The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell My rating: 4 of 5 stars What I enjoyed most about this novel is the language of the traders on Dejima. You’ll learn over 20 ways to describe the pain associated with gout and/or syphilis via the descriptive prowess of a 1800s English sea captain. […]
Books with this much hype don’t usually appeal to me. There may have been some sort of collective unconscious peer pressure at work here, urging me to put this book on my Christmas list. What is more interesting is that I am not really an Apple guy, I only own one iPod that I bought […]
A sudden, cathartic end to one of my more mammoth undertakings. And to think that two equally sized volumes remain! Biblio-exhaustion is rarely so enjoyable. As I read this massive tome, I came across an excellent article on The Millions about ‘Literary Stockholm Syndrome’. In essence, it is the theory that long, seemingly tedious works, […]
Prior to reading this novel I had read reviews by both established authors and critics. Harold Bloom gave the most negative of Wolfe, stating rather bluntly the Asheville native’s body of work exhibits no literary merit. Others were more favorable, especially those coming from more renowned writers, most notably William Faulkner, who considered him one […]
For students hoping to grasp the political and cultural underpinnings of Japan prior to the Meiji Restoration, Conrad Totman’s Japan Before Perry: A Short History is an excellent starting point. This work deals mainly with abstract elements, focusing on aesthetic primary sources like early warrior tales, No theater, and popular treatises. Surprising, very little is […]