Sumi Masen
(excuse me in japanese) I am sorry. When I was in Japan last month, i didn't really have much chance to read I. I knew my time there was limited. So I really just wanted to focus on Being in Japan.
There's been a lot of news articles about book club. I don't know if you read them. But so- some of them are great. Just praising the idea that uhhhh..
Obviously getting more people into reading a British bookstore a very very big British bookstore they had a select table of books and there were all books that I had reviewed and It made me think wow, it definitely had an influence on sales if they feature these books in in a specific way It's not like they'd said Pewdiepie Isle or anything like that, but it's cool. Should I force anything else positive into this before I begin? I don't think we need to do that. Thank you. Now, first book I read was the "Dice Man." Written by Luke Rhinehart this was suggestion by Brad Hooray for Brad Thank You Brad for suggesting A lot of you guys suggested this book as well and I can definitely see why.
I think Brad told me that he read it when he was younger and I. Think it's the kind of book I would probably appreciate If I was younger as well not saying that it's stupid or anything like that It's just it has a lot of flaws that I thought was a bit hard to Over- oversee is that how they say it (overlook) doesn't matter. The book is written by Luke Rhinehart who is also Conveniently the protagonist. Mmm how strange.
It follows a story of Luke who is a Psychiatrist he's very successful. He earns a lot of money. He has his wife He has his kids, but he just doesn't feel happy where he is in life His best friend is advancing before him even though he's not as clever as he is He just feels stuck in a rut basically so in a drunken idea Late at night. He decides that he's going to roll a dice and if it lands on a six I think it was a six.
It doesn't matter he is going to rape his best friend's wife who has been sort of flirting with him a little bit and Here it sort of shows how amateurish the writer is or maybe just needs a better editor. I don't know There's really no reason for him to want to rape his Best friend's wife. I understand that he needs to undergo this drastic change of character, but they justify it as "Oh well "she- she liked it more than I did" *weird noise* I feel weird i've been talking about it and it's not like I'm prude or anything like that But nevertheless this event has such a drastic change of his character that he becomes the dice man And he decides to live his life by the roll of the dice he will write down a couple things that he wants to do and a couple of things that he doesn't want to do and he place them on the number of the dice So if it rolls a 1 or a 2, he'll do this two to three or four he'll do this five or six he'll do this, so that determines his life and it's interesting in a way how that makes him break free from his Rut essentially his character that's just too comfortable. A lot of times it's obvious what you want to do and you always go for the obvious choice and he explains that the dice man as You there's so many things that you miss out on by not doing and that never gets to live because you always go with the obvious choice and by Constantly going with the obvious choice you may end up too comfortable and in the way that Luke was in the beginning of the novel Luke really decides that he's going to push this for Scientific purposes or for his studies.
He's going to push the limit of the dice and Following the dice as a godly figure to its very limits. It's not like the whole idea of flipping a coin is anything new it's not like there's anything that Special about it, but it becomes a cult and he becomes a cult leader of that of the dice. It's an interesting concept of self-control also letting go of that control to something else and while reading it I was feeling Like I want to try this out when I was in Japan, for example Me and Marzia a lot of times the things that we enjoyed the most were not the we had planned for but things that we just happened to stumble upon which I think is why what it's trying to get at. The book very Confidently says on the cover.
This book will change your life It won't. I really enjoyed it at the first half but the second half was just Unnecessary, I think it tried too hard to be commercialized The story takes almost like a movie like plot The FBI is after him and there's just so many sex scenes in this book I think there's like 30 sex scenes in it and it just became cringe-worthy after a while I'm like, this is just ridiculous. At the end of it it sort of made me question the the skill of the author and if the concept of the dice was even that great to begin with. It just seems so like some sort of pseudo-psychiatry and who knows? Maybe that's what it was trying to mock anyway.
Next! I read "Stoner" by John Williams. This was a book that when he came out it barely sold anything, but then later- fifty years later It got translated and it picked up in popularity. Now, it's very highly regarded. When I explain my favorite novel to people, or at least a novel that I really enjoyed, a lot of times I met with a skeptic look like: "That doesn't sound interesting at all!" What are you talking about? A good testimony of a good writer is that if you can tell a seemingly uninteresting story and captivate your your reader That's a great way to test it And I think Stoner is exactly that.
Now I was reading this and I kept thinking "When is the punchline coming?"
"When is the weed joke coming?" I was on page 420 and I realized, "I've just spent hours reading a boring book about a boring man's life!" It has nothing to do with weed. Not a single weed reference. I'm just kidding. Obviously.
It's actually a really great book I really enjoyed reading it It follows a story a William Stoner, which can be summarized as "Life sucks, and then you die." "So fuck the world and let's get high! 420 Everybody!" It's so cringe-worthy jokes. I'm sorry. William Stoner grows up on a farm. He goes to study agriculture and a part of his study he- it's obligatory to study English literature and he completely falls in love with it and he loves- and he switch his studies completely to literature instead of agriculture and At the day of his graduation, he very selfishly Tells his parents, "I'm not coming back to help at the farm.
I'm going to keep studying to become a teacher." I can't relate to that at all. I escaped to Italy to become a youtuber and abandon my studies so maybe I can't fault Stoner too much in this. It sets the swing of The story in of Stoner's life whenever something positive happens to Stoner so- it's met with something negative. He falls in love with literature, but at the cost of Disappointing his parents.
He falls in love with a woman and they get married very quickly But then he discovers that she's actually very horrible to him and they don't match at all. So anytime something positive happens to Stoner, it's met with something negative. He loves teaching his students at school, but it becomes very hard for him to do so because of the department. He gets a daughter that he loves very much and care for but the daughter After a while sort of turns against him because of his wife It just keeps on rocking back and forth for Stoner and you just have to, when reading it, you can't help but appreciate his immense stoicism and How much he endures of bad behavior from other people that just brings him down.
You just want to pat Stoner on the back and say "It's okay you did your best, man". I always try and find some sort of ideas in there. I don't know if I'm right or wrong But the way I saw it is that there's two sides of the coin in life. You're gonna be happy sometime and you're gonna be unhappy sometime and you can just hope that you end up on one side more than the other just because you endure a lot of pain and a lot of Bad behavior and just because you're a good person and work really hard for the things you love that doesn't necessarily mean Happiness is some sort of reward or something that's owed to you.
It just- doesn't work like that. That's just a state of life And that's the balance that we all have to go through. Stoner dusted in such grace and the way he endures it all You just- you can't help but look up to him and his character. In a lot of ways he's a hero and I think that's how the author described him as, as an angel in the end.
It's a fantastic read. I really enjoyed it. From start to finish, I think this was a novel that I found the easiest to read and flow through so if it sounded interesting give it a go. Next up, we have "Crime and Punishment." It's a classic, you've definitely heard about this...
Have you heard about this? It's written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1866. It was the longest one I read, and I- I mean that. Sometimes this book was very hard to get through, but the parts that shines in this novel truly shines. And I do Understand why it's a classic and I want to just focus on the bits that I really really enjoyed which is the bits revolving around the main character, Raskolnikov.
Raskolnikov is a young man who lives in St. Petersburg. He is, like I said, young, attractive, intelligent and since his father died, his mother and sister had focused on him a lot more which led him to come up with the Insane idea that he is going to murder and rob an elderly pawn-broker named Ivanovna. He sees Ivanovna as a lesser human, a bad human, and she has the only thing that Raskolnikov doesn't have which is wealth.
Raskolnikov is very poor and he sees it almost as an injustice following Raskolnikov's ideas around why he wants to commit this murder is the bits where I really really enjoyed. I don't know what it is about following someone's internal thoughts about something that's just bizarre and insane, the truest honest thoughts about someone. And I think that's why I really like Japanese literature as well nevertheless Raskolnikov doesn't see anything wrong with murdering this woman. He thinks is it's justified and He almost sees it as a practice of: Can he commit this crime? Is he able to commit the perfect crime even? And he sort of sneers at other people that it hasn't been able to commit the perfect crime.
So he sneaks into Ivanovna's apartment and he murders her with an axe. Unfortunately, Ivanovna's stepsister enters the scene of the crime and Raskolnikov is forced to murder her as well Now obviously this wasn't part of the plan and he sort of very clumsily Escapes the the murder scene and he only gets a little bit of gold from the apartment, but still somehow he managed to escape without anyone Seeing him commit the crime. He hides all the gold and the murder weapon and Then we're followed with the second part of the book, The Punishment. We get to follow Raskolnikov's internal struggle with- through conversations with other people of why he committed this crime and What made him want to actually do it.
If he didn't take the gold, what was the reason- true reason behind it and the guilt with it? The bits I especially enjoyed was the last third of the book. Raskolnikov wants to confess to his love, Sonya, that he committed this murder and he stumble upon his words and he stumbles upon his reasoning that before was so clear to himself But when explaining it to someone else he just can't get the right Reason and words out and I really enjoyed this bit. I don't know. It's just it's so interesting following these thoughts and The change of Raskolnikov.
Eventually, he turns himself in despite the fact that he- there was no real evidence against him. I think he was just so tired of dealing with this internal struggle and conflict and Even though he doesn't necessarily think that what he did was wrong, he compares his- his murder with what other- what other people have done in the past and Not received any punishment for people doing even worse things than him and getting away with it So why should he have to feel bad but he turns himself in because of Sonya, the one he loves, and he wants to serve his punishment and I think the epilogue where they explained this was a bit forced. These classic novels, they always have the a very strict conclusion to them, at least what I read so far, so maybe that's why the reason why. The reason why Raskolnikov struggled so much Maybe he had found logic behind what he but he put himself above society and that was his demise What do you think? Have you read it? What what do you think? Personally, I was extremely bored with the family conflict that was going on throughout this book It didn't interest me at all.
But nevertheless, I really enjoyed it. I would love to read more from Dostoevsky in the future I'm told that "The Idiot" is even better. Are you still with me? Next up, we have "No Longer Human" with Osamu Dazai I feel my voice is just different Talking about this. It's just such a sad story.
It follows a story of Oba and We follow it through some notebooks that he has left behind. I love Japanese literature. I. Really enjoyed reading Murakami, but I love reading Yukio Mishima and now Dazai.
They so beautifully describe the internal monologue in it where the protagonist is so extremely self aware of the Interaction and ideas that they have... I'm explaining this really poorly, but essentially, the way Japanese culture are so polite, It's hard to understand the true character behind a person and To then read a Japanese novel by- by these authors so- so brilliantly described, I just feel so immersed into it. Funnily enough, that's exactly- well, there's nothing funny about it, but that's exactly what No Longer Human is all about. The main character, Oba, can't present his true self to other people.
He has this facade that he hides behind and he makes jokes to other people to hide his true self and he's extremely self aware of this fact And we don't- we don't get to follow the jokes that he makes other people instead we get to follow his ideas of how he thinks other people perceive his jokes and It doesn't sound interesting at all. I says I just wanted to give you an idea how it's written, basically. Something that I've really grown to appreciate over the years is honesty. If I noticed that someone isn't being really themself or being honest, I.
Always wonder if you're not honest, then who are you? What are you? I don't want to play along with your facade and Sometimes in this novel, someone calls out Oba for not being genuine Maybe he laughed in a way that they didn't think was really Authentic and he recollects on these moments in his life where he did get called out for his facade and he he describes that in such immense pain that Someone is discovering that he isn't actually human. The story of no longer human is an incredibly sad story, especially Afterwards finding out about the author himself Dazai, who shares so much with the main character He was sexually assaulted as a child which is most likely what led to him protect himself behind this facade. The double attempt of suicide with his wife where the wife died but he survived, and the guilt of keep on living, problem with alcoholism and drugs, all these things that the character Oba, Goes through has happened to Dazai at some point in his life as well, the author. At the end of the book There's a very chilling moment where Oba is talking to his friend Hokiki (it's Horiki btw) I think his name was, I don't remember and Hokiki is sort of his character opposite It's his friend, but almost so sort of his enemy He's very direct and very straightforward Unlike Oba who hides behind a facade.
Hokiki- and whenever Hokiki is involved in his life It sort of triggers these bad behaviors, you know where he turns to alcohol and all these things. In this moment, they're both drinking and they're discussing the "Crime and Punishment" funnily, and discussing what the antonym of crime is and Oba sort of goes off as he usually does in his analytic way of What it actually is while Hokiki is just sort of not really following and making these really dumb assumptions. Hokiki then leaves the room and Commits adultery with Oba's wife Oba doesn't do anything to interfere with this and it's at this moment when you read the novel it's because he's no longer human and this happened to Dazai as well and It's clearly a very personal tale Reading it at almost in retrospect, it almost feels like a goodbye and The same year 1948 Dazai's novel came out. Dasai, you know, he had multiple suicide attempts Finally he succeeded To commit suicide by drowning himself in the river and his body was found on the day of his 49th birthday I feel like I didn't do it justice by reading this book first this is clearly the final chapter and I want to try and be more careful in the future when I.
I pick a new author to make sure that I read Read in the right order. I absolutely loved reading This book. Dazai clearly is a phenomenal writer and this is everything I would want from a novel. Next up, I read Yukio Mishima's "Sun and Steel." I'm not gonna discuss this book because I'm think- I want to save you Mishima for another time I just want to give a quick thanks to blue D on Twitter for sending me their copy of the book I couldn't find one before I left to Japan and I really really wanted to read it It was funny.
I- I walked around with a book. Long story short, I needed to put a paper in something without crinkling it and So I was using the book because it's very big. It's already becoming too long A lot of other people saw me holding this book in Japan and they were all, "Oh! Yuki Mi- Yukio Mishima!" I don't know if it's- I get I didn't realize how popular it was. I wonder who looks up to Yukio Mishima in Japan.
Super fascinated by Mishima, but we'll save that for another time. Next up for next week, We're going to read "Inferno" by August Strindberg. I want to read as- "Spring Snow," I think it's called, by Yukio Mishima and "Runaway Horses" by Yukio Mishima I'm gonna be a little bit selfish and just read books that I genuinely just want to read I'm sorry, but other than that, I just want to say thanks for all the support on the book review. It's been fantastic.
I always doubt myself if it's really worth it or not To make these but all the positive support and all the comments has been great. So, thank you very much That's it for me for now. I'll see you by the end of the month With another book review you can read all of them or none of them But I'll see you then. Goodbye..
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