Horror - Yoko Ogawa - Revenge (2013)

Bryan got me this book for my birthday this year. Not because it was on any wishlist or anything, but because he heard them talking about it on NPR. The fact that he heard that and decided that this would be relevant to my interests meant a lot more to me than getting a book that I had put on my list just because.

I read it because he told me to, really. I was floundering over what to read after that library book, and after first pulling The Weird out, he changed his mind and bid me to read the book he got me for my birthday.

This book is super short; at 162 pages, I easily read it over the course of a day. It is made up of a series of interconnected stories, and I do mean interconnected. A bit player in one story is then a childhood friend of another, or a place may appear in two stories, or strawberry shortcake will make another appearance. And all of the tales are dark, but at different degrees: some are subtle, some are not, some are just sad, some are even confusing.

I actually rather liked this book. The fact that almost no one has a name really adds to the sense of interconnectedness, and the fact that emotions are almost never directly described means that you can pull it from the way they talk or think instead. I know it's probably some work by the translator, but the word choices are spot on. Towards the end, however, the complexity of the intertwining stories gets to be a bit much and it's hard to follow how each character relates to another. The last story is actually connected to the first, which I appreciate, but not in a super clear way, which was disappointing.

If you like dark tales and want to see some great examples of how to express emotion without saying "she felt sad", I would recommend this book. $14 seems a bit steep for what you get, but I imagine that will go down the older it gets.

8.5/10

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Biography - Mason Currey - Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013)

I've actually been procrastinating on this review for a few weeks now. Because of that (and the fact that I am in the middle of Dance with Dragons now), some of the details are a little shot. Apologies.

I preordered this book as a birthday present to myself and received it about a month later. I plowed through those other books you saw me read before deciding that enough was enough and that I really wanted to read this one.

Being nonfiction, there isn't a lot for me to say about it. It does deliver what it promises: any known details of the daily routines of various creatives and thinkers--primarily writers, for obvious reasons--along with photographs where appropriate. I'm not ashamed to admit that some part I thought were kind of boring, but when the subject matter is real people, the truth comes out that not everyone is exciting.

To be perfectly honest, this was a book that I had been wanting for a while for a different reason: a list of different styles of approaching a creative workday to try out for myself. Don't do this. Please. Or at least have a little sense about it. Know if you are a morning person or a night person first. Don't do silly things like work from midnight to dawn just because this book says Thomas Wolfe did. Eat real food, not exclusively donuts and cereal like some of these people.

All in all, it is very interesting, both the details within, and the people included. It just wasn't amazing. But maybe I'm subconsciously grading it on a different curve than it deserves.

8/10

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