Sunday Salon: A Japanese Pairing

I woke up this morning to sunshine :D although the weather forecast says we will be back to torrential rain and wind by late afternoon :(
I spent a good 10 hours reading yesterday, finishing 2 books and I'm halfway through The Knife of Never Letting Go. When I opened the first page and saw a lack of punctuation and misspelt words I thought I would be abadoning it quickly, but after a page I was gripped. Eye strain was all that made me give in and send myself to bed.
Today I'm being creative Peanut Butter Cookies to bake for work tomorrow, ATC's to be made and then snuggling back down with A Suitable Boy and then The Knife of Never Letting Go!!! Can't wait.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
I read this book really early in the week and for some reason didn't write anything about it - I always write about books as soon as I finish them.
Sumrie has given up college and work to become a writer, she almost lives in a parallel world to everyone else, she gets up in the afternoon and writes all night. Her only real point of contact in the world is her best friend, our narrator. He is secretly in love with her but knows that she has no feelings for him.
When Sumrie meets Miu at a wedding her life quickly changes. She falls in love with the older woman, who offers her work and thus transforms her life into that of a normal young woman. Things turn strange when Sumrie and Miu travel to Europe together on a business trip.
I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and a collection of Murakami's short stories, I was expecting this book to be stranger, more magic realsim. What I did love was the smoothness with which it could be read.

Piercing by Ryu Murakami
This book I polished off last night in about 90 minutes. Kawashima is overcome at night by a fierce sweat and the smell of burning, and then the intense desire to stab someone with an ice pick. At this point his desire is to stab his 4 month old baby daughter. Desperate to rid himself of this desire he creates a plan to stab a prostitute, believing that he will then be able to return to a normal life.
What Kawashima doesn't expect is to pick a prostitute who was also abused as a child and who is also suffering the everlasting effects of such abuse.
The tale is a very strange one, violence threatens to spill over on every page, and I often found found myself wincing not knowing if I really wanted to read the next line in case he finally managed to stab her. Despite this, this book was strangely engrossing and I found that I couldn't stop reading because I had a desire to discover what happened next.

Challenge:
Japanese literature reading challenge.

Sunday Salon: Travelling from the Sofa

Africa - Sudan
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

A young man returns to his village after many years and finds that a stranger has moved into town and managed to work his way into the tightly knit community who are normally wary of strangers. In this place where each persons heritage is known the stranger is a rarity, it isn't even known from which village he comes from.
When he finally meets the stranger he becomes obsessed, the stranger suddenly talks to him in well-spoken English,revealing at first a small part of his past.
The past is revealed in more detail when we discover that the stranger had been taken to court and held on the charge of murdering his own wife, and being the named cause of the suicide of many of English women. When the stranger suddenly disappears into the floods one night, feared dead, the obsession doesn't end it only becomes stronger.
Challenges:
999 (tbr + Arfican reads)
Orbis


Japan
Crossing Midnight by Mike Carey, Jim Fern and Mark Pennington
This fantastic graphic novel tells the story of twins Kai and Toshi. During the mothers pregnancy the father promised a sacrifice in payment for the birth of a healthy child. Unknown to him (and the doctors) his wife was expecting twins.
Boisterous children they quickly learn that Toshi is incapable of coming to harm through knifes and sharp objects. This knowledge leads her to be brave, disobedient and confident unlike her brother Kai.
One night Toshi wakes up to find a large man, surrounded by hovering knives leaning over her, he demands that she is his, the payment for the sacrifice her father made. When she refuses to go with him her dog is dismembered into tons of pieces. The creatures keep returning and the payments for refusal get higher, Kai ends up fighting to save the whole family from the instrusion of these mythical creatures.
This is my first violent graphic novel, I tend to stick to memoirs, and I really enjoyed it. At the back of the book the author writes about Japanese mythology and folklore which has made me want to discover more.
Challenges:
Graphic Novel
Japanese Literature Challenge
Orbis Terrarum


America (and the spiritual world)
A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

I picked up this book because the cover resembled the fantastic Siobhan Dowd novel
A Pure Swift Cry, I had no idea what the book was going to be about as the synopsis is written in a pale blue against a moss green background making it hard to read.
The ovel starts with Helen, a Light, a ghost trapped on earth. She is doomed to walk the earth following a host - a person she has chosen as a life line, if she moves away from this person she feels herself being pulled into hell.
Helen follows after Mr Brown, an English teacher and is always present in his life, unbeknown to him, until she realises that a pupil can see her. The pupil James, was also a light until he learnt how to inhabit the body of a dead soul.
The pair join up and quickly become tied to each other, they struggle with their own lives plus the lives of the host body they have come to inhabit.
I haven't done this justice at all, this is a great read - its intense, gripping and your pulled right into their world. (YA for older teens).
Challenges:
YA 2009
A-Z (Name)

Japanese Literature Challenge III

Dolce Bellezza is hosting her third Japanese Reading Challenge. I participated last year reading:
1. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, Mishma ***
2. Goodbye Tsugumi, Yoshimoto ****
3. Hardboiled/Hardluck ***
I also started Out and hated it despite everyone elses love of it.

Bellezza says of the challenge:

The day has arrived, the day for beginning the Japanese Literature Challenge 3! I’m so excited because it is my great joy to read Japanese literature and share the experience with those of you who wish to read it as well.

This year, all you have to do is read one work of Japanese origin. It can be literature of course, but don’t feel confined to that. You may choose to read poetry, biographies, short stories or even manga. If you are willing to read one such piece, you’ve met the challenge. If you read more, all the better.

I have set the time frame between July 30, 2009 and January 30, 2010.

I have a Review Site set up for us here, where we can leave links to the reviews on our own blogs and see what other people have read.

I have prizes! I’ve been collecting them for several months, and I might whet your appetite with a brief sampling of the list here:

a Moleskine Japanese format notebook, with two Japanese pencils and a Japanese eraser
a copy of Murakami’s book South of the Border, West of The Sun
a brochure from the Art Institute of Chicago’s special exhibit on Japanese screens, with a magnet and box of screen cards
a cell phone charm, and makie stickers made of 24 karat gold, imported from Japan
two copies of Yakuza Moon by Tendo
a copy of Eat Sleep Sit by Nanomura
and more surprises to come!

I'm hoping for a few better reads this year. I have one book containing two Murakami novels:A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance , which has been turking on mount tbr for too long. I'd also like to discover a few new Japanese authors - I seem to read Murakami, Mishma or Yoshimoto and no one else. Any suggestions?

Sunday Salon: Challenge Completion

I just finished another challenge! I thought that was the last for the year then looked down my sidebar and realised I still have to read a Stephanie Myer book, I have The Host as my read once school finishes.

I managed to read The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea this afternoon, (I should have been studying but couldn't face phonetics!). The book centres around a widow and her only son. The son spies reguarly on his mother as she gets undressed for bed each evening, then one evening she brings home a man and he watches everything, almost as if he was watching a science experiment. The woman falls in love with this sailor, spelling disaster him at the hands of her precocious son.

The book features a nasty scene with a group of boys, a knife and scissors, and a kitten, one I don't think I'll get out of my head for a while.

I certainly wouldn't rave about this book, I've heard loads of positive comments about it and maybe I was expecting too much. It was ok, I'm sure bits of it will stay with me, but I much preferred the romantic Sound of the Waves.

Japanese Challenge completed!!!

What I was meant to read:

Any of Murakami which I haven't read
The Pillow Book by Shonogan
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Mishma

Out by Kirino (Started it and was put off by the violent disposal of the body)

What I actually read:
Goodbye Tsugumi, Yosimoto
Hardboiled/Hardluck, Yoshimoto

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Mishma

A Challenge and a My 100th Book!!!

Another Challenge!!! My Year of Reading Dangerously 2009


Your job: Read 12 books you deem "dangerous." between January 1st and December 31st 2009. They may be banned or challenged books, new-to-you genres, books that seem to inhabit a permanent space on your stacks, or authors you're afraid of. The possibilities are endless! If it's dangerous to you, it's challenge-worthy to us!

My Pool: I'll read some of these and probably discover other books as I read throughout the year.

War and Peace
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

A Passage to India by EM Forester

Night, Dawn, and Day by Elie Wiesel

Inferno, by Dante

Beasts, by Joyce Carol Oates
Man in the Dark, by Paul Auster
American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
The End of America, by Naomi Wolf
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Maus I and II, by Art Spiegelman
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Moll Flander's - Defoe (Banned)
Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury (Banned)
Brave New World - Huxley (Banned)
Cry, the Beloved Country (Banned)
The House of Spirits, Allende
Wild Swans

My thoughts: Hardboiled/Hardluck by Banana Yoshimoto
I polished off these two novell this weekend. Hardboiled is a strange mystical story about a Japanese woman on a walking trip, everything seems to be fine untill she comes across a shrine, an area with a funny feel to it. The day continues with many strange occurances including fires and ghosts. Very simply told, an easy way to pass an hour but not overly exciting.
Hardluck this was the better of the two, only around 50 pages in length it tells the tale of a young woman waiting for her sister - who has been labelled 'braindead' to die. During this tiem she mets a man, a man she knows ahe would love if only she had met him at another time.

Japanese Literature Challenge book 2/3

The Japanese Literature Challenge 2

Yes, yes another challenge!

This challenge is held over at Dolce Bellezza the aim is to read 3 Japanese books between the 30th of July to the 30th of December, whether it is fiction, poetry, graphic novel, autobiography or a biography.

I'm not one hundred percent sure what I will be reading at the moment but I have a few ideas:

Any of Murakami which I haven't read

The Pillow Book by Shonogan

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Mishma

Out by Kirino

I have read:

Goodbye Tsugumi, Yosimoto

Hardboiled/Hardluck, Yoshimoto