This wasn't my thing. The aggressive cheerfulness put me off. The claim that doing only a little bit at a time doesn't work doesn't fit with my life experience at all. And striving for perfection all the time seems tiring- I'm more in the "The Perfect is the enemy of the good" camp.

Watch any gangster movie and there is one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb: virtually no women. Yakuza are Japanese gangster's and I was interested in reading this book as the subtitle is: memoir's of a gangster's daughter. I thought it would offer me a fresh perspective on a well-worn story. Unfortunately Tendo's father was only a ( Read more... )

I stopped counting books when I realised it was making reading feel like a chore. While I've read a lot of manga I realised I'd never read any novels by Japanese people, so I decided to make a special effort to do so ( Read more... )

13. The Young Inferno by John Agard and Satoshi Kitamura is a verse retelling of Dante's Inferno embedded in a picture book. I liked Kitamura's stark, black and white, art style but in the art-as-storytelling stakes it seemed to me to lack variety. It also clashed with one of the text's spelled out messages: "My teacher said, 'You've got a point. ( Read more... )

I swore I wouldn't get behind this year, and look at this. I'm already lagging. I suck at New Years resolutions.

#2: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander)

( The Devotion of Suspect X )

Last year I completed the 50books_poc challenge, but I reviewed only a fraction of the books I read. So this year I'm going to make an effort to keep up, in order not to become overwhelmed by how far behind I am.

#1: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (translated by Yuji Oniki)

( The reason why you're all here today is to kill each other )

( The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami )

9.After Dark - Haruki MurakamiIf this book was a film, it'd be a film noir and in french. They'd film it in New York or Tokyo or maybe even London but everyone would be speaking French and making existential asides. It's a tale of love and hate, inexplicable events and incomprehensible motives. It leaves the reader going, yes but why and how? But ( Read more... )

( Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi )

19. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami

( cut for spoilers )