From the Guardian

Title: Fox Tales Author: Tomihiko Morimi (trans. Winifred Bird) Genre/s: horror, short stories Content/Trigger Warnings: body horror, alcoholism (implied), violence Summary (from publisher’s website): WHAT WAITS FOR US BEYOND THE LIGHT’S REACH…? A collection of four spooky tales for the modern era, all tied to a certain Kyoto curio shop. A basket wriggles, a masked man lingers in the shadows, and things are offered, lost, and forgotten. What mysteries lie hidden in the city’s winding streets? Tomihiko Morimi offers an eerie glimpse into the beguiling and mysterious darkness of the old capital. Buy Here: https://yenpress.com/9781975335465/fox-tales/ Spoiler-Free Review: Definitely a collection that will make you think a little differently about Kyoto - which isn’t all that difficult, since I’ve been to the city and wandered around some of the back streets at night in search of a chocolate shop that sells chocolate-flavored sake and I KNOW just how spooky those backroads can be. (In case you all think I’m making this up to be in line with the book: the shop exists. It’s called Dari K, and they have a genuinely wonderful mission supporting environmental protection and Indonesian cacao farmers - though I don’t think they’re selling their chocolate-flavored sake anymore, which SUCKS as I had high hopes of getting it if I went back to Japan again. Their site is here: https://www.dari-k.com/) Anyway: the collection isn’t out-and-out scary, so much as eerie, though there are moments in each individual story where I had to just stop reading and wait for daylight, which means that those moments are ones I find GENUINELY terrifying and therefore I need daylight to mitigate the effect a bit because I am a scaredy-cat. But apart from those individual scenes, what drives the eeriness of the stories in general is how they make the reader question whether or not what they’re reading is true. This is especially true when reading the first story (”Fox Tales”) and the second story (”The Dragon in the Fruit”) one after the other. There’s a bit of Rashomon Effect going on in the interplay between those two, which is a thought I find personally intriguing because of the place Akutagawa Ryunosuke occupies in Japanese literary history, and of course the influence of Kurosawa Akira’s film that gave us the term “Rashomon Effect” in the first place. The third and fourth stories aren’t as tightly connected as the first two, but do share the presence of water and the rivers and waterways of Kyoto. The blurb says the stories are tied to a curio shop, and while said curio shop DOES appear across all the stories, it only really plays a major role in the first two stories and then only a relatively minor role in the third and fourth. In terms of grouping, I think the first and second stories are a more or less coherent set, and the third and fourth stories are another more or less coherent set. Overall, a lovely collection of stories, with just the right notes of eerie and creepy to be enjoyable for someone who’s doesn’t like their horror to be gory and prefers the spookiness to linger instead. I can’t speak to the quality of the translation as I haven’t read the original, but I think Bird has done a pretty good job with it overall, since I didn’t get irritated with the stories at any point. Also: I think these stories would make absolutely scary manga or animated short films, because as I said, some of the scenes are TERRIFYING just reading them from the page, so I can only imagine how much scarier they’d be in the hands of a good mangaka or animation studio. Rating: Five balls of fox fire

Andreï Makine, My Armenian Friend Review

My Armenian Friend is a gentle narrative about a grim place by the Russian-born French author, Andreï Makine, who grew up during the Soviet era and emigrated to France in the late 1980s. My Armenian Friend is autobiographical and lightly-fictionalized, set in a nameless town whose principal building is a prison. Details of time and location stay vague, but this is brutal, poverty-stricken corner…

View On WordPress

Year of Lists

January Books

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (ToB Read) *3/5 - there's an ease in the storytelling, it gives you time to luxuriate in the plot. I loved the back-and-forth, the exploration of the past and of characters who were not central to the main goings-on, but just like in life, you can trace their influence through time. Despite the writing talent, and the much promising setup and characters, I had trouble connecting to this novel; most of my joy in reading this came from the observation of McBride's craft in putting this together.

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur *3.2/5 - for a minute there I really thought this would be the great Korean novel I've been looking for. Firstly: one for the great covers list. The marrying of science and folklore/superstition/oral inter-generational storytelling: chef's kiss. I wish it amounted to more than it actually did. The novel opens in dreamy language, otherworldly imagery, beautiful, beautiful world-building. It unfortunately loses its coherence and promise about 30% in. It fizzles into a concept that begs for a better storyline to hold it together. I wish the protagonist's personality amounted to more than self-wallowing in pity and self-othering. There are nuances that could have been explored so deeply; I wanted her to see herself as the wonder I saw her as. Nonetheless, there is magic here, there is familial complexity, and beauty.

Notable quote: “The first generation who come are grateful, certainly. They can endure much, swallow their pride. Their children want more—the freedom not to be grateful, indebted, and beholden.”

The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake *3/5 - it hasn't even been long since I read this and I can't even remember the plot. Positives: Blake's writing gets better and better, clearly not in the general, book-making sense, but in the pleasant-to-read, I-love-spending-time-with-your-words way. I did enjoy the reading of this, I just don't think this was written because the story was there, but rather, because the trilogy needed to end. I love the characters and I love the illustrations and the elements that make Atlas so exciting: magic, ambition, a sentient, secret, ancient library full of the deepest, darkest knowledge of the world - the dark academia of it all. Better luck with the prequel. We're suckers for it either way.

The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto *5/5 - a perfect little dream - I LOVE BANANA / Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls *5/5 - superb.

Both of these are 5 stars partially because they're novellas. They're dreamy and otherworldly, tackling their specific subject-matters with dexterity. Mrs Caliban is worth an afternoon, especially for fans of The Shape of Water.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke *4.7/5 - boy oh boy was this a surprise. I don't have much to say, THIS.IS.INCREDIBLE. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and perhaps wouldn't be mine if it was written by another author. I read this in a day.

The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (audiobook) *4/5 - this is a reread, first read-through was a physical copy; I'm listening to the series now because I'd missed that world. The narrator for this one is better than the first and his work is only improving. By the end of this one you can tell this is a narrator who truly understands King's writing, with all its humour and intricacies.

The Green Mile by Stephen King *4.7/5 - it's as good as you think it is, as good as everyone says it is. In case it wasn't clear I LOVE STEPHEN KING.

Fiction in Translation Book Releases August 2023 PT 2

All Fiction in Translation book new releases for this August!

If you are like me and are worried you are missing out on all the new releases. I have decided to do a list of releases of all my favourite genres for this month. So here is the History book releases for August 2023. Let me know which books take your fancy in the comments below. 17th – Saha by Cho Nam-Joo Info:…

View On WordPress

C'MON TO THE THEATER!

I love these guys so much. forget NRC, I want to attend their terrible disaster school for disaster children that might actually be plastered on top of the smoking remains of an actively sinking ship. I may or may not actually learn anything, but I will have the time of my life.

Lackadaisy Enrichment

Polish Movie Posters

[Free eBooks] 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto by David Safier & The White Rose: Munich 1942-1943 by Inge Scholl [Award-Winning YA WWII Historical Fiction & History]

The annual SYNC Summer of Listening program continues, promoting literacy among teens by giving away YA-friendly weekly paired audiobooks—1 modern, 1 classic/drama performance—free for a limited time courtesy of the the participating publishers and sponsor AudioFile Magazine.

This 14th week's featured selections, free through Wednesday August 3rd, have a theme of “Resistance”, focusing on fiction and non-fiction about individuals of varying backgrounds caught up in World War II, in groups targeted for different reasons:

28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto by award-winning German author David Safier, translated by Helen McCormac and read by Amanda Dolan from Recorded Books. This is a YA historical novel centred around the everyday life of a Jewish teenager as she tries to survive the Warsaw Ghetto. The novel won the Buxtehude Bull award for youth literature, and is dedicated to the author's grandparents who were also forced to experience life in a wartime ghetto.

The White Rose: Munich 1942-1943 by the late German activist Inge Scholl, translated by Arthur R. Schultz with an introduction by the late German theologian Dorothee Sölle, and read by Elizabeth Wiley, Heather Henderson, and a supporting cast from Post Hypnotic Press. This is her vintage 1952 history/memoir of the White Rose resistance group of German university students protesting the Nazi regime, of which her younger brother and sister were key members, leading to the family's arrest. A full cast provides additional narration to excerpts from period leaflets and postwar commentary, as well as the words of the young protestors.

The freebies are claimed via the Overdrive Sora app for iOS & Android or directly via the Sora website. You'll need to register just once with a valid email address and the signup code provided via the front page of the promotion and follow the instructions on the FAQ page to “Borrow” each week's featured selections for a permanent loan you can listen to anytime via online streaming on all devices or download for just the apps. NB: if you need to free up space on your device later, be sure to follow the FAQ instructions to ONLY delete the downloaded files and NOT “Return” which would remove your future access.

Offered free worldwide through Wednesday August 3rd (until just before midnight Eastern Time), available directly from the Sora website and apps, and you can sneak peek the upcoming featured selections to see if there's anything you'd be particularly interested in.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura

This book is without a doubt the strangest thriller I have ever known. And also, despite this—or perhaps because of it—one of the best. It is subtle and psychological, pulling the reader into the complex inner world of someone who calls herself “the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan”. At first, the narrator seems sane, reliable even—she is one of many people obsessed with a person known as “the Woman in the Purple Skirt”. The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan follows this “local celebrity’s” movements with scientific precision; perhaps her scrutiny is a little more thorough than the norm, but harmless, surely. And then the soft woollen threads of their lives become increasingly intertwined, with disastrous consequences. Before long everything has come unspooled.

Darkly witty, intricate, and expertly observed, this is a sympathetic, compulsively readable portrait of loneliness and mental difference.

As translated into English by Lucy North, The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura was first published by Faber in 2020.

The Devils’ Dance, Hamid Ismailov Review

The Devils’ Dance by Hamid Ismailov is an unusual novel which shines a light on Central Asia, a region that is still little known in the West. Even today, the Sovietised khanates Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are generally remembered for being pawns in the Great Game played between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century as the two imperial powers struggled…

View On WordPress

you ever read through all the fics of your current brain rot obsession and start looking at the ones in foreign languages you cant understand like

Fiction in Translation Book Releases August 2023

All Fiction in Translation book new releases for this August!

If you are like me and are worried you are missing out on all the new releases. I have decided to do a list of releases of all my favourite genres for this month. So here is the Fiction in Translation book releases for August 2023. Let me know which books take your fancy in the comments below. 3rd – The Evenings by Gerard Reve and translated by Sam Garrett Info:…

View On WordPress