Confessions
Kanae Minato, 2008
告白
湊かなえ
240 pages
Read in 2026.03
Check the synopsis and details on amazon.com
✔ A teacher declares that her daughter was killed by someone in her class ✔ People then confess what they did and saw ✔ Japanese school life at extreme
★★★★★ A teacher confesses her daughter was killed by someone in her classroom, then in the form of confessions the twisted truth will be told. Irresistible power of storytelling.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Irresistible power of storytelling.
I first thought it was a confession from the teacher that she knows someone in the classroom killed her daughter.
No it's more complicated as suggested by the English title this is about "confessions" plural.
There are numerous confessions, they tell us what they did, saw or think, but what if they actually don't know the truth, or maybe they're not saying the truth?
It doesn't only reveal the crime scene but reveals the truth about the people they thought they knew well, or their weakness.
Confidence, friendship, motherhood, and the crime itself.
You cannot put down the book until you are sure of what really happened.
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath, 1963
244 pages
Read in 2026.03
Check the synopsis and details on amazon.com
✔ A modern classic about a young woman and her uncertainty ✔ She seems to be successful, yet her mental health falls apart ✔ Though it's more than 60 years old still relevant
★★★★★ A summer job at a magazine in New York, all looks well yet nothing is going well. Modern classic coming of age novel about young women's fear and anger, still very relevant today.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The famous, the classic.
A young woman from a poor family studies hard and wins all prizes including a summer job at a magazine in New York.
All looks well, except nothing was actually going well and she ends up in an institution.
I am glad I didn't read this in my 20s because I'm not sure if I could take it.
Esther's fears are what any young women fear, and her anger, hopelessness, hatred, they are all familiar.
She's determined but if you let go one small rope, you lose yourself in the ocean.
Seemingly successful doesn't always mean happiness.
The author herself took her own life a few weeks after the publication.
It was written in the 60s so the world around these issues has changed, a bit, it's kinder now.
But 60 years on, it's still not that crazy to feel how she felt.
As long as there are girls in this world, this book will be read.
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●● The Bell Jar: A Timeless Coming-of-Age Classic (Perennial Classics)
Here are 3 books picked by me, akapan, to pile up in your bookshelf to create an amazing tsundoku, or actually read them, of course.
"Cheerleaders!" Not all cheerleaders wear uniforms
1. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813 UK 367 pages [my comment] How to humiliate a rich guy and to marry him in the end. What a girl. She cares about people around her, but knows what she wants. She brings everyone forward. [check on amazon.com]
2. Klara and the sun Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021 UK 307 pages [my comment] Artificial Friends; are they friends, or pets or toys? Klara exists only to support her assigned owner. Her dream is purely to support. [check on amazon.com]
3. 100 Nasty Women of History: Brilliant, badass and completely fearless women everyone should know Hannah Jewell, 2019 UK 376 pages [my comment] These brave women are buried away in history. Women are always less, they succeed "by chance" or are just "nasty"? No. They are the true inspirations, the heroes, they made our history. [check on amazon.com]
Here are 3 books picked by me, akapan, to pile up in your bookshelf to create an amazing tsundoku, or actually read them, of course.
"Women and Crimes" They got involved too much
1. Butter Asako Yuzuki, 2017 柚木麻子 Japan [my comment] Kajimana adores butter and hates feminism. From her prison cell, she has control over everything Rika does with her pale chubby arms. It questions Japan's expectations on women. [check on amazon.com]
2. The Paying Guests Sarah Waters, 2014 UK 595 pages [my comment] The woman who lives quietly with her mother falls in love with a beautiful young wife of the new tenant, their love led to a murder. Who's in control? [check on amazon.com]
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith, 1955 US 252 pages [my comment] It focuses a lot on what's on Ripley's mind, how he's cold and nervous, contrary to the blue sky of Italy, but it's Merge who is involved and used to it a perfect crime. [check on amazon.com]
"Mother and Daughter" Relationship too close and struggling
After picking these 3 I realised that they are not Japanese books but are all related to Japan and its history. A mother in England reminiscing about her hometown Nagasaki and the woman she met during the war, a Korean mother who lived for her family in Japan throughout the war, a mother who was a popular prostitute in Indonesia colonised in Japan - and their daughters. Powerful.
1. A Pale View of Hills Kazuo Ishiguro, 1982 UK 183 pages [my comment] Etsuko now lives in England, she thinks about her lost daughter while reminiscing about Nagasaki, about a strange woman and her daughter she met. The women's past, future and regrets. [check on amazon.com]
2. Pachinko Min Jin Lee, 2017 US 512 pages [my comment] A young Korean woman crossed the sea to Japan. She lived in the war time Japan as a zainichi, lived entirely for her family. Endless struggles and little happiness. The way of living passed down to her daughter. Life is a pachinko. [check on amazon.com]
3. Beauty is a wound Cantik Itu Luka Eka Kurniawan, 2002 Indonesia 480 pages [my comment] Mixture of history and race, religions and politics and power, and living among men abusing all above. An epic drama of strong beautiful women. Her only hope is her ugly daughter. Blessed ugliness. [check on amazon.com]
★★★★☆ A collection of short stories that makes you simply sad. It gets you excited a bit, then in the end you face the cold reality, that you are merely insignificant being.
🔽 log 🔽 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999 Read in 2018 check on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A collection of short stories that makes you simply sad.
The author herself is of Indian origin so protagonists are Indian or Indian origin, if not someone looking at Indian.
She depicts these Indian characters as some kind of aliens, someone we cannot understand.
The stories get you excited a bit, then in the end you face the cold reality, that you are merely insignificant being.
It won Pulitzer and other awards so I'd love to read this in English.
★★★★★ The dynamics of the 3 generations of these women, these proud, bold, beautiful, lovable women. They all want to live their lives fully.
🔽 log 🔽 The Persians Sanam Mahloudji, 2025 384 pages Read in 2016.02 check on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I've set a theme for this month which is women, and what a perfect start.
A noble, or ex-noble Valiat family, a family that produced a national hero,. The story is about their women who left for America, and those who stayed in Iran after the revolution. It definitely reminds you of Persepolis, but this one has even more incendiaries. The dynamics of the 3 generations of these women, these proud, bold, beautiful, lovable women.
By following the perspectives different women, it shows you the very different lives they've led, how the women in Iran really lived behind the veils, against the money-making shallow lives in America. But it's not only the countries that determine their lives, like Elizabeth being a woman in Iran in the 1940s is different from being one during the 80s, like Niaz.
But one thing is common between these women across 3 generations, they all want to live their lives fully. They want to love freely, they want to discard freely, and they want to embrace each other despite their regrets, grudges, and lies.
Afterall, as Shirin the entrepreneur says, America is younger than their favourite jewellery, so of course their lives are extravagant. Just that their extravagance is not shallow.
🔽 Book reviews and notes 🔽 Here are 3 books picked by me, akapan, to pile up in your bookshelf to create an amazing tsundoku, or actually read them, of course.
Women and Madness Women against the social expectations
1. The Woman Dies Aoko Matsuda, 2021 Japan 女が死ぬ 松田青子 [my comment] In Japan it's still normal to say "typically female" or "it talks to the female sensitivity" in ads or magazines. These women won't give in. Anger, fabulous. [full review page] [check on amazon.com]
2. Little Fires Everywhere Celeste Ng, 2017 US 400 pages [my comment] It starts slowly in everyone. 2 families, opposite ideals, and different mothers different daughters with different fates. [full review page] [check on amazon.com]
3. Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf, 1925 UK 240 pages [my comment] Clarissa is on the verge of falling apart, she's physically unwell but holds it together, on the outside. Nothing seems to happen, yet there's a storm in her head. [full review page] [check on amazon.com]
★★★★★ Dystopia that could happen in near future. This is the terminal point of misogyny. Women are no longer human but tools to perform some roles. Interesting yes, very much, but above all scary.
🔽 log 🔽 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood, 1985 337 pages Read in 2018
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I borrowed it from a Canadian friend of mine who is a big fan of Atwood, I must say, I was actually staying in a hospital for weeks that time so it was pretty heavy!
Offred is one of very few fertile women left so she has been enslaved to reproduce a child for a commander and his wife.
Not so long ago she had her own life with a husband and a child and she cannot easily let it go.
This is the terminal point of misogyny.
Women are no longer human but tools to perform some roles.
Even wives are just a role, there is no affection between married couples.
You could write a few books dissecting the theme, but let's pause and ponder that Atwood wrote this story in the 80s.
The story is obviously awfully interesting but it's at the same time scary that maybe in 20 years or so, this could be reality somewhere in the world.
✔ Kerala, south India ✔ Childhood memories and struggle of a broken family ✔ Tradition and expectations
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Knowing you are loved less, jealously, love, taboo, nothingness, coldness, honesty - through these feelings and environment the life slowly falls apart. Haunting, emotional and beautiful.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A friend of mine recommended this book, so I started reading it without knowing anything about it - what a glorious and emotional surprise.
It is difficult to read. First of all because it's not chronological, chapters and plot jump around and second of all, if you don't know much about Indian culture, ideas and terms, you feel left behind. So, I ended up googling a lot while reading, but it was definitely worth it.
You don't really understand what happened in earlier chapters until the end. It reminds us of the way our minds work, when you are traumatised you first feel the strong sense of fear of the moment, and slowly you establish the surroundings, it's never like, A happened thus B happened, followed by C.
The meaning and significance of the fact that it was written by an Indian woman living in India. The emotions, perspective, way of descriptions that she has as an Indian or Asian woman cannot shine through fully if she was brought up in the West. Physically living a life where you have the Caste, as a mother, as a woman, as an obstacle. The acknowledgement that you are loved less as a child, jealously, love, taboo, nothingness, coldness, honesty - through these feelings and environment the life slowly falls apart.
The best part of reading this book is to try to follow these small things. Of course it won Booker Award.
Also after reading the book I really wanted to see Kathakali, and yes I managed it, I did go to Kerala and saw it.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 Here are 3 books picked by me, akapan, to pile up in your bookshelf to create an amazing tsundoku, or actually read them, of course.
"Strong Female Characters" Yes, yes, it's rather common, I know, but I wanted to pick some quirky ones because strength comes in different shapes!
2. Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata, 2016 コンビニ人間 村田沙耶香 [my comment] She's not married, not doing a "grown up's job", no kids, no boyfriend, also she doesn't give a sh*t, she is clever and quick. she didn't just end up being a convenience store woman, this is her true self. [check on amazon.com]
3. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte, 1847 624 pages [my comment] I have to add this classic in the list. A woman who doesn't obey? A woman who says no? All with her plain childish looks? How dare. [check on amazon.com]
★★★★★ She was sent to pose as a maid, but their relationship becomes more than that, a lot more. It feels like many books in one; Victorian London, girls, crime, and love - girls in crime and in love.
🔽 log 🔽 Fingersmith Sarah Waters, 2002 582 pages Read in 2020.10 check on amazon.com
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I actually watched the Korean film The Handmaiden first. I watched it when I was heavily pregnant so it's a bit blurry, but I was astonished to a point that I had to look for the original book.
A family of thieves sends their girl to a rich family, for her to be a maid of the naïve gentlewoman aiming for her eventual inheritance, but slowly their relationship becomes more than that - a lot more. In the film her uncle collects paintings, ukiyoe, which suits the film as it's set in Korea, but in the book in Victorian London he collects words.
So naturally I kept comparing it to the film, which is always an error because films tend to be more dramatic or exaggerated, but the madness is definitely there in the book. It feels like you're reading many books, because there are quite a few twists and everything builds up so well; the girls, the crime, and the love.
Also the historical background is intriguing, it depicts different lives in the backstreet in London, that's one reason it feels like you are different many books in one.
At first you think one is tricking another, but oh no you are wrong, but wait it's changing again, now what, oh what is going on NOW. I don't want to spoil it but you'll see what I mean by this - she's not just a pearl, she's what she's made herself to be but now with pride.
★★★★★ Your fiancé tells you he has betrayed you. 2 weeks to your wedding, will you break the perfect life you have created, or will you cling to it? A woman struggling with the expectation of others and her own. Girl, we hear you.
✔ Female rage ✔ Life in London as a young woman with career ✔ Food
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 A book about female rage. About trying too hard and about creating life based on others. And eating. It's a story of a woman who is about to get married, so the tension is at its peak when he confesses his betrayal, what now? The need to show you're up to their expectations, because you carefully fabricated that image. And godforbid she lives the life of her own lower class family. It's all represented in the food and eating. Look at me buying good stuff from waitrose. Look at me cooking and baking fancy stuff. Very real, it's what womanhood is today.
✔ Life in Kalimpong, India, historical fiction
✔ Class struggle and love story
✔ Gurkha movement and immigration
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★+♥ One person is so small and can be crashed in a second, so is there any hope? In spring the Himalaya brings fragile hope, but with the rain it makes everything rotten. We live at the mercy of something we cannot control. Powerful.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Recommended by a friend so I realised only later that it was in Kalimpong.
Through eyes of a well to do orphan girl, it looks at Gurkhaland movement in a non-romantic way; how we live in our own imagination - and how the reality bites back in nonchalant tone.
The orphan girl starts to live with her grandfather, who eats Indian food with a knife and fork, in a big house with his cook/servant.
She falls in love with a young man amid the violent Gurkha movement, and at the same time on the other side of the world the cook's son is fed up with his life in NY that's going nowhere.
One person is so small and can be crashed in a second, so in the end, is there any equality, understanding, or hope?
Everything changes, except for one thing; the Himalayas.
In spring it brings fragile hope, but the rain makes everything rotten, and we all live at the mercy of something we cannot control.
It's a feeling you get when you are in India, you physically feel some superior power, something much bigger than life.
It is comical at times but tragic in a subtle and unkind way. Powerful.
Fanny Hill
Memoirs of a woman of pleasure
John Cleland, 1749
UK
176 pages
Read in 2024.5
check price on amazon.com
✔ One of the most banned books in history
✔ Life of a woman of pleasure in Victorian England
✔ Female lead, somehow encouraging
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ One of the most banned books in English literature. She's not only a mere woman of pleasure, but she gets rich! A free and lively woman who gets rich, yeah an enemy of the decent society.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
One of the most banned books in English literature.
It took a while to properly start reading it, but for me it's excessive.
That is the point of this book as it's said to be the first pornographic novel, but, less descriptions would have made the book more interesting, to me, but obviously that would reduce the charm and the meaning of this book.
One of the critics says the writer is a homosexual, because of the obsession with the description of male bodies, yes it's obsessive compared to that of female bodies.
Well, it was written centuries ago so it must have been shocking, that the women find pleasure without any regret or shame!
Normally these femme fatale stories end with the woman regretting her past, or getting punished.
Take Lolita, she is made to be happy by settling in the countryside as a wife (while Tanizaki's Naomi continues with her life style, that's what makes Tanizaki great)
Here, Fanny does not regret, but not only that she even gets rich, such a bad ass enemy of the (patriarchal ) society.
✔ Biography of a Jamaican nurse ✔ Often compared with Nightingale ✔ Insightful and encouraging life
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Jamaican British nurse whom British and Nightingale rejected for being non-White, but she pushed her way through serve her mother country in Crimea regardlessand was loved.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Biography of a Jamaican British nurse who pushed her way through to Crimea to serve her mother country.
Contemporary to Florence Nightingale, Seacole chose to be closer to the battlefield, not only financially funded her way through to the battlefield, she established a sort of restaurant business to support herself while working as a nurse.
Why did she have to make her money to help the wounded British soldiers? Because the British government and Nightingale rejected her, precisely for being non-White.
It's a revelation of the dark side of Nightingale, as well as the determination of the mixed race woman, who paid little attention to the colour of her skin but more to serve the Britain and her dying and wounded "sons" (she called soldiers sons).
But Britain did not show the gratitude she well deserved. As it's been said many times elsewhere, it's not correct to refer to her as "a black Nightingale", they were very different and the impression we get today from the record is, a very strict Nightingale didn't appreciate Seacole much who gave not only care to the wounded but also joy.
✔ 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.
✔ 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.
🔽 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.
✔ 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.
🔽 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.
✔ 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.
🔽 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.
✔ 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"
✔ 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.
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.
✔ 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.
✔ 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.
✔ 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!
✔ 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.
✔ 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.
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.
✔ 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.
✔ Sardinian traditions ✔ Women's position in a traditional culture ✔ Mediterranean society
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Accabadora, a woman in Sardinia who ends the suffering of very ill and their families. Is she an angel or a devil? That's not the point any more to them. A book with an unusual dignity.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽 The famous Accabadora, the woman who ends it.
It’s very Sardinian, very Mediterranean. You can almost see with your eyes closed of the dry town with stones, men at the bar and women hurrying to go back home to cook, and the dry field that is brown, ready to ignite a fire from any tiny sparkles.
Maria was adopted by this woman who lives alone since she was small. Time to time, she dresses completely in black and leave their house in the night – and comes back in the morning and continues the day. It’s not about right or wrong, or justice or injustice, if she was an angel or devil or death – it’s about if it should be done or not.
In Sardinia it’s understood to be true, that such women did exist. Even today the problem of euthanasia is not easily talked about and we probably won’t ever find an answer that’s absolute. This is a book that shows the town’s unsettling state of mind with such a powerful dignity.
✔ A fierce mixed race female fighter
✔ Yakuza family
✔ Non apologetic violence
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Full of violence, full of actions, full of sisterhood. Yoriko is extremely violent, but she is unapologetically a woman. Very entertaining, yet it's stepping into the new, unknown world. An important book.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Full of violence, full of actions, full of sisterhood.
Having a woman as the protagonist, with such detailed description of violence, of physical, sexual, verbal violence - this is unique.
These yakuza or mafia stories tend to have women who are usually weak, or bad, or traumatised (therefore an excuse of her violence) or too masculine.
So even though they have a woman as the main character it's full of (sometimes hidden) hatred towards the woman or women in general.
Not here.
Yoriko is extremely violent, but she's a woman, she is unapologetically a woman.
We don't need only these weak women, or bad women, just to please male readers.
We need strong bond, strong sisterhood.
We need stories where she want to be the happy kick ass monster.
I kind of worry about how it's sold in the West though, it's not a new Kill Bill (full of revenge and trauma) it's neither queer novel as they want to portrait it.
Ultimately it's a story of a women who finds a happy life.
It'd be a pity to read this only as a violent novel.
It's without a doubt very entertaining, yet it's stepping into the new, unknown world.
An important book.
✔ Pride and Prejudice ✔ Girls and young society of Pakistan ✔ Uplifting
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ What it says on the tin. Refreshing to read the comic side of Pakistani girls, the real Pakistan written by a woman born in Pakistan an it's lovely.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Pakistani Pride and Prejudice. It's what it says in the tin.
I haven't read Pride and Prejudice (at this point), so can't judge on the similarities or references but even so it's entertaining.
It talks about the culture and of course the food of Pakistan, so purely for that it's fun. It could look too caricaturistic, so it sounds too much like it's written for the West, but still it's refreshing to read the comic side of Pakistani girls, and this is the real Pakistan written by a woman born in Pakistan an it's lovely, no doubt it's a pleasant read.
The chatty girls are definitely a homage to the original.
100 Nasty Women of History:
Brilliant, badass and completely fearless women everyone should know
Hannah Jewell, 2019
376 pages
Read in 2022.03
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✔ History of 100 women
✔ Women from different time and places
✔ Feminism
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Brief history of 100 unapologetic badass women. These great women are not less. As the author says, before we go and read in depth about them, it is first of all important to know they existed.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Brief history of 100 individuals - 100 unapologetic badass women.
As the writer says, before we go and read in depth about these women, it is first of all important to know they existed.
It's amazing how these brave women are buried away in history.
They are equally important to any of the male in history. But no, women are always less.
Less important. Or they managed to make a difference "by chance" or they're not heroes they are just, "nasty"
Easy and exciting to read, it's entertaining and the writer jokes and swears a lot, but not too much.
Definitely makes you want to do further reading.
✔ A popular Japanese modern fiction ✔ Woman against expectations of the society ✔ Today's Japanese society
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Something so painfully normal and boring yet full of madness. Then she realises, she didn't just end up being a convenience store woman, this is her true self.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
I always saw the book in bookshops in London but of course I wanted to read it in Japanese so I wanted a bit. Completely unpredictable.
Somehow I thought it was a love story about a girl working in a convenience store, but of course it was everything but. It was about no-love-story, it was about something so painfully normal and boring yet full of madness. It's a pleasant surprise that people not living in Japan get this.
She's getting close to 40 years old, not married, not doing a "grown up's job", no kids, no boyfriend. It's the "other side" that anyone, I mean everyone, could end up on, but then she realises, she didn't just end up being a convenience store woman, this is her true self.
She doesn't give a sh*t, she is clever and quick. She can actually defeat the loser guy in arguments, and you just cannot predict the next step, anything can happen. It's short, and in a way a feel-good book, and for me ends with a happy ending.
Unfinished Portrait
Agatha Christie, 1962
UK
Read in 2022.05
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✔ Written under her pseudonym, Mary Westmacott.
✔ Female struggle as a mother
✔ Less famous side of Agatha Christie
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Her wish to go outside, into the unknown world - that's something she must suppress because she's a wife, a mother. A wonderful storytelling, a story of her mind, by one of the greatest.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Agatha Christy that doesn't involve murders or crimes - in fact she used her pseudonym, Mary Westmacott.
The book is about about the inner emotions of the sensitive protagonist who is now thinking to commit suicide.
After a happy childhood with her family, she was supposed to have a happy family life with her husband.
Her wish to go outside, into the unknown world - that's something she must suppress because she's a wife, a mother.
A wonderful storytelling, a story of her mind, by one of the greatest.
✔ Feminist crime story based on a real case ✔ Power struggle between two women ✔ Relationship with her body and her food
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ For a woman to eat oily food, gain a few kilo and have a fun life is a shameful thing. She must give up a lot, including her sanity, to go beyond. Then, there is a place where she can eat what she wants, a life of rich and luxurious butter.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Finally read Butter, the book everyone is talking about, in Japan, in the UK and beyond.
The power of Kajimana is the core, a pale chubby middle aged woman with an undeniable attraction, who is a suspect of murdering her lovers – she hates two things, margarine and feminist. The book is about the power struggle between the two women; Kajimana and Rika a journalist. Well actually no, it is always Kajimana who has the control over everything Rika does, including when she sleeps with her boyfriend and what she should eat afterwards when and where, as if her pale chubby arms is grabbing the life of Rika. It’s a struggle to escape the chubby arm of control.
It’s a bestseller worldwide, but this is very Japan. You’d enjoy it more if you know how horrible Japanese society is to women, even today (and if you know how expensive butter is there) It’s a very normal thing to criticise or joke about the weight of a woman in public, and a woman is expected to worry about her appearance constantly and forever. For a woman to eat oily food, gain a few kilo, have a fun life is a shameful thing. God forbit. So especially in Japan, for a woman, to have a good life for herself requires more energy. You must give up a lot, including your sanity, in order to get there. But as you get there, there is a place where you can eat what you want, a life of rich and luxurious butter.
This book is not merely a feminist book, that’d be an easy observation. As women become free from the society’s cruel and unrealistic expectations, men are also freed from the unreasonable expectation of manliness.
The novel is based on a real life crime in Japan, but before you know it it becomes less about the crime and the mystery but more about you and me and the society we live in.
The Woman Dies
Aoko Matsuda, 2021
女が死ぬ
松田青子
Read in 2025.11
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✔ A collection of 52 short stories
✔ Feminist theme
✔ Funny and fierce critique of Japanese patriarchy
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ What did I just read. It's about strong women, but it's not only that it's full of female rage. She flies to wherever she wants as a modern Tinker Bell, and she throws up whatever she wants in the toilet. Fabulous.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
What did I just read.
My first time reading Aoko Matsuda, and as you can see from the title it's about strong women, but it's not only that it's full of female rage (also feminine rage).
It's not explosive anger though, it's the anger that's slowly simmering.
"I hate the girl you like" or "a male sensitivity" these are the things she hates and she tells you in your face with "the woman dies" and "demonstration of misogynies demolished".
It might be surprising for some but in Japan it's still normal to say "typically female" or "it talks to the female sensitivity" in advertisement or magazines.
She won't give in.
Whatever the others say, she flies to wherever she wants as a modern Tinker Bell, and she throws up whatever she wants in the toilet.
Fabulous.
The Bangalore Detective Club Harini Nagendra, 2022 India 292 pages Read in 2022.12 check price on amazon.com
✔ Mystery from an Indian author ✔ Housewife detective ✔ Life in Bangalore in 1920
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Set in 1920 Bangalore, a freshly married housewife goes around the city to solve mysteries. Nice locations and food – a nice little crime novel for India lovers.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Set in 1920 Bangalore, Kaveri only recently married to a doctor and was expecting a quiet life, instead she goes around the city to solve a murder. A bit of tension with British is always a good pinch of spice. There are some treats, of famous locations in Bangalore and food – a nice little crime novel for anyone who’s interested in India.
What’s a bit unusual is that the author is an ecologist, so with her background like that I’m more looking forward to reading her other books.
✔ Indian classic ✔ Strong female characters ✔ Strange friendship between the wife and the lover
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ A beautiful widow. She cannot give up her pursuit for happiness. Chokher Bali, the sand in the eye, she disturbs everything she touches and disappears. A strong sense of un-happiness.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
My first Tagore. This is actually popular that it’s made into film and TV series in India. The sentiment is close to what they have in Japan: husband-wife relation, mother-son, or even mother-in-law and wife, it’s something many in Asia can easily understand, and cannot avoid.
Then comes the beautiful widow. Despote “her place” as a widow, she cannot give up her pursuit for affection and happiness. Chokher Bali, the sand in the eye, the annoying thing, she arrives and disturbs everything she touches. And like an eyesore, before you know it it goes away and the life is back to normal, the witch is punished.
Her happiness was taken away because she’s a widow, she brings bad things. Could they ever blame her? A strong sense of un-happiness.
✔ Korean zainichi in Japan ✔ Historical fiction World War Two ✔ Mother and daughter relationship
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Life of a Korean woman who survived all the difficulties the life threw at her. And about her beloved ones, Korean or Japanese. Life is a Pachinko. It’s not fair. You’re bound to lose. But you keep playing. An epic.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Life of a Korean woman who survived all the difficulties the life threw at her. And about her beloved ones, Korean or Japanese.
By narrowing down the novel to one woman’s life, it tells about real struggles, somehow making it universal. The history of Japan and Korea, or Japanese and Koreans, is not an easy one to fully grasp – because it’s still alive. The war is partly to be blamed but it’s not that simple. The book is rich, depicts how little luck or timing could change your life, it is probably difficult to understand if you’re not Asian beyond it being “fascinating”.
Again Koreans do better in storytelling. It’s dramatic, but that’s how it was in Japan up to the early 90s.
Life is a party, Fellini says. But here this novel tells you, life is a Pachinko. It’s not fair. You’re bound to lose, but you keep playing.
✔ Classic English literature ✔ Strong female character, feminist icon ✔ Love story
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★ Has all the juicy stuff, mainly romance, but it has the themes of coming-of-age, feminism, religion, gothic, class, race/colonialism, anything. She's a woman who says no. How dare.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It's always pleasantly surprising to find many of the classics are entertaining, but then, it does make sense, if it was boring or merely difficult, it couldn't have been loved for centuries.
Jane Eyre has all the juicy stuff, mainly romance, more romance-y than I had imagined, but it has the themes of coming-of-age, feminism, religion, gothic, class, race/colonialism, anything that reflects the life in the north of England in early 1800s.
You can easily imagine why there was a huge criticism when it came out - a woman who doesn't obey? A woman who says no? All with her plain childish looks? How dare.
But today we of course see it differently. She's a cool independent woman, she doesn't want her man to shower her with expensive stuff, she wants an equal relationship, only when she's sure that she can also be helpful, does she accept. She knows how to forgive, she knows how to be useful in practical ways, and she grows and glows.
The matter of the madwoman in the attic is also an interesting point. Pretty clearly a typical racist view of the time; indicating her to be of the mixed race, thus a black woman, therefore she is irrational and violent, must be kept away from the white civilisation. Also the madwoman haunts Jane, but Jane doesn't seem particularly to hate her, despite everything she represents and does?
Gripping, and surprisingly entertaining with difficult themes tangled up.
✔ Strong female characters ✔ Social differences in the American suburbs ✔ Mother and daughter relationship
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★☆ Women and their inner angers, and how the social class divides women. Their little angers start everywhere.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Borrowed from a colleague as I was working on this project. It starts slowly and as the title suggest little fires start in everyone. 2 families, opposite ideals, and different mothers different daughters with different fates.
The story goes around women and their inner angers, and how the social class divides women. Like when you talk about feminism you must also remember the class and the race, it's more complicated than we'd lightly assume.
It might be a bit too obviously girlie buddie book, but maybe I'm too harsh. Mia is great, she's the cool one, everything is all nicely done, but in this kind of books I always want characters to break down and go insane to be happy.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge, 2019 UK 288 pages Read in 2020.01 check price on amazon.com
✔ Nonfiction from a young black British female author ✔ Racism in the UK and the world ✔ Standing up for the social justice
🔽 Review summary 🔽
★★★★★+❤ How the author, a young black British woman, got fed up talking to white people while trying to protect their fragile sentiments and trying not to be labelled as "one of those angry black women". But now she knows, the silence won't protect us.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
What is wrong then? The problem of racism is not the black, brown or yellow people. It is the white people who regard the people of any colour other than white as the problem. Today it's as if being called a racist is "worse" than being actually affected by the racism.
It was Stormzy who once said something like, in the UK there might not be "obvious" racism, but though it might be hidden it exists, and today they believe they have the right to be racist in public, and that's the scary thing. (I wrote this note originally in 2020, so it's probably a bit old)
The book is about how the author, a young black British woman, got fed up talking to white people while trying to protect their fragile sentiments and trying not to be labelled as "one of those angry black women". But the silence won't protect us. So it is actually about how she decides, through complex discourses of feminism, class and one-and-only Britishness, that she still needs to speak up to start this important conversation even if it might be uncomfortable for some, I mean, frankly, even if it pisses off many fragile people.
Confessions Kanae Minato, 2008 告白 湊かなえ 240 pages Read in 2026.03 Check the synopsis and details on amazon.com
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath, 1963
244 pages
Read in 2026.03
Check the synopsis and details on amazon.com
赤パンの本棚 akapan's bookshelf 