I’m currently reading book of the new sun so in many ways you could say it’s already begun
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I would read this
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Every community gotta have that one performative ally…
I’ve been reading The Russia House at bedtime. It’s the only John le Carré novel I’ve ever read and I’m enjoying it so far.
I saw the Gary Oldman Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy movie when it was out in theaters and loved it, and this book kinda fell into my lap about 18 months ago, and I’m just now getting around to it. Pretty interesting since the other le Carré story I know was set earlier and I’m just old enough to kind of remember the fall of the Berlin Wall as A Meaningful thing. It’s got a big mood about it.
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I also tried reading le Carré after watching the 2011 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy film, which I loved. I went with The Looking Glass War, which focuses mainly on a dysfunctional branch of British intelligence as they try to track down a Soviet rumor. It’s a spectacle of disaster, borne from out-of-touch notalgia.
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Recently finished the other two books I picked up on my Chicago trip, The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada and Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, both very quick reads. Surprisingly, they ended up being something of a piece, both following women who chafed against rigid expectations of normality, not to mention just absolutely horrid men.
This is wildly overselling it and not entirely accurate, but I might summarize The Hole as Boku no Natsuyasumi x Silent Hill. It’s way more sedate and abstract than that would suggest, but it served to dispel some of the magic of the Japanese countryside through the lens of magical reality. It’s a very compelling read, alternating between snappy dialogue and luxurious descriptions of nature–seems like an excellent translation with evocative text. Definitely interested in checking out some of her other books.
I went into Convenience Store Woman with no information other than the title and the KAWAIII cover and wow was I shocked. This is not some light, quirky story, but more of a tragedy depicting profound autism that has been profoundly failed by society, and that’s before she meets to most incel incel to ever incel. I really tore through this one, in part because I was looking for a chapter break as a natural stopping point only to find that it’s one continuous text. The translation seemed a little iffy in parts, but the protagonist might have intentionally been using unusual, off-putting terms and phrases for certain things…hard to say! Highly recommend this one, probably my favorite of the two.
I read TTSS right before seeing the movie and I loved it. I recall that it took me some time to keep the characters and plot straight, but I was totally on board by the end. Not long after that I sat down with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and try as I may I absolutely could not get into it. I would still like to go back to it, but I just was not following what was going on in the least…it felt like I was missing some important context or something (though I am fully ready to admit this was probably a me problem).
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I remember when the movie came out William Gibson posted something along the lines of “Anyone who found Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy hard to follow obviously didn’t read the book obsessively the year it was released when they were in college.”
Great movie and great story. But hard to keep the characters straight!
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i haven’t been able to make much progress in book of the new sun, i’m afraid, as i’ve been working much more than usual and am usually too tired at the end of the night to put up with world-building and “unreliability” antics.
i must have @yeso on the brain, though, because i keep staring at these fat collections of stories by jg ballard and juan carlos onetti, thinking they might be better suited to my current station
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havent read it but I recall people getting freaked out by another novel of hers Earthlings for a similar reason: packaging and marketing did not suggest it would be upsetting and “serious”. That happened a few years ago to a degree with thread favorite Hurricane Season too, although ND put that out in the USA so perhaps a signal. then again if someone isnt already familiar with ND then I suppose they would be surprised. Just kind of an amusing phenomenon that’s started to happen since books have this big social media centered audience now and not just nasty gremlins like us itt
I’m almost always too tired for this kind of thing even when I’m fully rested. Fwiw I don’t think you need to assume this posture for these books specifically because the effect is more in aggregate and gradual. You aren’t really given anything solid unil well into the 3rd book anyway so no use straining yourself.
However: Ballard and most def Onetti are well worth the time. Can give you some specific recs if you’d like
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i have a weird thing with sff where i often enjoy it more in abstract than in experience, so it’s kinda hard to muster up the enthusiasm to read it at like 10pm or something when i find the time. i haven’t read enough of wolfe to know if this will be the case with him, too, just preemptively a little squeamish.
i have a dream come true by onetti and i’m interested in reading the whole thing. he’s been on my periphery for a minute now, but the picture you posted of him pointing the gun at the camera is what convinced me to finally move him up the list.
the ballard book, on the other hand, is way too big. if you have recommendations for specific stories or eras, i will glady take them.
also @kory you make convenience store woman sound very appealing. i had a similar shock factor with heaven and to a lesser extent all the lovers in the night by mieko kawakami. i would highly recommend both of those books. coincidentally, i also read hurricane season after yeso recommended it to me during a microsoft flight simulator stream and now i must ask myself if i’ve truly become based and yeso-pilled and, if so, how i can find a cure
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Had to do some googling to figure out what ND was–wasn’t familiar with this publisher (not very aware of different publishers and their reputations in general, tbh), but I’m putting this book on my to-read list now.
I just picked up Debt again–or, more accurately, just pulled it up on the kindle it’s been languishing on. Going to try and keep the momentum going and finish this one. I will say, after taking a break from ebooks and tearing through three books worth of dead trees, I realize how much I missed the old ways.
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the david graeber book? nice choice.
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yup–I read the first chapter as part of the sample ebook years ago and those few pages alone were eye-opening…can never think of the concept of the IMF or loans in general the same way again.
Going back to Convenience Store Woman, it makes me uneasy to read some of the review pull quotes on the back cover…“Tranquil dreamy,” “weird and wonderful, deeply satisfying,” “witty and sweet.” Hard to imagine what sort of mindset these people are coming from, but it strikes me as some combination of superficiality, lack of empathy, and probably some detached orientalism for good measure.
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i’m not sure how far you are into debt (the book), but i was slightly disappointed that the bulk of the book was anthropological studies of what different kinds of “debt” might look like rather than a more historical investigation into what we know as monetary debt. knowing graeber as i do now, i understand that he was just in his wheelhouse and is still very much worth reading for his visions of a different world, but i was still left hankering for more of what he touches on in the first and last chapters specifically. someone else said (maybe in this thread?) that the book is at its best when it’s dismantling the capitalist/economy 101 myths of barter economy, and while i think that’s a reductionist compliment it’s also true.
as for pull quotes and the like–fuck em!
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Gosh…I’m not even done ranting about this one…maybe this is the baggage I’ve been bringing into nearly every piece of media I’ve been experiencing as of late, but this book is also a stern denouncement of a consumerist society that insists that the one niche of a lifestyle that this woman has found for herself, which by all accounts should be just fine, is intolerable and grotesque, even to the extent of essentially making her contemplate ending her life (though not expressed in those terms exactly) . Just a profoundly sad story…it disappoints me to see it handled so dismissively.
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fuck the IMF
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darn it…this is exactly what made me put down the book when I first started it a couple years ago. Glad to hear that it picks up again at the end.
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I just finished The Honjin Murders by Yokomizo Seishi which I picked up between the holidays, while I was feeling kind of uninspired about what to read next.
The book is about a locked room murder mystery set in 1937’s rural Japan and features peculiar young detective Kindaichi Kosuke. The back of the book didn’t hold back with praise: Comparisons to Poirot and Sherlock Holmes as well as talk about this being the first entry in one of the most popular detective novel series of Japan made me pick it up with quite high expectations.
I don’t have a long standing history with the genre of detective murder mystery novels and I must admit that I know Poirot, Holmes and Miss Marple mainly from movies and TV. I hold a vague reverence for these figures because of their historical relevance but have never read any of the books, which I feel kind of guilty about.
Then there are the modern murder mystery books. I’m extremely prejudiced about these and I’m the first to admit it. Most book stores are flooded with these and they always hog up space on topseller lists. Obviously fake author names that lack any kind of creativity and the most distasteful book cover designs have so far kept me from reading any of these. They mostly give me extreme “books for people that don’t like reading but like to be perceived as the reading type” vibes and that has kept me from digging into the genre.
That is probably an unfair assessment and I feel like an unbearable elitist for thinking that way. Germany’s 2019 hit book Murder Mindfully made me reconsider because its humor spoke to me personally in some very specific ways and I’m trying to get out of the mindset that bunches all of these newer books together. It’s a process.
This book however made me excited to read a classic, unburdened by the yucky feeling I get from its modern successors. Unfortunately the book didn’t live up to the hype drummed up by the comparisons to other legendary stories.
It might be that it was the author’s first ever book but ultimately I at no point ever really cared about any of the characters. There were some red herrings that got me interested and made me start thinking about what could be behind the mystery but the ultimate reveal felt kind of weird and unsatisfying.
I’m now left with the desire to watch some Detective Conan, which I really liked as a kid but haven’t revisited ever since.
I wanted to read some more German books and a friend once gave me a strong recommendation of Juli Zeh’s Dark Matter as a book that I in particular would probably love. I enjoyed Juli Zeh’s The Method when I read it back during my train rides to and from university so I’ll give it a shot.
This is also a detective story so I hope that this one helps shed more light on the genre and makes me appreciate it a little more.
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just to keep your expectations in check: the stuff that picks up at the end is very scant and his argument essentially boils down to the value of the dollar being pegged to our military occupation across the world and that is threat deterrence and provocation other countries are indebted to, not all of our gold that is moved by forklift in the basements of large banks and fort knox.
he’s not wrong and it’s still good, but for a deeper dive on that topic i would recommend reading something like super imperialism by michael hudson
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Seconding the Super Imperialism rec. It explains all that stuff very well.
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