i've been so into kafka after reading the metamorphosis it's actually insane, i am going to read everything this man wrote because he captured emotion so well and made me feel so much in 73 pages 🗣️🗣️

the sad thing about translated books is you can never fully grasp an authors work in the way it was intended to be read, and that will always plague my life

It takes courage to say what has to be said.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot)

cursed bunny - bora chung (translated by anton hur)

“When you’re happy you can indulge yourself a bit.”

— The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian (trans. Bruce Humes)

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Sent to the lab for a protective housing is this Hebrew translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan”. Complete with creepy metal baby vibes.

I started reading Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami (translator: Allison Markin Powell) yesterday.

I love the atmosphere that Kawakami makes in her world. The pacing is slow but it's character centered.

In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami

My First Book of 2023!!

My brother lent this to me on New Year's Eve, and I decided to squeeze it in as my first book of the year so that it didn't get lost in the mix among my planned 2023 reading.

Ryū Murakami's  In the Miso Soup is a peculiar, perverse little thriller about loneliness and the desperate urge to connect with someone else; the need for something outside yourself to remind you this is all real. Its first act is a journey through the seedy side of Tokyo nightlife filled with as much unsure dread as it is a grungy air of authenticity. The second act is an awkward depiction of the masks we wear and the parts of us we’re willing to bare to those around us that comes to a head in a brutally violent, grotesquely surreal manner that hits like a brick. From that brilliantly visceral, over-the-top, desperate moment, the final act takes an unexpected/interesting turn, sacrificing any traditionally suspenseful climax for an exploration of a sick psyche and the world in which it was incubated. The ending leaves a bit to be desired structurally, but is perfectly ambiguous for the themes, characters, and the book they inhabit.

7/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot)

The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.

– Yōko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor

Between books at the moment, so I’m reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The City of Mist 😶‍🌫️ , a collection of 11 short stories.

Tove Jansson, Fair Play. Introduction by Ali Smith. Translated by Thomas Teal

Normal behaviour