Hi dcozy,

Thank you for adding me to your list. I see that you are a Murakami fan- I just finished Kafka on the Shore a couple of days ago. I liked it and it is still resonating with me. I think it is a book that I should reread because of all of its metaphysical layers. I felt the same way about Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I also saw that you are a Wallace Stevens as am I. My favorite poem of his is "Sunday Morning." Your favorite list is impressive, inspiring. I haven't read many of the authors on it, but I have the ambition! I keep telling myself I can catch-up when I retire or when the "house is quiet and the world is calm," but then I suppose one never has enough time to read good books.
posted by Clea at 9:47 pm (EST) on Aug 12, 2008 | delete

inlägg gjort av Clea vid 9:50 pm (EST) Aug 12, 2008

Great review of the Lewontin book. Not knowing what it was, I was ready to be in up in arms. But then you cut these received ideas down. I was lucky enough to see Lewontin give a lecture when the book first came out. I still think of some of the things he said in it. If you ever get a chance to see him in person, do take it!

inlägg gjort av sarajill vid 11:16 am (EST) Aug 7, 2008

Hi dcozy

Inspired by your rave reviews, I've found out where I can borrow the whole of Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion sequence. But I was wondering whether I should read them in publication order or in order of the internal chronology - the latter is the obvious choice but it feels strange to read them out of the order they were written. What do you think? Thanks for the advice!

inlägg gjort av wandering_star vid 9:54 am (EST) Jul 31, 2008

Your new acquisition - For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut - looks intriguing!

inlägg gjort av slickdpdx vid 12:09 pm (EST) Jun 26, 2008

Thank you so much for your terrific review of Black Glasses Like Clark Kent! I'm delighted. When I published the book, I thought most of the response would be from PTSD-suffering soldiers, but the more enthusiastic have been the Japanese. I even received a letter from a man whose father had been a translator for MacArthur--and took the only footage of the Japanese internment camps!

Now if one could only get to the people who are against torture!

Thanks again,

Terese Svoboda

inlägg gjort av svoboda vid 12:26 pm (EST) Jun 6, 2008

And likewise, thanks for adding me to your list. I kept looking at yr books and thinking "i need to read that and that and that...
I absolutely loved Against The Day. Whether it is the best Pynchon has written I cannot say (though I also loved Mason & Dixon) but it is certainly one of the most rewarding books I've read in years.
Now reading Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian, a book that also propels historical characters into a (modestly) alternate reality.
Cheers, Allan

inlägg gjort av abealy vid 8:18 am (EST) Jun 3, 2008

After your pointer to the review of "Scarlet Gang", I've started working my way backwards through your reviews in Japan Times ( http://tinyurl.com/5ucw4l for interested bystanders). I thought these reviews had come to a close, so I'm glad to see their have been new ones added recently. I'm still working on the older ones though.

I appreciate you championing Richie. He's such a gem. I imagine wit and panache in his grocery lists. I recently found "The Japan Journals", but it is lodged in my stack a few feet down.

-- Gerry

inlägg gjort av gscottmoore vid 12:29 pm (EST) May 11, 2008

Hi;

We're up and rolling on the GEB read at http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph...
Looking forward to your comments. Jim

inlägg gjort av torus34 vid 7:39 am (EST) Apr 1, 2008

Hi David,

English is fine with me as you may guess from the large number of english books in my library.
Yes, you're right, I got interested in your library mainly for the japanese stuff. I stumbled over one of your posts in the Japanese Literature group, where you linked to one of your book reviews in the Japan Times. Which led me to look around for more of your reviews at the Times. Funnily enough you just compared Haruki Murakami (of whom I like WUBC and his collections of short stories the most) to Paul Auster (which was my one of my favorite writers back in the 90s (City of Glass, In the Country of Last Things and Moon Palace being my favorite books, having read Moon Palace alone several times since then), but who got really boring in his recent books) in a review of a book of Yoko Tawada, who writes a lot in German and whom I like for her playful and experimental writings (of which I struggle to imagine how to translate them adequately into another language).

How I got interested in the "archipelago" you ask (owning a quantity of books from and about Japan which long surpassed the number of books about my profession (the craft of building software) indeed lets one presume a certain interest ). For a long time I had an unspecific zest for asian cinema and cuisine when a few years ago on a lazy early summer's afternoon I happened to start reading Cees Nooteboom's Rituals (which I had sitting on my shelf for years), in which the short novel Thousand Cranes of Yasunari Kawabata plays a central role. Curious, I started to read the books of Kawabata, followed by Inoue, Mishima, Oe (The Silent Cry!), Abe (Woman of the Dunes, of which I rate the film adaptation which Abe himself did together with Teshigahara even higher than the book) which opened a completely new literary world to me ... as I got more and more intrigued I supplemented my literary diet with non-fictional books about Japanese culture, history, society and language and even started to learn some Kanji (and never managed to memorize more than about 200, having started over twice) and a few bits of spoken Japanese.

So one may blame Cees Nooteboom, whom I learned to like for his travelogues, for my yet insatiable and still growing interestand curiosity for the nipponese archipelago.

Well, enough for today. The post-man brought the German translation of Botchan today which eagerly awaits to be read ...

inlägg gjort av kaixo vid 6:23 pm (EST) Mar 12, 2008

I'm having my publicist send you a copy of Black Glasses. Hope you find it of interest!

Terese

inlägg gjort av svoboda vid 2:04 pm (EST) Mar 1, 2008

Thank you for your queries about my new memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent. My uncle wasn't especially famous. You can see the video for it at blackglasseslikeclarkkent.com and excerpts are posted on Critical Mass, the National Book Critic Circle's blog.

If you'd like to review the book, send me your snail mail address. I think readers in Japan would be particularly interested, at least from the interviews I did there two years ago. No one seems to have asked the Japanese how they felt about being occupied!

Terese Svoboda

inlägg gjort av svoboda vid 3:26 pm (EST) Jan 21, 2008

I think it was the Davenport that first led me to your library, but I was taken with your range of interests, and was interested to keep up on what you are adding to the collection. Have a lovely 2008.

inlägg gjort av jaime_d vid 9:10 am (EST) Jan 7, 2008

Hello,

I also discovered your library via Thouv... I agree with aipotu's recommendations for Roubaud. They are kinds of autobiographical essays, but Roubaud also wrote strange novels such as La Belle Hortense which is worth reading. It's difficult to find something else I like and you've not read yet, but I noticed that you've got no Huysmans in your catalogue. A rebours is his best-known novel—but I don't like it very much. (Some do!) Les Soeurs Vatard is one of his early novels. Not well-known. Very dark and Zola-like. I'm enjoying it at the moment.

Best wishes,

François

PS And also, if you like Oulipo or rather pre-oulipian writers, Raymond Roussel's Comment j'ai écrit certains de mes livres.

inlägg gjort av Pepys vid 4:57 am (EST) Sep 19, 2007

Just wondering if there's an english translation of
Human Condition by Jumpei Gomikawa? None that I can find.
Thanks.

inlägg gjort av tros vid 5:10 pm (EST) Sep 7, 2007

I was looking for gardeners in Japan. No gardening books, but a decent overlap in classic literature. Love your avatar.

inlägg gjort av botanica vid 3:56 pm (EST) Aug 29, 2007

Hi,
I discovered your library via Thouv who added our two libraries in his "interesting libraries".
As I see only authors I like (Beckett, Borges, Dostoïevsky, Gombrowicz, Pynchon...) or plan to read in your library, I think of taking it as a starting point to choose my next readings especially with regard to american and japanese authors.

My favourite french living author is Jacques Roubaud, and his masterpiece is a series of five books :
Le Grand Incendie de Londres (available in english translation : The Great Fire Of London)
La Boucle
Mathématique
Poésie
La Bibliothèque de Warburg

Regarding my wine tastes, living in Bordeaux does not make me an expert but I appreciate Côtes de Castillon and Côtes de Blayes wines wich are usually not too expensive.

inlägg gjort av aipotu vid 2:40 pm (EST) Aug 8, 2007

Hi, We have favorite authors in common, so I looked you up and noticed your erudite library. Right now I am reading for review "Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia" by Thomas Gibson. I bought and am reading "In Pursuit of Knowledge" by Deborah L. Rhode. For fun I am reading "Two Girls Fat and Thin" by Mary Gaitskill. I liked Gaitskill's first book "Bad Behavior" very much and also for fun I recommend "Rock Springs" by Richard Ford. (Both are short stories.)
Jay

inlägg gjort av Jaybernstein vid 9:46 am (EST) Aug 8, 2007

I am also American so English is fine with me.

What's one French novel which not everyone knows about but discerning readers should read? Well... All the ideas I have are already in your library, maybe because I (paradoxically?) haven't read much French literature, or rather have not read much of any literature (being 22 helps).

Play-wise, though, I recommend you read The Devil & The Good Lord by Sartre as well as Caligula by Camus - not their most famous plays but their best, according to me.

Nicolas

inlägg gjort av Thouv vid 3:32 pm (EST) Aug 4, 2007

David,

Excellent news - looking forward to hearing (seeing) more from you. It looks like LT has enabled, through techmology, the germ of a cult of refined taste.

inlägg gjort av benwaugh vid 7:36 am (EST) Jun 5, 2007

Welcome to group Fin de Siecle. Not to lean upon a facile hermeneutic, but noticing your locus as Japan, I invite you to submit any material you may be aware in Japanese (etc.) literature that corresonds, however loosely, to our themse, which, in the end, eschews the familiar and welcomes the novel, the eccentric, the strange, the baldly random. I am aware of Edogawa Rampo, The Japanese themed tales of Lafcadio Hearn, but little else.

inlägg gjort av benwaugh vid 1:33 pm (EST) Jun 4, 2007