Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Edition: 1-58243-022-5
Pages: 227
Synopsis: A collection of writings (novellas, short stories, and a play) that examine the lives of characters sensitively.

This collection of writing is just as subtle, atmospheric, and melancholy as Kawabata’s other writings (at least, of what I’ve read: The Old Capital and Beauty and Sadness). These moving, bittersweet tales show snapshots out of the lives of a variety of characters.

One thing about Kawabata’s writing that is very easy to notice in this collection is the sense of introspection of his characters. The stories, even when involving multiple characters, rarely look at the actual relationship between the characters but more the effects these relationships have on individuals. Thus, even stories about divorce or affairs really involve the certain people who have gone through these experiences, not the experiences themselves, which is why this collection is so poignant and enjoyable.

This Country, That Country — A married woman loves her married next door neighbor, and to satisfy her ache has an affair with a third man. This novella mainly looks at the aftermath of the affair, as the main character Takako is breaking up with her lover and coming to terms with her feelings. She deals with the sense of feeling like two people in one body, and as if a third person wants to arise in response to her neighbor.

This story quietly looks at the smaller incompatibilities of marriage, the things that prevent passion although they are not so large as to make a marriage unbearable. This story would probably resonate stronger for a person for whom arranged marriages are an important topic.

Like with Kawabata’s other writing, I was struck by the resonance of his characters with nature. The parallel of seasons, gardens, and mountains with his characters’ lives is such an important element in his writing.

The holly was speckled with tiny white flowers. Though it was plainly visible from the sitting room, Takako couldn’t remember when the flowers had started to bloom. It was strange that she couldn’t remember.

And now the flowers were falling—the black earth in the tree’s shadow looked white.

Takako picked up three or four of the small flowers and held them in the palm of her hand. Each blossom had four round, softly curved petals. The stamens were long.

Hirata might have noticed the flowers on the holly, but of course he would know nothing at all of the delicate form of the individual blossoms. So far neither Takako nor Hirata had mentioned the flowers this autumn.

A Row of Trees — A husband is particularly touched by the changing seasons as expressed by a row of ginkgo trees on his daily walk.

The bare branches of the enormous trees at the bottom of the path looked particularly sharp against the background of yellow leaves at the top, and the foliage that rose up over the path at the top looked richly colored and even more thickly layered than usual with all those bare trees in the foreground. The sense of great height that one feels looking at ginkgos was especially marked in these trees. Even the copious small branches of the bare trees strained toward the sky, as if attempting to embrace the tree-trunks, forming shapes tightly closed. The masses of yellow leaves conveyed a sense of volume as only layers of thick leaves can, but bathing in the morning sun they looked still and lonely.

This story is also about Soeda’s daughter, who has a purse stolen from her by a con woman. I feel I would enjoy this story more if I could understand the connection between the half-bare ginkgo trees and the theft.

Nature — In this nostalgic story, a man named Uragami visits a favored vacation spot of an old, deceased friend who was a famous novelist. While there, he encounters a fan of his friend’s work, Uryû, and listens to the man’s life story. Essentially it’s a look back on the War as Uryû explains how he avoided enlisting in the war by pretendinig to be a woman. To make matters more complicated, he’s an actor (who pretended to be an actress during the War) who has always specialized in female roles.

The scenery in this story is particularly well-written. I had a very clear sense of place while reading, both of the ocean and of the spa and of the room where Uryû and Uragami are talking.

Not only the horizon, but the color of the ocean itself was oppressive. I was amazed that my friend had been able to bear it, looking out on an ocean like this from his room at the spa, and I began to feel lonely. It occurred to me that the relative proximity of the aurora borealis might make the sunset beautiful.

Raindrops — An inspection of marital happiness and jealousy in a house boarding several families.

“I don’t know….You can’t tell whether it’s rain or raindrops just from hearing that it’s water, and that it’s making noise right now.”
“If rain makes noise it’s raindrops.”
“That’s not true. The sound of rain and the sound of raindrops aren’t the same.”

My favorite part of this story is a bit off topic, but it’s usually what I end up loving most about Kawabata’s writing. His attention to nature, the way he observes things like differences between the sound of rain or the sound of raindrops, always gives me something new. I’d never distinguished between raindrops and rain before, but after reading this statement I suddenly realized the truth of it. There’s a difference between the individual drops and the actual sound of the rain.

Chrysanthemum in the Rock — The narrator of this tale is contemplating what he would like to use as his grave-marker, relating his search to the legend of a ghost from his home town. This ghost lives in a rock and requires a chrysanthemum to be planted in a hollow there. As he’s thinking, the narrator imagines an exchange with this woman, discovering why she would linger by this rock.

“He told me to wait every day, so I’m still waiting.”
“No matter how many days you wait, it doesn’t look like he’s going to come. Your hands and feet must be frozen already. How about this—what if you were to plant a chrysanthemum in this rock, and let it wait here in your place?”
“I’ll wait as long I’m alive. If I die here, a chrysanthemum will bloom here and wait in my place.”
“He may not come even when there’s a chrysanthemum waiting.”
[...]
“If this autumn’s chrysanthemum dies, another chrysanthemum will bloom next autumn. If a chrysanthemum takes my place, I’ll be happy.”

His thoughts progress from discovering a work of art to use as a headstone, to the natural emergence of headstones of famous figures, to the end of his desire to locate his own headstone.

First Snow on Fuji — A pair of old lovers reunite and decide to spend a chaste night together. This story has the most subtle sadness of this collection; the clearly poor condition Utako has arrived in, the loneliness between the characters, Jiro’s wistful thoughts of reality, the very marital way in which they move despite the long years they have been apart, the tragedy of their past. Despite its sadness, it’s so graceful.

Utako felt relaxed, it was true. Yet at the same time she felt a loneliness, like a dying flame.

This story gives a forbidden look at what might have been, passion turning to love, emptiness leaving solitude, closure, even forgiveness. It’s the ability to say goodbye to a lover one has left long ago, knowing that even if what was once there is gone, at least for a moment it existed at all.

Silence — After suffering a stroke, a famous author Akifusa is paralyzed; he can no longer speak nor use his right hand at all. Despite that he could form characters if he wanted to with his left hand, he chooses to remain in silence while his daughter takes care of him. The narrator of the story goes to visit this writer, since he’s been a mentor in the past. Running alongside this story is the rumor of a ghost who appears in taxis at night; she never speaks, only rides for awhile and disappears. The silent, paralyzed novelist is no different than the ghost, and the story ends on an ominous tone as the taxi driver warns the narrator that speaking to a ghost will leave him cursed.

“That single letter ‘t’ would probably have more love in it than all the novels you’ve written during the past forty years, and it would probably have more power.”

Her Husband Didn’t — A young man finds solace after he discovers his first love affair has been no more than the execution of a rather foolish daydream for his partner. This story shows how discrepancies in communication, in this case the different reasons for the affair coming into existence, can affect a person.

Yet the cold feeling of that earlobe had instantly cleansed him of his filth. The earlobe was just as round and plump as an earlobe ought to be—it was small enough that Junji could squeeze it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, no bigger than that—yet it filled him with a sense of the beauty of life. The smooth skin, the gentle swelling—the woman’s earlobe was like a mysterious jewel. Her purity had remained intact there, inside it. The earlobe held dew-like droplets of the essence of female beauty. A sentimentality like yearning welled up inside Junji. He had never known anything with a texture like this. It was like touching the lovely girl’s soul.

This may be my favorite passage out of the entire collection. Junji’s perspective isn’t even about his sexual desire for Kiriko, nor thoughts of himself, but a fascination with something ordinary that to him is beautiful. When I read this passage, I feel really in touch with Kawabata. I appreciate the way he does this, how he makes me realize the variety of human likes and dislikes in existence, how we can look at the same things in different ways, how what’s beautiful to one person may simply be unnoticed by another. I feel like, here, he so accurately captures a perspective that isn’t often explored…this boyish, surrealistic fascination of Junji’s is comparable to any of our preferences that may seem out of touch or unshared with others, which, even communicated, remain private still. In a way, this story speaks to my need to communicate, too, and my difficulty in doing so.

Yumiura — What’s the emotional distinction between an event that could have happened but didn’t and one that’s been forgotten? This question disturbs an older writer when he’s visited by a woman who claims they met long ago. Even as he’s beginning to believe her (despite being unable to remember even the smallest detail), he discovers something about the town that she claims as their meeting place.

The Boat-Women — This historical drama takes place during the battle of Dan-no-ura, chronicling the events of a daughter and father reuniting. This one is a bit hard for me to review because I don’t know much about this time period, but it reminded me of several other dramas in small ways including King Lear and even La vida es sueño. Aside from the main story about Kagekiyo reuniting with Murasaki, this play also offers insight about the aftermath of this battle.

Oh how precious / the preciousness of this day / this life the life of a drop of dew yet still I chance to meet / the joy of this day. The sadness of this day / yesterday a dream / tomorrow an illusion / today in reality here on my lap / the b iwa I pluck and make sing / whose child listens / it is my own good child / oh how precious / the preciousness of this day.

My favorite stories in this collection are Chrysanthemum in the Rock, First Snow on Fuji, and Silence. To me, they are the most touching and interesting.

Another interesting review of this collection can be found here. Part of the first short story This Country, That Country is available online for free via NY Times here. No subscription is necessary.

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?

More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

Well, this semester I’m taking a technical writing for engineers  and scientists class, so I have Pocket Book of Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Finkelstein and I’ve read a good portion of that for assignments. I also reference the Sun Style Guide for this class, too, but I can access that online through my school’s library so I haven’t, and don’t plan on, purchasing it. I also have a grammar book from Jr. high (Warren’s of course…I used this for several years). I did the exercises in school but haven’t touched it since then. I also have an arrangement of grammar books for other languages, in particular Latin, Gaelic, and Spanish due to various courses in these topics. The Latin and Gaelic ones have seen minimal use, but the Spanish ones I’ve used frequently.

I think grammar is important in communicating clearly…a comma or some such can change the entire meaning of a sentence. I used to be a huge stickler; I carried around a marker specifically so I could correct signs or advertisements with improper grammar, style, or syntax. I’d always figured that if one is taking the time to sell a product or an event, and one goes through the trouble of printing the sign, at the very least one ought to have it proofread. I’m much more relaxed now, and I’ve always been relaxed about informal communication—I’m not the type who will correct someone’s conversational grammar (my boyfriend does this, so sometimes I do it back at him) or blog post grammar. I just think it’s important in getting one’s message across: good grammar, style, and syntax lead to clearer messages.  Using a semicolon when a comma would do is not the end of the world to me.

Author: Carlos Fuentes
Edition: 0-06-097063-4
Pages: 199
Synopsis: This is the fictional biography of Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist and writer, who disappeared in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.

This book is a bit difficult to talk about after only one reading, so consider this review a rough draft for subsequent readings. For such a small book, it’s dense—not so much by prose but by meaning. There is a lot of circularity; rereading early passages after later ones brings new light to everything. For this reason, I’m hesitant to share too much of any one of the beautiful passages because I don’t wish to spoil, but here’s a sampling of the writing:

Look, Arroyo said to Miss Winslow, as he had to the old gringo that morning, look at this land.  She saw a dry, ugly, but beautifully dramatic world, strong, devoid of any generosity, alien to fruit easy for the picking: she saw a land whose scanty fruits had to be born of a dead womb, like a child that goes on living and fighting to be born from its dead mother’s womb.
Both Harriet and the old man were thinking of other, more opulent lands, of fertile, long, lazy rivers, of the splendor of waving wheat fields on land stretching flat as a tablecloth toward smoky blue mountains and gently rolling mountainsides covered with forests. The rivers: the thought especially of the rivers of the North, a litany that rolled from their tongues like a current of lost pleasures in that dry and thirsty Mexican evening, Hudson, the old man said; Ohio, Mississippi, she answered from the distance; Missouri, Potomac, Delaware, the old gringo concluded: the good, green waters.

This book takes place during the Mexican Revolution, which in terms of literature is similar culturally to our American Western (according to a keynotes speaking I attended on this book…). There are several themes I’d like to revisit once I’ve reread this book:

• [Spoiler] The circularity of the old gringo’s dream. He fantasizes of standing on opposing lines with his father in wartime. After becoming a father figure to Harriet and Arroyo, he stands on opposing lines with Arroyo, and it is Arroyo who kills him.
• Arroyo was conceived through rape. This theme appears again and again in Mexican literature; it’s important because Malinche and Cortés are considered the legendary mother and father of modern Mexico, and Malinche was certainly not a willing partner. A lot of Mexican literature’s heroes are children of rape victims. (I never knew this until I attended the keynotes speaking about this book as well…I learned quite a bit from that speaking!)]
• Fuentes doesn’t demean either American or Mexico. What I got out of this book is that Fuentes wants Mexicans and Americans to understand each other.

Author: James Tiptree, Jr
Edition: 0-812-55625-9
Pages: 375
Synopsis: Brightness Falls From the Air plots one long night as the remnants of a great war play over a lonely planet. A group of tourists has gathered to take in the event, but the night takes on a new shape as danger makes itself known.

There is an interesting perspective for this novel.  Instead of taking place during first contact, where one race  does terrible damage to the other, this book starts off during the aftermath as humans are repairing relations with the dameii, a race of insectoid aliens whom they’ve injured gruesomely in the past.  There is a bit of mystery since we don’t start the story knowing everything that’s happened; we figure out the history between the two peoples over the course of the telling, and of course that history becomes the focus of the novel as two plots erupt around a small party of tourists and their guides.

Tiptree’s writing is all her own; personally, I haven’t read anything truly comparable to her style. The tense and often her way of describing things are unusual, although Brightness Falls From the Air is not so much unusual as her short stories.

The road improves. Damiem’s yellow sun, called here Yrrei, is rising through a pink fleece of fine-weather cloudlets and igniting little rainbows in all the dewy foliage.  The streamer-trees give way to flowering shrubs and light green bird-trees. Many of the mobile bird-leaves take off and flap curiously after the jitney.  As usual, the tourist love this; even the dour Aquaman brightens as some leaves settle for a brief rest on the edge of the jitney near him.

This book, like Tiptree’s other writings, is very sentimental. Despite the strong plot full of mystery, the different threads of history that affect everything, the strongly built world, this novel is definitely about its characters. It’s impossible not to loathe some of them and dread the tragedies that befall others. Every character inspires some emotion.

Tiptree also has an interesting way of examining life and death.The author herself committed suicide after killing her husband (in her suicide note she basically explained it as a mercy killing), and struggled with depression and had previously attempted to take her life as well. Understandably, a lot of her writing is depressing and dark due to her own nature, but surprisingly Brightness Falls From the Air is actually a very uplifting, hopeful tale despite the darkness in it. Still, life and death are concepts that are examined here, as well as rebirth.

There are actually a lot of different themes in this book, including life and death. The characters, all from different planets, all have different cultures. There are the morally secure Federation types, soft-porn stars from the future version of Hollywood, an orphan who has traveled vastly, royalty and nobility from two different worlds, etc. It produces an interesting result as these characters interact with one another, and as they are all drawn together by what happens to them. This also discusses race relations between the cultures of the human and delicate dameii, as well as a now extinct race of aliens that had previously contended with humans.

(I know that some sci-fi & fantasy readers are looking for books that have GLBT characters or authors, and this book falls somewhat into that category. There is one gay couple among the main characters, although their relationship is more just a matter of fact and isn’t really examined. Tiptree herself was bisexual.)

The science serves as a backdrop for the novel rather than the focus, so this is really more of a fantasy. Given Tiptree’s background in the military, there is also a lot of military influence in the novel.

I’d recommend this novel to anyone who is after an interestingly written piece, or one who cares about any of the themes I’ve mentioned as they are all critical to the story.

Off the topic of the story, the more Tiptree I read the more I’m not impressed by the people who were so sure she was actually a male writer. To be honest, she does a lot of things that are more stereotypically female than male, from the way she writes her sex scenes to the sentimentality of her stories—she’s even more sentimental than Arthur C. Clarke. Given the time during which she wrote, a lot of her writing has a very obvious feminist edge to it. And unlike many of her contemporaries, women feature prominently as characters—not the beautiful, back-row type of male authors of this time, but the type who have jobs and careers, thoughts, and goals. They are just as realistic as male characters. And yes, she does have a few girls who are there only as candy, but she also has some unimportant male figures in her writing, as well.  Honestly, if I’d read her works during the time when people were unsure whether she was male or female, I would have been unable to commit to either side of that fence.

Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
Edition: 0-618-00221-9
Pages: 272
Synopsis: Bilbo the Hobbit sets out on an adventure, very much unlike a Hobbit, to win treasure from Smaug the dragon.  In the employ of thirteen Dwarves and the wizard Gandalf, Bilbo explores the world of Middle-earth and has a number of close calls that don’t stop with trolls, goblins, and deadly wolves.

(In the following paragraphs I may mention details from the books of Lord of the Rings, which, while I don’t think are specific enough to qualify as spoilerish, I do want to announce.)

This is not my first reading of The Hobbit, although it’s been more than a decade since my last encounter with it.  First of all, I haven’t revisited this one nearly as often as I have the Lord of the Rings trilogy because I’ve never liked it as much.  That said I do love this book: Tolkien has a way of speaking to us, as his readers, about our need for adventure as well as our need for familiarity.  His attention to detail is what makes him so famous as an author, his ability to create cultures for his characters that draw inspiration from mythology and history, and all these cultures highlight some aspect of human nature in whole.  In reading Bilbo’s adventure, my love for this type of tale sparked back to life, my love for high adventure and epic quests, beautiful elves, hardy dwarves, mysterious forests, bold dragons, treasure, distant lands…and I found myself sad to turn the last page after such an absorbing adventure with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves.

I remember in my first reading, I hadn’t been terribly fond of Bilbo because he sometimes comes across as slightly arrogant (if this is the right way to describe it?), but I really found him appealing this time around.  And even if LotR is such a serious set of books itself, The Hobbit has a bit of odd humor in it at during certain points and is, in general, more light-hearted.  (For instance, think of how much trouble a single dwarf leader has caused…Thorin really brings about quite a lot of trouble in his rather straight-forward way.)

If the meat of the story is in battles with trolls and goblins, riddle games with Gollum, outwitting Wood-elves; then certainly the heart of this story is how adventure changes us.  I know this is a theme that was important to Tolkien, and he wrote in some ways to show how war affects people, but as one of his earlier and more young adult-friendly stories The Hobbit feels more about an allegory for change in general since, after all, Bilbo is so cheerful and well-adjusted by the end and his adventure lets him acquire a new type of maturity and appreciation for his creature comforts.  This is such a stark difference between what happens to Frodo in the LotR, whose own adventure changes him far more thoroughly and more seriously.

Also this re-reading made The Hobbit feel somewhat like a totally new book, since I had completely forgotten a lot of chapters and even that there was much story after Smaug’s demise—even though the events after Smaug’s death actually give the entire book a new shape.  With the introduction of the War, it takes on a different scope and moves from being mostly light-hearted and focused on single characters into something more serious and widespread, although never as heavy as LotR as  a whole.  Still, I’m surprised at myself for having forgotten so much!

I’m definitely satisfied with my re-read, and I feel like I got a lot out of it this time around—maybe even more than from my earlier time(s), since now that I’m older (…I think I was barely a teenager when I actually read this the entire way through for the first time?) I feel I have more appreciation for Tolkien’s world and his great care for detail, especially since I’ve taken both a folklore course and an ancient Celtic literature course since that time.  (Back in the days when I had time to take arts classes for my electives.) His particular style of writing is descriptive in the way oral tales often are:

To hunt the whole mountain till he had caught the thief and had torn and tramped him was his one thought.  He issued from the Gate, the waters rose in fierce whistling steam, and up he soared blazing into the air and settled on the mountain-top in a spout of green and scarlet flame.  The dwarves heard the awful rumour of his flgiht, and they crouched against the walls of the grassy terrace cringing under boulders, hoping somehow to escape the frightful eyes of the hunting dragon.

It has a really sweeping feeling that fits very well to the form of an epic adventure.  Despite events being relatively predictable, and the fact that so much of what’s written of in this book is rehashed by fantasy authors so frequently that nothing is surprising anymore, everything has a fresh and and engaging pull to it due to Tolkien’s talent as a story-teller.

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

Author: Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder
Edition: 978-0-312-42780-1
Pages: 180
Synopsis: A single mother who works as a housekeeper comes into the service of a brilliant, aging professor of mathematics whose memory lasts for only eighty minutes.  The relationship between the mother, her son, and the professor explores the ways in which we as humans connect with one another, using mathematics as a means to express our less concrete traits.

Maybe it’s something in the translation, but I’m not particularly satisfied with the execution of this book. While I enjoyed the angle (…I know, not a funny joke…), and the fact that the author includes actual mathematical equations in the story’s scope (instead of just vaguely referring to unaddressed concepts), something in the writing about the characters itself is juvenile or under-developed. Otherwise, the usage of math to link the Housekeeper, the Professor, and Root together is the best part of the book, emphasizing the beauty of this universal language to communicate on themes of love, memory, and joy. The story itself is rather typical and the ending can be predicted within the first few pages, and I failed to develop a real empathy with any of the characters due to the extreme briefness of the book as well as the unoriginal plot.

I was not surprised to find balls of hair and moldy Popsicle sticks behind the desk, or a chicken bone resting on top of one of his bookshelves.  And yet, the room was filled by a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence, untouched by fallen hair or mold, silence that the Professor left behind as he wandered through the numbers, silence like a clear lake hidden in the depths of the forest.

This version of the book includes a set of discussion questions at the end, and I want to offer my answers here to a few of the more relevant ones.  For instance, the author’s treatment of single mothers doesn’t really warrant much outward attention in the book.  The struggles of an unmarried, uneducated mother does not comprise a political place in the novel.  To me, it seems that Yoko Ogawa merely took a common situation out of real life that she’s observed and wrote it, the same way another author may choose a character who is a widow; I feel she probably chose this specific situation to further unify her characters through mathematics, showing how anyone can understand it for different reasons: a brilliant professor, a ten year old boy, a high-school drop out who works as a housekeeper.  The only other really important thing is that she presents this situation as a chain; a daughter follows her mother’s footsteps, leading to, yes, a brokenness in the family, which if it’s a statement at all by the author is less about this particular situation and more about modern life and how we perceive children (for instance, the Professor’s great love for Root, and even the symbolism of the name Root; the Housekeeper’s early independence in taking care of herself; the way in which Root is introduced to the world).  As for the main characters lacking names,  I believe Yoko Ogawa chose this format in order to make full use of her style.  Leaving them undecorated this way is meant to show (as I see it) that these characters aren’t specific, but are universal; they’re not isolated, but they represent parts of us.  Just as each of the main characters is in a different stage of life (childhood, adulthood, full maturity), their struggles seem as if they are meant to apply to us more generally, and their vitality is affected by their life stage.  On one end is Root, youthful and healthy and confident, and on the other is the Professor, who is awkward and brain-damaged and declining.  This theme comes up directly with the Professor’s continual insistence of putting Root before himself because Root is the youngest; he awards Root the biggest snacks, only behaves with proper manners around Root, and is glad that Root has the next seat up from his at a baseball game, representing a specific record-breaking event in baseball history.
The Professor’s obsession with math keeps him grounded; in a world where he has no yesterdays, where his todays disappear in eighty minute intervals, math is eternally consistent, unchanging; as he says, numbers have always existed—what humans do with numbers does not change the world.  It’s his something to cling to, and his way of passing on a legacy.  Even his own disinterest in his earned prizes, in the fact that he’s toiled greatly to arrive at mathematical solutions, shows how little he thinks of what he’s done as individual accomplishment.

Overall, putting it this way, I love the themes touched on in the book but I don’t think it accomplishes its ambitions very neatly or touchingly.  In too many ways it reminds me of other literature on the same topic.  Unfortunately, its writing is never beautiful or engaging enough to make up for it, either, although it does have some moments of poignancy.  I understand that Yoko Ogawa here tries to capture an authentic feel in her narrative voice, writing this in the style of a biography by a housekeeper who did not even complete high-school, but it fails to feel stirring to me.  However, as I said in the start of this review, this may just be a product of translation.  Of course we’ll always lose something in translating a work, no matter how talented the translator is, and overall I think an accurate job was done.  I think there were probably a lot of difficult passages to translate, or to correctly communicate the importance of, such as the professor’s ability to repeat syllables in reverse so easily; such a thing is highly dependent on how we see language; not just how we use it, but how we feel it, and Japanese is vastly different from English.

I’d recommend this as a library read to someone already interested in this genre of fiction.  Or to someone who really, really loves baseball. (:

What books did you get for Christmas (or whichever holiday you may have celebrated last month)?
Do you usually ask for books on gift-giving occasions or do you prefer to buy them yourself?

For Christmas, I received: Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset, Among Flowers by Jamaica Kincaid, Gravity Wells by James Alan Gardner, Planiverse by AK Dewdney, and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.  (Several of these I’ve wanted since seeing them on other book blogs, unsurprisingly…)  I usually do receive books on my birthday and Christmas; books are usually the number one gift for me, followed by clothes and jewelery and an occasional video game.  Books are by far my favorite gift to give and receive, because the selection is something personal; even if you give a wishlist of books that you want, the person who ultimately decides which book to buy you gets to make that choice and I think it says something about their interests, too.  But I love getting and giving “surprise” books, too!

Author: David Bainbridge
Edition: 0-674-01028-0
Pages: 181—extends to 205 with further reading, glossary, and index
Synopsis: This is a brief look at the sex chromosomes of humans: how males and females are determined, why certain diseases are more common in one sex than the other, and the history of this form of genetic science.

This rather short, very readable book about the genetics of sex can be divided up into three main components.  Chapter one discusses the differences between the X and Y chromosomes, what they are, and how they come together to form either a male or a female.  This chapter also discusses how there are some XO women (that is, women with only one X) and men who may have multiple Xs with their Ys.  The second chapter talks about sex-linked diseases and how these almost always affect men over women: hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and color blindness for example.  The third chapter is all about the dual nature of women: since women have two X chromosomes, half of her sex genes become ‘inactivated’ at random so that she does not overdose on X.  This inactivation is responsible for calico cats, and human women are similarly calico in less obvious ways. This chapter also delves into the world of twins, and it also explores what it means to be an XO woman—a woman who suffers from Turner syndrome—or a man with extra X chromosomes.  And most interestingly, it brings up that girls inherit a behavioral gene from their father’s X—but these same genes do nothing in the father from whom they inherited them.  It also shows how, although we women don’t suffer as much from sex-linked diseases, we’re more at risk for autoimmune diseases for reasons still not entirely understood.

Despite its diminutive size, this book is full of information.  A lot of truly interesting material is packed into it, and for that I recommend it at least as a library read.  However, Bainbridge has a tendency to “talk down” to his audience; this isn’t a challenging read at all because Bainbridge expects you to be limited.  His humor, while in many moments is appreciated, does tend to detract from the book because he wastes a lot of space in order to execute it.  Finally, while he pretty clearly marks things out as theory versus fact, he does allow his own opinions on things to permeate the book and this does not add positively to the experience.

In short, this is an interesting but limited account of the X chromosome’s history, life, and importance.  After all, the X has not only helped us in terms of sex and sex-linked diseases, but it has also led to insight into other important areas of health; treating cancer, for example:

Although women are mosaics, their cancers never are, and this is because they are never derived from more than one cell.  If they were, then some women’s tumors would be mixed, containing cells with different inactivated X chromosomes.  All tumors start as a single act of sinister madness in a lone, fatal cell.  If we can stop that single cell, then we can stop cancer.

This information helped tremendously in understanding how cancer works, and therefore how to approach it.

This is the type of book I would suggest to a total novice; it’s extremely easy to read, does not require any previous knowledge either of sex or genetics, and it’s packed with a lot of information that can be useful in approaching this huge topic. Here are some of the things to be learned, in easy format:

• Women are calico, just like cats, because we inactivate half of our X chromosomes
• We inactivate half of Xs in order to avoid overdosing on X genes
• The inactivated material is known as a Barr body
• Our genes are inactivated at random, but in marsupials the inactivated X is always the paternal one
• Some reptiles choose their sex based on ambient temperature around the egg instead of by having a Y chromosome
• Because we have two X chromosomes, we’re not as susceptible to sex-linked diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, and color blindness
• We are, however, far more likely to develop autoimmune diseases, although it’s still not understood why
• A woman who has only one X chromosome has Turner syndrome
• A woman inherits a behavior gene from her father, which the father does not ever use except to pass on to his daughter

2009’s almost over, but I’m still a bit late on the bandwagon of picking out challenges and reading goals for the looming new year.  So here’s that sort of post from me!

This past year has been my first wherein I used a blog format to update this site, having converted from a hand-coded website.  And as a result of following the community, my wishlist has grown immensely and I’ve also tried a lot of new things this year.  I was introduced only to one new author in whom I’m really interested, and that’s Yasunari Kawabata.  Despite finding only one new author whose complete works I want to read,  I did read a lot of individually excellent books—both from new and old authors to me—because this year I learned how to stop reading material that I’m not enjoying.

As for this coming year, I want to take a slightly more structured approach to my reading.

I want to choose all of my sci-fi and fantasy, for one thing, from books I already own.   I discovered sometime in the middle of 2009 that I was no longer being fulfilled by my steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy (in particular fantasy) and as a result I’ve branched out a bit more; of course, I’ll always love this genre of fiction, but for now it doesn’t feel like my sole focus.  So for this coming year, I’d like to read a larger amount of non-fiction, classics, and contemporary literature.  I’d also like to re-explore some mythology and legends.  And finally, I’d like to read books in Spanish as well since I’ve gotten so out of practice over the years.  (10 children’s and young adult Spanish books, 10 non-fiction books, and 10 classics.)

I also want to buy less books.  Wait, that’s a lie; I want to buy lots of books!  But  I’m going to try to choose the library over purchasing, and save purchasing for books that I want to revisit or that I believe add positively to my personal library.  It’s been hard for me to choose the library the past few years because I live in a tiny community with a very limited lending library.  Luckily, my boyfriend Nick lives in the city and I now have a card for its network…and guess what?  He lives literally less than five minutes from one that has a huge selection of books I’m interested in, fiction and non-fiction alike.  Even better is that Nick is also a dedicated reader himself! The biggest reason for this goal is that I’m in the process of moving into a new apartment, and it’s only 300 sqft. I literally don’t have enough room to continue inviting new books in. D:

Finally, I want to pay more attention to my blog.  I’ve had commenting turned off for awhile because I presently lack the motivation to respond and participate in the community.  I work and go to school [full time] and reading isn’t my only big hobby—I’m also a runner, an amateur astronomer, and an amateur photographer…alongside the fact I choose socializing with Nick over socializing with the blogging world…However I’d now like to write reviews that are more in-depth and interesting, possibly participate in several weekly memes, and actually be more involved with the read-a-thons.  Of course, this goal will be tempered by my availability due to school and work.  I don’t want to take on any formal challenges at this point. In 2009 I picked challenges that weren’t exactly challenges for me.  They were things I knew I would accomplish whether I signed up or not.  So really there isn’t much point…However, I do want to keep up with both the Japanese book groups linked in my side bar, and I will most definitely participate in other read-alongs.

I hope you all had a wonderful year of reading, and that 2010 will be wonderful as well.  Good luck with all your resolutions this year!

Author: Yasunari Kawabata, trans. by Howard S. Hibbett
Edition: 0-394-46055-3
Pages: 206
Synopsis: Years after the end of a love affair with a much younger woman named Otoko, Oki still finds himself in love with her memory.  She, too, finds her heart belongs to him as well.  Despite the intensity of their feelings, after a brief and impersonal visit on New Year’s they never meet again…instead, this is the story of Otoko’s young apprentice, Keiko, and how she’s affected by this passion.

I didn’t enjoy this novel as much as I enjoyed Kawabata’s The Old Capital. Both the style and the subject didn’t impress me quite as much.  Some of these problems may stem from the translation; I may just not prefer this translator, and because Kawabata’s style is heavily stylized its translation plays a huge part of the experience.  Still, although this wasn’t as moving or touching a read for me as The Old Capital, this book is still a very worthwhile and recommended read.  Kawabata’s narrative voice is consistent and strong, clearly evoking a sense of shared melancholy between the characters and their settings, tying them directly to the cities and landscapes in which they live. This is a subtle novel focused on a sense of feeling and the threads of personal symbols, with the plot coming secondarily to the emotions it’s intended to inspire.

While the dialogue often has the sense of being muted and a bit surreal, the reader really gets to know the characters through their solitary expressions: Otoko and Keiko as painters, one a realistic and traditional artist and the other abstract, and Oki as a writer.  But overall, they most come alive as they empathize with inanimate surroundings.  Even in the opening scene, Oki introduces himself by feeling a sense of loneliness from an empty, worn-out chair on a train.  In simple, lyrical prose Kawabata captures simple images with a strong beauty.

“Keiko—” Otoko went out on the veranda and kicked a cage of fireflies into the garden with her bare foot.

All the fireflies seemed to glow at once.  A greenish-white light was streaming out as the cage landed on a patch of moss.  The sky was clouding at the end of a long summer day, and an evening haze had begun to hover faintly over the garden, but it was still daylight.  It seemed unlikely that the fireflies could have glowed so brilliantly; perhaps she had only imagined the light streaming out of the cage, perhaps it had been conjured up by her own feelings.  She stood there rigidly as if paralyzed and stared unblinking at the firefly cage lying on its side on the moss.

Although I’m not particularly fond of stories involving infidelity due to my inability to sympathize with the character, this one takes on a layer of complexity by exploring the three most involved characters.  More importantly, I feel that Kawabata actually achieves stronger female characters than male ones; his female characters are more nuanced, have more human traits, and are generally more interesting.  I came away from this book with a clear feeling that women’s relationships with other women was of interest to Kawabata during his life, and he manages to inspire out of his efforts realistic and sometimes frightening characters.  And in many ways, Keiko is contemptible and malicious.  Her craziness is captured in the contrast of her moments of gentleness and her moments of violence.

My favorite part of this novel is that it has a strong sense of nationality; it’s interesting to see Japan through Yasunari Kawabata’s eyes as he captures the things he notices about Kyoto and Tokyo, festivals, and tradition.

Keiko looked at Otoko, and whispered: “Was she speaking for the weather?”

“What?” The woman’s remark had seemed quite natural to Otoko.  “Yes, I imagine so.  For the weather.”

“That’s interesting,” Keiko went on.  “I like the idea of saying thank you on behalf of the weather.  Is that what Kyoto people do?”

As with in The Old Capital, there is a melancholy overtone of loss that Kawabata captures about the modernizing world.  He accomplishes a wonderful thing as an author: his readers understand a quiet, bittersweet sadness; instead of mongering an overly emotional reaction with melodrama, Kawabata very carefully makes something about his writing subtly and beautifully sad.

That said, this has a very inconclusive ending; while this suits the story, it’s still frustrating for me, personally, as the reader.