Despite a promising theme (a strange virus spreading) and a lot of connections with Japan, this collection of short stories felt roughly cobbled together. There were some good ideas here that probably should have stayed as short stories. The “connections” between stories really stood out as overly obvious and felt like they had been added in after the fact to try to make things more cohesive.

So, I didn’t like this book.

I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas, which is similar in scope (and intent?) and written with skill and subtlety compared to this effort. While that book gave hope, this book is full of bleak scenes of death and hopelessness, loneliness and dysfunctional families and relationships. I’m guessing the writer was working out some issues from the recent pandemic. Therapeutic for him, not entertaining for me.

Also, many of the characters in this book are Americans from a Japanese background, or Japanese people living in Japan and there were a lot of racial issues that are sort of tangentially addressed. The Japanese people living in Japan didn’t follow Japanese cultural norms, and almost all the characters felt shallow and not fleshed out. The Japan in this book was just a collection of pop culture references that didn’t ring true to me.

Therefore, I think I’ll have to move on to something a little different. Next I’m reading The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian.

Another book on how the brain works – for some reason I’ve been interested in reading these kinds of books as if I’m searching for the missing instruction manual to my own brain.

There was a lot of good stuff in this book, and a lot of stuff that wasn’t so useful. It sometimes felt like the writer just couldn’t stop and ended up pouring in all the little pet peeves he has had over the years – prostate cancer diagnoses, car repair estimates, and more.

However I did get a lot out of this book. The descriptions of the two states of the mind – active analytical and dream-state, and how there is a daily limit to how much analytical you can do. There was a lot on categorization and how you can (and should) offload information from your brain to the external world.

The focus on developing critical thinking skills when dealing with information (because of all the low quality information that is out there) was appreciated. Also he writes that we have to show understanding – not only to help other people but the characteristic of understanding has some strong positive effects for ourselves long term.

Finally it was interesting to think about where we go from here – now that just about everything is instantly available online it is far more important to have some strategies for selecting what you want.

Next I’m reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.

A book on some of the lesser-known destinations in Italy written by someone who has chosen Italy as their home, and certainly has spent a lot of time traveling.

Part of the reason I picked up this book was because of the extensive wine tastings we did as part of our own enological explorations of the country, and also there is a possibility that we’ll be back in Italy after COVID settles down.

I’ve read another of the author’s books, Under a Tuscan Sun, and I liked the starting over in a new country aspect of that book. This one has a different tone – sort of a dreamy travel log of various regions. It reads a little too poetic/romantic for my tastes (she is actually a poet as well so it should be expected) but the parts of food and wine were fun to read.

As she is already a sort of literary Italy celebrity she has no problem setting up special arrangements – friends and connections hook her up with tastings and the chef often steps out from the kitchen to answer her questions. It is nice to dream but I couldn’t help thinking that these kinds of experiences would be out of reach for commoners like me. Still, this is a book about dreaming, and as long as you treat it like that, or as a very fluffy guidebook to unusual areas, I think it will be an enjoyable read.

Next I’m reading The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin.

A book full of lyrical prose, a blurry romantic look at France, and a large heaping serving of sex. I liked it!

The writing in this book is especially beautiful – written in the third person (usually) from the point of view of an (ostensibly) older man staying in a small town in France ruminating about the romantic life of a younger man discovering love with a local woman. As you can see, there is a lot going on here, and sometimes the reader is at a loss to figure out who is saying what, and what is imagined and what is truly observed.

The writing about France is especially well done – you can get the feel of visiting these places and have the sense of time passing languidly in the heat of the summer sun.

There’s plenty of sex in this book – unapologetic and handled in a way that isn’t lurid or gratuitous. It is not something that you could cut out – it is critical to the story – but it must have been pretty shocking when people first read it back in the late 60’s.

I enjoyed reading this book – I think the story (and how it ended) will stay with me for a long time. I’d like to read books like this that use a country (or a city) as a main character like this one did.

Next I’m reading See You in the Piazza by Frances Mayes.

I haven’t read his other book on food, but I was interested in seeing what kind of things go on in the human body when faced with a steady diet of highly processed foods.

After reading this book it seems like the consumption of processed foods in America is common, and that obesity and other health problems can be tied to this over-consumption. I think most of this is outlined in the previous book that I haven’t read, but here the writer focuses on the psychological hook that food makers use to get people to continue eating their products.

I knew after leaving the USA that the foods I ate there were not especially healthy, and over time I’ve changed over to a much healthier diet here in Japan. Kuniko and I spend the time and money necessary to make what we eat out of whole foods and avoid processed foods and additives as much as possible.

However not everyone has the luxury of time and money to do that, and this book shows some of the ways big food companies take advantage of that. Waving the flag of convenience, “new and improved”, or “new flavor”, the foods attract customers who don’t realize what they are signing up for.

The book spends some time explaining why diets don’t work for most people, and it was interesting to see that most of the big food companies went out and bought diet food companies – so they could make money getting you fat and then make money getting you thinner, too. Scary stuff!

The writing style sometimes gets a little preachy, and the writer has a clear agenda so the stories and evidence given here should be considered as coming from that particular viewpoint. I think this book would really be effective for people that don’t really care too much about what they are eating – understanding who is controlling what you eat (and what you want to eat) is the first step to a better diet and healthier life.

Next I’m reading A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter.

Recently I was thinking back to the 1980’s Disney movie based on this book, and so I downloaded it and enjoyed it now as much as I remember enjoying it as a kid.

This book takes a hard look at the innocence of kids, and examines what makes men bad or good. There is a lot of philosophy here – mainly in one character’s speech while thinking through things in the town library – but it felt sort of forced to me. There is some great setup of some spooky situations, and a couple of scenes that weren’t in the movie. Also some scenes from the movie weren’t like the book, and it pleasant to discover these points as a reward for digging deeper into the story.

The book is written in a folksy tone, maybe deliberately, but some of the old idioms and expressions caught me by surprise. There are odd generalizations (“women love gossip”, bad kids throw dead cats down neighbor’s chimneys) that maybe resonated better fifty years ago.

Overall the story is solid and was worth reading, but just felt a little outdated in some parts. I’ve read plenty of older books that didn’t feel outdated – maybe it was because they depended less on phrases and idioms popular at the time.

Next I’m reading Hooked by Michael Moss.

Luckily I haven’t read any of this author’s other books, and went into this one completely blind.

A thriller/mystery set in the late 1960’s in Laguna Beach, Southern California, it is packed with memories from the author’s own childhood, and it turns out to be sort of a nostalgia trip turned into a mystery adventure. The quirky characters are here: a beachfront hippies, suspicious swami, murder, kidnapping, LSD and all the counterculture escapades of the revolutionaries of the era.

The writer did a great job capturing those times, sometimes going a little overboard with the cultural references, but the hits far outweighed the misses and I really enjoyed reading this book.

It helps that the main character is a likable teenager just hitting manhood in a time of great upheaval in the United States. You always are pulling for him, and we’re with him as he finds the seamy side of the world he lives in, and makes some moral decisions and has to live with the consequences.

I’ve read quite a few thrillers and mysteries, but this one really felt different – maybe because of the time shift and maybe because the author really loved his memories of growing up in this place. The result is a story that he put a lot of love into, and so it was naturally pleasant to read.

Next I’m reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

This book is an eye-opening look at a subculture I didn’t know much about: the lives of long term low-income residents of the Ozarks in the United States. Written about ten years ago, it tells a fictional tale of a young teenage woman who is sort of co-opted into the role of head of household, and shows how much courage and conviction she exhibits to protect herself and her family.

The scenes of poverty and violence are pretty gut-wrenching. Boys and men are expected to cook meth and go to jail. Women are expected to marry and get pregnant. Relatives are there to protect their own. And no matter what, nobody talks to the police.

This would all be pretty depressing if it wasn’t for some beautiful writing and interesting background into the people’s lives and the generations that came before. Thanks to the beauty in this book I could stomach the brutality.

Next I’m reading A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker.

This book was recommended by a former student, and so I finally got around to checking it out. It is historical fiction, written by a group of Italian writers under a pen name, and I read the English translation (while my student read the Japanese one).

This is a meaty book – set in the mid-1500s around the Mediterranean Sea. The story shows the point of view of a Venetian spy hunter, who becomes hunted himself. This leads to travel all over, and thanks to the detailed writing style the reader gets a real taste of what life could have been like in those days. The novel overall deals with the Jewish struggle to establish a homeland for themselves, which in turn is set on the unstable edge of friction between the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian Empires. Throw in some interested European parties, hints of the future of Palestine, a dramatic invasion of Cyprus, and you get a wide ranging multicultural story that has a lot of depth.

There is a lot about this period of history that I don’t know, so it served as both entertainment and education. Thanks to the pacing of the story and the tag-team nature of the writing style (who wrote what?) you really find yourself unable to stop reading sometimes. Also, I had the chance to visit some of the places in this book which made them feel even more real to me.

There are some points that I didn’t like – the main character is generally likable but is prone to fits of sudden violence or lust that didn’t seem to fit his nature overall. I understood him as a vehicle to tell an overarching story, but I’d have still preferred a little more depth to him. Some of this might be due to awkward translations – I understand that things can feel slightly off when reading translated work.

Also this grand tale sometimes gets a sudden fast-forward, speeding through parts that I had been looking forward to, and glossing over intrigue that could have been teased out a little more. There is plenty of intrigue here, though, and this made me want to read some more spy stories (Tom Clancy?) soon.

Next I’m reading Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.

I can certainly understand the idea of moving on past a tragedy, and it seems like part of the world is making motions towards normality after COVID-19, but it is not too soon to take a hard look at what things went wrong in response to the pandemic. Some books look at political missteps – this book looks at how some people took advantage of public money and a streamlined government response in order to enrich themselves.

The writer is a journalist with ProPublica, and his and his colleagues’ actions show the important role that journalism still plays. Parts of the book were fascinating in just learning about how journalists approach such a huge and fast-moving topic. The writer uses humor and an accessible writing style to really bring home the details of these scams and what went wrong.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and reading this is sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes disgusting, and very rarely, hopeful. Thankfully the author uses humor throughout, which helps to sweeten the bitter topic.

I wonder if political dialogue in the future will be up to the task of analyzing these serious faults – or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes in the future?

Next I’m reading Altai by Wu Ming.

This book was recommended by my mom, and I was immediately interested in the story of Edward Dickens, and a fictional guess at what his life might have been like after emigrating to Australia just before his famous father, Charles Dickens, passed away.

This book tells its story in front of a deep background of all of Charles Dickens’ works, but while it may help to have read his novels it isn’t essential to digest what goes on here. Edward Dickens (nicknamed Plorn) is a young man of seventeen when we meet him, and we watch his approach to manhood and finding himself a place outside the colossal shadow of his father.

There were a lot of bad situations that he could have found himself in, but the book is written in a sort of wholesome, positive way that made it a pleasure to read. Sinking into the history and scenery of colonial Australia in the early 1900’s was captivating, and I especially appreciated the story of someone moving overseas to find themself – “the place that concentrated the forces of his soul.”

I enjoyed the attention to detail and the thorough research in this book. Recently I read The Spanish Daughter, which took place on a cacao plantation, and I lamented the lack of detail in the processes there. This book goes into great detail of the sheep and wool industry, and the tremendous scale and skill needed to supply England with the fabric it demanded for their suits and fashion of the day.

I’ve read Great Expectations long ago and certainly didn’t appreciate its literary qualities at the time, but people that have read most of Dickens’ works will surely be satisfied with this tale.

I’ll miss reading about Edward Dickens – a quick check of his Wikipedia page after completing this book showed a short and relatively uneventful life. I’m glad the author decided to breathe something new into Plorn’s story.

This book was my kind of read – a crisp, fast-moving story with a deep world in the background and just the right amount of wit and grit to keep me turning the pages. Written completely in the first person and following the adventures of just one character, this was a pleasure to read.

I hadn’t read any of the author’s other books but it seems like this book was a very polished work. Every detail had meaning, the attention to details that served the main character throughout the story, and a feeling that I couldn’t help compare to the Game of Thrones series of books. It wasn’t quite as deep as those books are, but the realism of the characters and their flaws was there, along with a healthy dose of mystery.

Apparently the second book in the series is coming in a month or two, so I’ll definitely pick it up when it comes out – I don’t think I can wait for the library to get it.

A tale of colonial Korea from the early 1900’s to after World War II, it shows the complex birth of an independent nation through the eyes of some of the people who live there.

It starts in a unique way – telling a story of a hunter and a tiger, and the events in this prologue echo through the entire book. I was pleased that the events I predicted to happen didn’t go exactly as I expected, and that the story was not always happy but ultimately satisfying to me.

The writing style stood out to me – sometimes it felt like an awkward translation, and in this awkward feeling was a more direct description of beauty that would be hard to tell otherwise. This is a saga that spans more than 50 years, so the book has to fast forward now and then, and sometimes that felt jolting. Huge events in people’s lives are glossed over in a few sentences, in order to keep our focus on the feelings of the main characters as they react to the progress of the nation.

One thing that caught my attention was how women were treated in those days – wives were for raising kids, courtesans and whores were there for other (more carnal) pursuits. Just about very man in this book was cheating on their wife, to the point where it seemed like it was part of the culture in those days. Whether it was or not is unclear, but it was a little jarring to read.

Next I am reading The Pariah by Anthony Ryan.

I’m always interested in books that focus on changing the way you think. For one, it gives you more tools to approach problems, and for another it gives more dimensions to your daily reflections.

This book is from the perspective of someone who has an academic background of cognitive psychology, and a professional background of playing poker for high stakes. It certainly is an unusual background, but this book focuses squarely on the thinking side of things.

There were some pretty useful points in here. Some examples that stuck with me: distinguishing between the decisions you make and the outcome of those decisions, not dealing in absolutes (“I’m 60% sure of X”), working within diverse groups to avoid personal biases, and firmly understanding the differences between what you can influence, and what is merely luck (good or bad).

The writing style of this book was a little heavy handed, and often dwelt too much on the real-world examples given. I’d have preferred to get the idea and move on, but there is some repetition here.

Still, not a bad book to refresh the old brain software. I might read more from this author in the future.

Next I’m reading Beasts of a Little Land by Juheah Kim.