"Goodbye Tsugumi" by Banana Yoshimoto- Sunday Salon

I am simply crazy about my second book for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge. Goodbye Tsugumi by
Banana Yoshimoto (1989, translated by Michael Freeman 2002, 186 pages) started a little slow for me but by the time this story was nearing its ending I was wishing it was 1000 pages long so I would not be cut off from the world Banana Yoshimoto created with such economy. I was drawn very deeply into the lives of the lead characters, two female teenage cousins whose lives center around a small town inn outside of Tokyo. The title character Tsugumi is 18, her cousin and narrator of the story Maria is 19 and Yoko the sister of Tsugumi is 20. The parents of Tsugumi own the Inn. Marie's is the only child of a single mother.

Tsugumi has a serious illness and a personality that grates on most people at first. At first I did not like her but
by the time of her action scene that I am sure will amaze all readers I was cheering so much for her. Goodbye Tsugumi contains a lot of themes. It is a story of sibling and family conflict. It is a coming of age story of the two cousins. It is a love story. It is a tale of a revenge so sweet you will howl with delight even as you are shocked by what happens. The novel gives you an intimate look at life in a small town Japanese Inn trying to compete with hotels run by giant corporations. It is a story of the pull of the big city and the shadow it casts.

There are some wonderful descriptive phrases of nature throughout the book.

"I get the feeling that in towns near the sea the rain falls in a more lonely fashion than in other places"

"It's a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together next to it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent".

Here is an observation that to me echoed my first book for the Japanese Challenge After Dark by Haruki Murakami:
"Night time turns people into friends in next to no time"

Both Maria and Tsugumi read a lot. Maria tells us "She was always reading books about all kind of things, she knew a lot".

We are shown how books read long ago can create bonds.

" ''You remember that book Heidi we read when we were kids. I feel kinda like that friend of hers with the bad leg.'
Tsugumi chuckled sheepishly."

It is not labored over in the novel, nothing is, but we can see Maria and her cousin both read a very lot. They read to learn, to pass the time and because they enjoy it. They are raised in a tradition that respects the written word. this reading echos in Maria's observations on nature and in the characters reading of each other.

I really enjoyed Goodbye Tsugumi and I flat out loved the last twenty pages. I hope a lot of others will read this book so I can see their reactions. Banana Yoshimoto has five other works translated into English and I will read them all. My next book for the Japanese Challenge will be Real World by Natsuko Kirino.

Mel u

"Dewey:The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World" by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter

Books can be the building blocks of bonds of family and community. We book bloggers know this for sure.
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by a 25 year library professional Vicki Myron tells us a lot about how libraries can create communities.

My family and I have all been cat lovers from way back. My brother was just with my family for a visit and he bought and read straight through-unusual for him-while he was here Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, a N Y times best seller from 2008. The story begins with an act of cruelty when a small cat is left in the middle of an Iowa winter in a book drop outside the Spencer Iowa library. Dewey ends up being adopted as the library cat and spends nineteen years bringing joy to the patrons of the library and has a very special relationship with the library director and her daughter. He achieves world fame being on the cover of cat magazines, on local and nationwide American news shows and is even featured in a Japanese documentary.

Vicki Merton is a true cat lover and any body who loves cats will relate at once to her story about Dewey. The book also deals with her personal and professional issues and tells us a lot about life in a small town library. I live in a city of millions with few real public libraries. This does not affect me so much but I know it prevents many people from becoming life time readers.

Books can also lead us to a shared laugh. My family shares our home with two cats. Charles is an eighteen year old Siamese and very royal in his bearings and attitude. About a year ago one of my daughters found a very small kitten in our parking lot and now Karlie is also in residence. My wife laughed when I showed her this quote "Dewey only eats Fancy Feast" as both Charles and Karlie, who was rescued from a life of eating out of the garbage, only eat Fancy Feast and Science Diet now.

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World is a fun heart warming book that I think most cat lovers will enjoy. It also has something to tell us about The Reading Life.

Mel u

Reflections on my first month as a book blogger-Sunday Salon

I began my blog, The Reading Life on July 7, 2009.

 About a year ago I began to follow an ever increasing number of book blogs. I have been a near compulsive reader since I was about seven. For many years I read mostly classics along with biographies, history, poetry with a special interest in the 18th Century. I wanted to start my own book blog but I wanted to find a focus for it. A few months ago I read a book I really loved, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog", by Muriel Barberry. One of the blogs I admire Incurable Logophilia by Verbivores had an excellent review of the book. I was moved to write a couple of long comments on its treatment of the life of the very reading centered characters in the book. I then had the idea for a blog focused around the literary portrayal of the reading centered life. From my blogs, with the aid of Amazon reviews, I began to find 21th century writers I loved.


I soon learned a book blog can sort of take on a life of its own. I am beginning to focus on 21th century treatments of the reading life . I have joined a number of book challenges to expand my reading range. Since starting the blog I have already found four new to me writers I really love: A S Byatt, Muriel Barberry, Penelope Fitzgerald and Markus Zusak. Most of their books deal very centrally with
the reading life. I will read all of their novels. I have found thanks to other bloggers first novelists I like and whose work I will follow. I still read the classics. I am embarked on somes long term reading projects now, all the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton. I have gotten good reading ideas from visitors to my blog.

I love being a book blogger and will I hope be one the rest of my life. I am very thankful to all who have stopped by my blog.

"After Dark" By Haruki Murakami-Reading the Tokyo Night

I just completed my first book for The Japanese Challenge “After Dark” by
Haruki Murakami. This was also in fact my first Japanese novel ever.
“After Dark” starts in a Denny’s, a comfortable familiar place in the night world of Tokyo. The characters in the story are at once beautifully individuated with just a few brush strokes.
“She reads with great concentration. Her eyes rarely move from the pages of her book….She just keeps reading her book, lighting an occasional cigarette, mechanically tipping back her coffee cup, and hoping the time moves faster”.

As the book proceeds we are drawn further into the Tokyo night world. We meet a number of interesting people along the way. Like Dickens and Balzac before him Marukami brings to light aspects of the city that fall below the radar of those safely out of the margins.

“The garbage trucks have not yet collected all of the garbage. This a giant city, after all, and it produces a prodigious amount of garbage”.

A central character in the novel, Mari, uses her books to hide, to make her self invisible. She lives partially in the shadow of her sister’s beauty. Mari is a reader as hider. The Tokyo night world also helps her hide. She and we learn to read the night and the city from writers like Murakami.
I like “After Dark” a lot. It was a good first Japanese novel for me as it is not hard to read at all and it is not that long

Mel u

"Getting the Girl" by Markus Zusak- A start of a reading life?

Getting the Girl is the second of Markus Zusak's four books. The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger deal directly with reading life issues. I love both of these books. Getting the Girl is more a young adult book than his subsequent works. It is very worth reading to see how rapidly Zusak is developing as a writer and it is a good tale of teen age angst and sibling issues between brothers.

There is no mention of reading and books directly in Getting the Girl. To me it is clear that the lead character
Cameron has the potential to develop into a serious reader. Throughout the book at the end of every chapter are notes in a hand written style font that show the thoughts of Cameron.

But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

That's when the stories show up for me.

They find me all the time.

They're made of footsteps not only to the girl, but to me. They are made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent. They only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories come first.

Maybe they all just merge into one.

We'll see, I guess.

I'll let you know when I decide.

To me Cameron will grow into Ed in I am the Messenger and  Ed's reading life forefather, Ishmael. He will use his books to rise above the world and to   sink below ordinary life.



I will read Markus's Zusak's first book Fighting Ruben Wolfe before the year is over. It is sometimes interesting to read an author's work in reverse order as it makes you very conscious of his or her development


Mel u

July 2009 Reading Review

July 2009 was an excellent reading month for me. I completed 11 books. I discovered two new to be writers that I love, A J Byatt and Markus Zusak. I will, I hope, read all of their books.

These are the books I read in July 2009 with some comments. I will review a few of them in terms of their treatment of The Reading Life.

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak--I have already made a few observations on this book. It it a great book.
it is sad to see a lot of book stores have it in the Young Adult section only.

2. The Book Seller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad-This is an interesting book about contemporary Afgan family life.
It is worth reading if this topic interests you. I did switch into speed reading mode half way through.

3. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I have already reviewed this book. I am glad I read it and will read her
next book but I would not reread this work. It is a first novel and I like to read first novels.

4. I Am Messenger by Markus Zusak. I have already reviewed this really fun book. So far he has published
four novels. I have read two of them and will a third in August. He is young and a lot of people, myself
included, hope to read twenty more books by Markus Zusak.

5. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I should have read this a long time ago. Among many things this world
treasure tells the story of a great reading life cut tragically short.

6. The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmore. You can learn a lot about
Kipling's life and about the politics of the period from this book. You will not, however, get much of an idea
how he developed into a writer worth reading. Kipling is not on the reading list in many schools or universities.
I would not recommend this book to someone seeking an excellent literary biography because this book'
is not one.

7. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry-1990 Newberry winner by author of The Giver. A delightful book for those
eight on up. I have posted more on it earlier.

8. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. I really like the Folger Library paperbacks of
the plays. This was my first read of this work.

9. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. A beautifully written book with a great deal to tell us about
the reading life. I will try to talk about this latter. Some of the sentences are so wonderful I read
them three or four times.

10. Three Tales by Gustav Flaubert. If you are looking for a second Flaubert then read these three stories,
each about 30 pages long. Each is a unique masterpiece. These stories show the artistic
mastery of Flaubert. I would also recommend highly Flaubert: A Biography by Frederick Brown. To me
his book is a model of a literary biography that shows how Flaubert became a great writer and reader.
Flaubert was well traveled, had friends in high and low places, and did some things that may surprise you.

11. The Biographer's Tale by A S Byatt. This was my first of her novels and I was very happy to see she  has written lots of other books. It seems she is a core early 21th century Reading Life novelist.

Japanese Reading Challenge III-a great opportunity to learn for me

Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge is a great challenge-the 2009 Japanese Reading Challenge

here are the rules of the challenge:

"

This year, all you have to do is read one work of Japanese origin. It can be literature of course, but don’t feel confined to that. You may choose to read poetry, biographies, short stories or even manga. If you are willing to read one such piece, you’ve met the challenge. If you read more, all the better.

I have set the time frame between July 30, 2009 and January 30, 2010."

Some challenges have the potential to consume to much of our often limited reading time.

This challenge is a great opportunity for people like me who have very little or in my case no previous experience with the Japanese novel.
I will read in August “After Dark” by Haruki Murakami. If I like this, I will read “The Wind Up Bird Chronicles”. I know I will get lots of good reading suggestions from posts from challenge participants.
My knowledge of Japanese History comes largely from The History Channel. Speaking of which there is currently on the History Channel a very good two hour show on Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Diplomat who risked his own life in WWII to provide visas for Jews to escape the Nazis.
I decided I would add to the Japanese Reading challenge “Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World-1852-1912. This is a serious work of great learning by Donald Keene, a leading translator and authority on pre 20th century Japanese Literature.
I will read one Japanese novel a month until the challenge ends. I will post on what I read as it relates to the reading life.