4213%2F9784106104213_1_2.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=10589699&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F9117%2F9784101489117_1_4.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=17352315&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F3330%2F9784150413330.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=11468318&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F1013%2F10134917.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=13898138&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F1018%2F9784167791018_1_5.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
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![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=11255804&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F1513%2F15130081.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
![[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]](https://hbb.afl.rakuten.co.jp/hgb/0755ac2b.e8fbcae9.0755ac2c.14c3d96f/?me_id=1213310&item_id=20061940&pc=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp%2F%400_mall%2Fbook%2Fcabinet%2F9506%2F9784622089506.jpg%3F_ex%3D128x128&s=128x128&t=picttext "[商品価格に関しましては、リンクが作成された時点と現時点で情報が変更されている場合がございます。]")
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