@“RubySunrise”#p72052 thank you for putting this series on my radar. it sounds, frankly, amazing.
@“whatsarobot”#p72105 heck yeah! Let me know if you check it out and have thoughts. I hope it was clear from my post that I did greatly enjoy it.
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@“RubySunrise”#p72052 One particular stylistic choice of Muir’s I eventually wore out on was the use of anachronisms in the prose.
whenever I come across this it reminds me if the weird play bart simpson wrote when he broke his leg and was stuck in his room for a month
Looking for some recommendations of Japanese books to read. I was reading some Natsume Soseki, but it is so old and literary that it is quite a lot of effort, and so I end up reading less and less each day. I tried a more recent book called センセイの鞄 just because I had heard of it somewhere, but it was kinda too boring to keep me going.
I quite liked 虐殺器官 by Project Itoh, which I posted about in this thread. I enjoyed the goofiness (and the seriousness), and also learned a ton of vocab related to fields I had never read about in Japanese, which is cool.
Never want to read Murakami Haruki ever again (I've somehow read like 7 of his books completely by accident), but other than that, basically open to anything.
@“wickedcestus”#p72273 yeah! i added 虐殺器官 to my reading list because of your post, but i still haven't started it yet :o
some of the books i've loved the most in the past are:
ブレイブ・ストーリー by 宮部みゆき - fun isekai story about a kid who basically gets transported to his favourite jrpg world by one of the most popular and best-selling novelists in Japan.
ミッドナイト・バス by 伊吹有喜 - divorced bus driver contemplates the meaning of his life as his kids start getting old enough to not depend on him anymore. sounds sad, but I found it beautiful. sounds Murakami-esque, but it is refreshingly _not_. like you, i am sick of Murakami after having read too much and now cannot go back.
星やどりの声 by 朝井リョウ - a family of four kids reflect on their lives up to this point after their dad dies, leaving them his old Showa-era curry and coffee shop.
Ank: a mirroring ape by 佐藤究 - i think you'd dig this one the most, maybe. published before the pandemic, but set in 2026. humanity starts going crazy and attacking each other because of a kind of parasite transmitted by a chimpanzee.
かがみの孤城 by 辻村深月 - this one was a huge bestseller a few years ago, and i guess it's since been translated. explores the issue of bullying of kids at school through fantasy and allegory. i have a six year old daughter who's just started elementary school, and am so glad i read this book when i did. helped me better understand, as an adult, what it's like to go through trauma as a young kid.
池袋ウエストゲートパーク by 石田衣良 - this has gone on to be adapted into everything, but it started as a series of novels, and this is the first one. kind of urban lowlife drama with a good amount of intrigue and comedy. i'd say that if you like the Yakuza series, you'd dig this.
同志少女よ、敵を撃て by 逢坂冬馬 - i haven't finished this one yet, but it's a big big deal right now. double-award winner, big-time bestseller. tells the sort of true-ish story of a Russian girl who becomes a sniper around WWII. purports to deal with heavy themes like the nature of war, but reads kind of like a light novel or manga. endorsed in the media by a fellow called Hideo Kojima.
@“wickedcestus”#p72273 I think the first Japanese novel I read was Naomi/痴人の愛, which I had read right after The Doll/Lalka (a wildly-good 19th century Polish novel), and it turned out the two books were based on essentially the same premise, though they differed in every detail. I need to reread both, because at the time I understood nothing about either of the historical situations they were written in. Shortly after finishing Naomi I met some guy on the internet from Tokyo to talk about the book with, but I think everything I said about it was so dumb (I was 14-15 and he was, like, 30) that he tried to politely end the conversation as quickly as possible. Anyways, I think it‘s very readable and is filled with stuff that if you’re anything like me will make you feel weird and conflicted. I haven't read anything else by Tanizaki, but I really should.
And since you are explicitly rejecting Haruki Murakami, you can try the other famous Murakami novelist, Ryu Murakami, whom I (and probably lots of other non-Japanese people) discovered because his books were right next Haruki Murakami's at the library. The one I like best is Almost Transparent Blue, but I think everything I've read by him has been great. His most famous one is probably Audition? It was made into a movie by Takashi Miike. He's one of those male authors that often write feministic themes in very bizarre and violent ways. Maybe the clearest example of this is Popular Hits of the Showa Era, which is about a group of no-good male punks and a group of middle-aged ladies who all share the same given name that engage in a rapidly escalating arms race.
@“saddleblasters”#p72284
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Maybe the clearest example of this is Popular Hits of the Showa Era, which is about a group of no-good male punks and a group of middle-aged ladies who all share the same given name that engage in a rapidly escalating arms race.
this sounds delightfully insane.
@“whatsarobot”#p72285 yes it is lol
@“whatsarobot”#p72282 @“saddleblasters”#p72284
Appreciate the recommendations.
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@“whatsarobot”#p72282 Ank: a mirroring ape
Definitely was interested in this when you first mentioned it, and would've picked it up already but acquiring Japanese e-books outside of Japan is unreasonably difficult, and if I'm going to order physical books I like to do it in bulk so the shipping isn't so unreasonable (which is why I needed more recs!)
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@“saddleblasters”#p72284 Ryu Murakami
I actually have half of one of his novels lying around somewhere, now that I think about it: Coin Locker Babies. Perhaps I should give it a shot.
@“wickedcestus”#p72344 I forget whether or not you’re in the United States, but if you are (and probably even if you’re not — i just only have personal experience in the US), libraries might be more useful for getting Japanese books than they initially seem. While public libraries typically have pretty small foreign language collections, many large state universities have very extensive East Asian language collections. If you live near one you might want to try searching their catalog and see if you can borrow directly from them (e.g. if you’re an alumni, have a friend who’s an alumni, or if the school has a “community borrowing program.”) If not you can theoretically get a lot of stuff through your public library’s interlibrary loan system, though it might be a little tricky with non-English stuff. You might need to pay a fee, and you’ll probably have to wait, but I think it will be cheaper and less time than ordering books from overseas.
Just thought I’d mention this as an affordable option (if not necessarily for you then for others), since a lot of people I’ve talked to seem to not be aware of the power of libraries (though I think the IC community is probably [more library-loving than most](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1011-your-local-library-has-gamesfor-free)), and they’ve allowed me to read a whole bunch of Chinese stuff that i wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Not sure how libraries work outside of the US, but I imagine they can be similarly powerful (Canadian ones might even be part of the same ILL system as US? I’m not sure.)
Juan Emar in English for the first time I believe
https://www.ndbooks.com/book/yesterday/
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@“saddleblasters”#p72350 public library’s interlibrary loan
I've only used interlibrary loan probably half a dozen times, but each time it really does feel like magic. I don't have experience with foreign language books in the US, but I have used it to check out rare books and each time I want to be like "If you knew how much this was going for on Ebay rn, you definitely wouldn't let me walk out of here with it!"
@“rearnakedwindow”#p72471 Yeah, it definitely does feel like magic. Until I actually tried it for the first time I always thought of it as something reserved for just serious scholars and researchers, not for random people like me. Even now just the very existence of public libraries still kind of amazes me.
(I’m sure there are librarians reading this saying “It’s not magic! It’s our hard work!” So thank you to everyone who works at a library.)
@“wickedcestus”#p72273
I read these in English and enjoyed both:
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada.
An I Novel by Minae Mizumura.
They both had unique styles, The Factory has little punctuation and just rolls on and on. An I Novel mixes large amounts of English. (In the translation is was just bolded)
@““I thought lethal weapon was safe…yeah.””#p72466 Interesting, does this one have a good reputation?
@“RubySunrise”#p72052 I read both Gideon and Harrow couple of months ago and in fact, ended up making Gideon as my character for my fist playthrough of Elden Ring! (which ended up being funny because there is already a major (male) npc named that way).
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/9FAgN5Z.png]
I started reading the spanish translation but they didn't handle the modern twists well at all, so ended up jumping to the English version. That made me appreciate the novel a lot more and left me with the feeling that the stylistic and rhetorical devices Muir plays are a lot more sophisticated than they seem at surface level. She totally borrows from that internet/tumblr/fanfic (ao3) culture, but it's more of a recontextualization. She plays very smartly with those elements and chooses carefully when to break the tone, and it ends up giving the book a very particular flair and vibe I found really cool and modern. And it's not only the tone, the sci-fi and fantasy elements end up working in tandem with the style and end up coalescing in something that to me feels quite unique.
I didn't like Harrow as much as Gideon though, but that's my own fault because I'm basic bitch and couldn't help liking a book *without* Gideon as the protagonist less than a book *with* Gideon as the protagonist. I'm quite excited for the third novel, which should release later this year!
@“sabertoothalex”#p72499 I haven‘t read the whole thing myself but yes it’s well regarded. The extracts I read reminded me of wyndham lewis but without the weird asshole vibe (thankfully)
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@“wickedcestus”#p72344 half of one of his novels
is this book unique for having its two volumes labeled ‟上‟ and "下” or is that normal for two-volume bunkobon sets?
@“captain”#p72784 That‘s the standard way of labelling them. I’ve no idea why but that's how it is.