There’s a reason I don’t read Romance.

As I left the library the other day, I stopped to peruse the Used Shelf as I always do to look for a treasure hidden among the discards.(Once I found a hardcover, first edition of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Really.)

On impulse, I picked up Claimed by J.R. Ward. It was by a best selling author, and she had graduated from Smith College; it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Let me give you the briefest sample of her writing:

“As she continued to mutter while staring at the barn, he tapped on her shoulder. When she finally looked away from the newscaster and cameraman, he took Lydia’s hand to make sure she paid attention.

“What did they do to you.” He put his palm up as she opened her mouth. “No, you don’t fucking lie to me. You brought me into this. You don’t get to start editing the story now.”

Her eyes went back to the barn, her brows down, her lips in a tight line. As a breeze came up her ponytail was swept in his direction and he caught a whiff of her shampoo.” 

Okay, let’s forget about the fact that there is not a vocabulary word in the entire 200+ pages I’ve read that a third grader wouldn’t know. Let’s even forget about the fact that there are at least two grammar errors in as many paragraphs. Dependent clauses, compound sentences, omission of ending punctuation marks be damned.

What really troubles me is that it is all so trite. What I’ve read is absolutely meaningless! The characters lie, swear, futilely joke with each other, break into another’s home, and essentially do nothing of any interest to me whatsoever. So, I’m abandoning this brief foray into a genre by an author I’ll never be tempted to pick up again.

Even if she  does have 88.2K followers on Instagram with “F**k is a comma” in her profile. That’s the best you can come up with?

I’ll be back in a day or so with thoughts on more books listed for the International Booker Prize 2025. What a joy that will be.

Sunday Salon: Mother’s Day Edition

 

My mother loves lily of the valley. And when I brought a bunch to her sister, who was feeling ill this week, my aunt said, “Grandma loved these flowers.” Apparently, it runs in the family.

What a thought: to run in the family. Imagine that the flowers loved by the women of the family grow in my backyard because I love them, too. Imagine the continuation of likes and similarities.

Once, when my son was in High School, we attended the Mother Son Brunch. I was surrounded by blondes with fake hair, fake eyelashes, fake tits, and fake nails. They were talking about what their sons would be after graduation. 

“And what would you like to be?” one of them asked my son.

“A mercenary,” he replied. 

He wasn’t kidding. For the longest time he wanted to work for Blackwater, an American private military contractor now known as Constellis.

There was a long pause. How do you respond to someone who wants to be a hit man? But, inside I smiled. Not because I condone killing, but because my son is, after all, like me. Neither one of us wants to fit inside a box. Be easily defined. Color in the lines. 

May you find the connection you need to the people in your life. And, to those who are mothers, a very Happy Mother’s Day.

(Find more Sunday Salon posts here.)

On The Calculation of Voume I by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J.Haveland (“Maybe there’s healing in sentences.”)

My husband, who is a gardener, notices things like this stone that is wrapped with a rope. In Japan, it has a name, sekimori ishi, and it indicates that a path is closed. Or, that visitors should take a different route.

I find it particularly meaningful in light of the way I placed such a stone in my blog. For a long time, it has been closed. Even now I am hesitant to move the boundary stone, uncertain if I’m ready to head down this blogging path again.

Yet, the requests to review books keep coming in, and more surprising than that, to me, is that my blog stats have not significantly changed since the post I last published. Perhaps there is still an interest in what can be found here…

Although I have not joined the International Booker Prize Shadow Jury this year, for the first time in at least eight years, I have been reading the list on my own. I was reluctant to read it under pressure as there is such little time between the announcement of long list and the winner. Instead, I wanted to take my time before submitting scores, and evaluating each book, with fellow shadow members so that we could arrive at a decision as to our winner. 

This year’s short list is not disappointing. I have read all but one, and I would like to share my thoughts on each as we draw closer to learning which book is the winner on May 20, 2025. Let’s begin with On The Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle. 

The premise is relatively simple; the narrator relives the same day in her life over and over and over for a year. The end.

But, when thinking about it, I find much deeper applications. For example, couldn’t that scenario depict the way that we are stuck in our lives? We don’t know how we got somewhere, and we often don’t know how to escape. Certainly I have felt that I make the same mistakes, repeat the same routine, relive the same sorrows over and over and over.

Most poignant to me is when she speaks of writing, for it is a similar passion of mine:

I am sitting at a table with a pile of paper in front of me on which I have written that it is the 18th of November and that my name is Tara Selter. I feel as if I am no longer alone. As if someone is listening. My days have not been lost to oblivion. They exist. My days exist in my pile of paper, they have not been erased during the night, the paper remembers…Maybe there’s healing in sentences.” (p. 84)

Of course, this will probably not be an aspect of the book on which most readers focus. But, I am fascinated by the power of writing, the power of words, as a shelter in life’s storm. Can you relate?

A Sad Realization

 Dear Friends, 

I should not have hosted the Japanese Literature Challenge 18.

I have been horrific at visiting, and commenting, on blogs for a long time.

I thought that Japanese literature would give me the boost I needed to rekindle my fire for blogging. For reviewing. For commenting.

But, I am finding that I feel completely overwhelmed in my life with the obligations to which I am committed. So much so, that I have even declined participation in the Shadow Panel for the International Booker Prize 2025, for the first time in ten years.

My comfort is that by now many of you have become quite familiar with Japanese literature; in fact, I hope, with translated literature in general. And, there is this site with reviews of so many great books for you to peruse.

I hope you understand my position, and I hope to return with greater competence than I have shown this Winter. 

(You may see a series of posts I’ve written for Reading Austen 25 which will appear on the Classics Club this March. I read Pride and Prejudice earlier this year to fulfill my commitment to Brona as a host. Perhaps you will like what various hosts have prepared in reading Jane Austen throughout this year.)

Please accept my apologies for this decline,

Meredith

Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

 

So many images flood my mind as I close the cover of this tender book. I see bottles of pale blue soda, called Fressy; a pygmy hippopotamus named Pochiko; a brown Mercedes driven by a suave and elegant uncle; and an asthmatic girl named Mina, whose presence is not only in the cover, but throughout the entire novel.

Mina’s cousin, Tomoko, has come to live with her family. In this way, her mother can continue her education in order to gain a better job. It is during her stay with her relatives, that Tomoko relates the family’s lives. There is Grandmother Rosa, from Germany, who is Mina’s grandmother; her mother, and two gentle Japanese people who help care for the home:  Yoneda-san, the cook, and Kobayashi-san, the gardener.

It is an innocent tale, told by a thirteen year old middle school girl. She tells of the special room where Mina takes “light-baths” to help combat her asthma. She tells of going to the library for Mina, who is far too fragile to make the trip herself, and checking out books such as The House of Sleeping Beauties by Kawabata. The librarian is impressed by Tomoko’s knowledge, which is really only a repetition of Mina’s interpretations.

I am charmed by Mina riding Pochiko to school, in a harness her father has created especially for this purpose. Her father, the president of Fressy, the owner of the aforementioned Mercedes, can do anything. He makes the family laugh. He fixes whatever needs to be repaired. He is endlessly patient and sophisticated. But, he often goes away for long periods of time with no explanation.

That is when his wife goes to the smoking room and quietly drinks her whiskey.

But, when Tomoko makes a discovery, everything seems to change. He stays home. Mina gets better. Life continues, even to the last Christmas celebration that Grandmother Rosa prepares. One with stuffed chicken, a real tree filled with ornaments, and lit candles in every candlestick the house contains. 

I will leave another surprise for you, which is what Mina does with the matchboxes she collects. 

This is a book which most certainly should be included in your Japanese literature awareness. It was a marvelous way to begin the Japanese Literature Challenge 18, as well as the New Year 2025.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (translated from the Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood)

I found The Full Moon Coffee Shop to be a pleasant variation on an oft-repeated theme; so many Japanese books with cats as the central characters seem to have seized the market. While I like cats, I am not so fond of astrology, another theme within this book. But, there are other ideas within its pages that gave me pause.

Let’s start with the idea of a “pop-up” cafe appearing when you need it most, and serving delicacies suited just for you. Take for example, a simple glass of water:

…I gazed down at the glass. It was small, slightly curved, and contained three ice cubes and some water. At the gentle impact of the glass being set down on the table, tiny shards of light began to shimmer on the surface of the water, like gold dust. Baffled, I leaned to get a closer look, but the golden specks had disappeared.

 I took a long gulp of water to steady my nerves. It tasted purer than any water I’d ever drunk. As it trickled down my throat, it seemed to dissolve directly into me…

What is more refreshing than water when one is truly thirsty? And, if you’re ready for a snack, how about some of these:

• Full Moon Pancakes have a sphere  of butter and Astral Syrup accompanies them, with a golden shimmer.
• Lunar Chocolate Fondant on a white plate, consisting of a piece of cake out of which thick molten chocolate oozes forth.
• Planetary Affogato has two spheres of yellow ice cream in a glass, which seemed to have been sprinkled with gold dust, and coffee poured over the top.
• Mercury Cream Soda, a beautiful sky blue soda, topped with ice cream and a cherry. The pale gray ice cream is actually lemon sorbet.

These imaginary treats tickled my fancy, and though Christmas decadence has recently ended, I long to indulge in these. I also found myself writing down quotes which seemed applicable to  myself or those around me:

The full moon gives us the power to let things go. That includes negative emotions such as regret, jealousy, or obsession. Those weren’t the only things I wanted to let go of. There was also the fear of what others thought of me. My terror of being criticized. My habit of facing up to the truth. “I think I could do with a bit of letting go,” I murmured. 

and

What I really needed…was to live as comfortably and peacefully as I could in the present. Rather than living in the past and possible future. 

and

Our world is governed by the mirror principle, everything you do in life is reflected back on you in time. Hurt someone, and it’ll rebound on you eventually. Affairs inevitably cause a great deal of pain - especially when there’s family involved. All that suffering will come back to haunt you.

and

If you obsess too much over the restrictions you've placed on yourself, you’ll lose sight of what you really want. Instead liberate yourself. Embrace who you really are.

and 

Throughout my life, I’d always been my harshest critic, constantly policing my own desire. 

As I mentioned earlier in the post, New Age thinking and Astrology do not appeal to me. Instead, I gain my hope and peace from Christ. And yet, there are principles in this book which I can eagerly apply in this new year, such as letting go of others’ opinions, or living fully in the present. I found this book a light, and enjoyable, way to begin the Japanese Literature Challenge 18.

p.s. The collage of pictures is from the artist Chihiro Sakurada, to whom the author credits her story.

Japanese Literature Challenge 18

Welcome! How lovely it is to see this challenge continue on to its eighteenth year. I so appreciate each of you readers. Here is the Review Site for the Japanese Literature Challenge 18. Please leave the link to the book(s) you have read this January and February in the widget below.

2024: The (Reading) Year in Review

It’s been a strange year for reading, and blogging, for me. My husband has been quite ill, and after a serious cycling accident in October, he has required much of my attention. Switching from WordPress to Blogger, as my domain at WordPress was full, was not as smooth as I had hoped. Nor did my relative lack of interaction with all of you help.

But, I have been reading, and fulfilling much of the blogging events I’d signed up for, nonetheless. Here is a list of the books I’ve read this year:

Books read in 2024

~January~

1. Point Zero by Seicho Matsumoto (Japanese Literature Challenge 17)
2. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston 
3. The Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes (reread)
4. Don’t Let Her Go by Willow Rose
5. The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino (Japanese Literature Challenge 17)

~February~

1. Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino (Japanese Literature Challenge 17)
2. Life and Death in Shanghai by Nein  Chung (book club)
3. Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard
4. A Well-Behaved Woman by Anne Therese Fowler (book club)

~March~

1. The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker (reread)
2. God Save The Child by Robert B. Parker (reread)
3. Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker (reread)
4. Undiscovered by Gabriela Weiner (IBP longlist 2024)
5. The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone (IBP longlist 2024)
6. Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (IBP shortlist 2024)
7. A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare (IBP longlist 2024)

~April~ 

1. Not A River by Selva Almada (IBP shortlist 2024)
2. The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov (IBP longlist 2024)
3. The Details by Ia Genberg (IBP shortlist 2024)
4. Lost On Me by Veronica Raimos (IBP longlist 2024)
5. The Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
6. The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
7. Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon (IBP longlist 2024)
8. How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino, translated from the Japanese by Bruno Navasky (#1937 Club)

~May~

1. Knife by Salmon Rushdie
2. The Hunter by Tana French
3. Looking For Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker
4. Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker
5. A Savage Place by Robert B. Parker
6. Ceremony by Robert B. Parker
7. A House Like An Accordion by Audrey Burges

~June~

1. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland (Paris in July 2024)
2. Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy
3. Long Island by Colm Toibin
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Paris in July 2024)

~July~

1. Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See (book club)
2. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Paris in July, Reading Orwell 2024)
3. Tsar by Ted Bell
4. The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald 

~August~

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Classic Club Spin #38/Pulitzer Prize winner)
2. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk  (Women in Translation Month)
3. The Other Woman by Therese Bohman (Women in Translation Month)

~September~

1. Emily Forever by Maria Navarro Skaranger
2. Nightmare in Pink by John MacDonald
3. Kristan Lavransdattar: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
4. Cold Hearts by Gunnar Staaleson 

~October~

1. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
2. Speaks The Nightbird by Robert McCammon (R.I.P. XIX)

~November~

1. The Other Name by Jon Fosse (Norway in November)
2. Ti Amo by Hanne Orstavik (Norway in November)
3. Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad (Norway in November)
4. Death Deserved by Horst and Enger (Norway in November)

~December~

1. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
2. The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
3. The Therapist by B. A. Paris

Top Ten for 2024

1. The Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes (although a reread, it stands the test of time)
2. Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino (the imagery still lingers)
3. Not A River by Selva Almada (for a mother’s love)
4. Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy (because friends are found in unlikely places)
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (every reread provides fresh insight)
6. The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (it further launched my passion for classics, and Norwegian lit)
7. The Other Name by Jon Fosse (a true favorite, again offering fresh insight each reread)
8. Ti Amo by Hanne Orstavik (I’m always interested in stories of couples)
9. Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad (offered a perspective on society)
10. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (because who doesn’t love reading about cats, and libraries, and loneliness, along with a parallel universe?)

As you can see, I have continued with my passion for literature in translation by reading for The Japanese Literature Challenge 17, The International Booker Prize, Paris in July, Women in Translation Month, and Norway in November. I have also read for R.I.P. XIX, 20 Books of Summer, and Reading Orwell.

I plan to host the Japanese Literature Challenge 18, for which the Review Site will be available tomorrow. I also agreed to host Pride and Prejudice in March for Reading Austen 2025. After that, who knows? Perhaps you will see me from time to time. Meanwhile, I wish you the happiest New Year, and may the quality of each book you read abound in 2025!

Love,

Bellezza 

I’m beginning to think of Japanese literature again…

 

It’s hard to tell from the small section included in the picture, but this is a window seat under our dining room window, in which I plan to sit and read All Day. I hope to finish Haruki Murakami’s latest, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, which is proving to be just as enigmatic, and intriguing, as I had hoped. Once again, I find some of the same themes: libraries, dreams, walls, and loneliness, and I am reminded of my love for Japanese literature.

When my husband and I were in Kyoto, in 2018, one of the many photographs I took were of the beautiful flower arrangements in the hotel. They were so elegant, and so simple at the same time. I have chosen one of  the photographs to represent the upcoming Japanese Literature Challenge 18.

It won’t officially begin until January, but if you choose to participate again, or for the first time, you have several weeks in which to choose what it is that you will read. I am compiling a list myself, which includes such titles as these:

• Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami
• Palm of the Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
• Harlequin Butterfly by Toh Enjoe (speculative fiction, winner of the Akutagawa Prize)
• Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa
• We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida
• Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
• The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
• Marshland by Yotohiko Kaga

This list is comprised of short stories, classic authors, and newly published works. I hope you find something which encourages you to consider joining us, as we read for the Japanese Literature Challenge 18. (Review site to come.)

Ti Amo by Hanne Orstavik “I love you.”

 

If Ti Amo wasn’t in the fiction section of the library, I would have thought I was reading a letter. Or, more accurately, a personal journal entry. 

It is exquisite in its poignancy.

At first, I was apprehensive about reading a novel in which the narrator’s husband is dying of pancreatic cancer. The pain is raw, and the description of his suffering is graphic.

But then, the novel evolves into being more about her than him. Suddenly, quite near the end, she discloses an attraction to a man who is only called A; he has come to meet her on a book tour for one of her books in Guadalajara, Mexico.

She does not betray her husband. She writes this about meeting him four years earlier:

It was when I was writing Over the Mountain that I met you. I wrote myself into a place then where our coming together became possible, I knew that the work I was doing in writing that novel, approaching the girl-child parts of me from which I’ve detached myself all my life, despised and shunned, was in order to ready myself to live in nearness to another person and love them. Because if I couldn’t be near the vulnerable, soft and silly girly parts of me, the parts that so yearned for affection, how could I believe I could ever allow another person to be? Another person can’t make me love what I despise about myself, therefore if I hate myself I can never feel loved. And I longed for someone to love. (p. 108)

We learn about the process of dying, as we read, and what it does to a couple who love each other. But perhaps more importantly, to me at least, we learn about how we must also love ourselves. 

Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad “…he kept himself at a certain distance, he had always done that…”

 

Silly me. I was intrigued to read this book not only for the Norwegian challenge I have put forth, but also because I thought it would be a kind of thriller. Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad has, at its core, a murder. And I love Scandinavian noir. But, this is noir of an altogether different kind.

On Christmas Eve, Professor Anderson sets the table in his dining room. He changes into formal clothes, and serves ribs with crisp crackling from his own oven. We think, perhaps, that he is preparing a party. But, no, he sits down and eats all by himself, taking his coffee and cognac to sit before the fire when he has finished his meal.

“That’s odd,” I think, for even to an introvert such as myself, this seems like a tremendous amount of effort for one’s own holiday celebration. Even more odd is that when he stands looking out of his window he sees a beautiful young woman in the window across from him. Suddenly, a man appears behind her, puts his hands around her neck, and with flailing arms she falls to the ground. Apparently, she has been murdered.

We never see the body. We don’t know for certain if she has been killed. We don’t even if this event really occurred, or if it is just Professor Andersen’s imagination. What we do know is that he doesn’t report the event. He goes about his business, accepting a dinner invitation with friends, and then flying to visit a colleague in another city, all the while consumed with what he witnessed and what he should have done. When it is entirely too late.

Professor Andersen is a professor of literature, and the author of his own bizarre life. He is removed from people; more interested in how he appears to them, than how he connects with them. 

“…he kept himself at a certain distance, he had always done that and it had become more and more important to him over the years.” (p. 113)

What is important to him is having a well-organized life. He makes assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. He is passive. Removed from people on any level beyond the superficial. He lives alone and chooses to be almost completely isolated.

New Directions, who publishes the book, says, “Professor Andersen’s night is an unsettling yet highly entertaining novel, written in Dag Solstad’s signature concise, dark, and witty prose. “He’s a kind of surrealistic writer, of very strange novels,” Haruki Murakami wrote. “I think he’s serious literature.”

If this novel is meant to portray society today, as I have read, then I fear for us. 

If comedy is not far from tragedy, then Solstad’s writing is very witty indeed.