The Book Thread! What are you reading?

[Bakajo Nono]

Just read Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).

Quite good. She's a hilarious writer.

[questorminator]

I finally finished Battle Royale. @_@ What a ride. Dat ending.

I don't care to read The Hunger Games now xD

Me too. It was so much better than the movie (although I liked Beat Takeshi in it) but I still used the face of the actors while I was picturing the scenes in my mind.

Too bad the author said he's done with Battle Royale. It could do with a proper sequel, if only to remove Battle Royale: Requiem from my consciousness.

Currently reading The Yamato Dynasty. Next in line is probably that book about Blackwater that I saw in the book store.

[erilaz]

Right now I'm reading Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904). Interesting stuff. Hearn's thesis, in a nutshell, is that the Japanese are the way they are because of ancestor worship. From the thought processes of the Japanese people to the peculiarities of their social institutions, right down to the alacrity with which they obeyed the Meiji Emperor's command to modernize and industrialize, all these things have their roots in the ancestor worship at the heart of Shintō. And despite the enormous changes that Japanese society has undergone in the century since this book was written, a lot of what Hearn writes still has relevance.

[Moh]

I recently read Coma and Marker, both by Robin Cook. Marker was okay, but I loved Coma. I didn't realize just how old it was until I saw checkout dates from 1978.

[questorminator]

Right now I'm reading Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904). Interesting stuff. Hearn's thesis, in a nutshell, is that the Japanese are the way they are because of ancestor worship. From the thought processes of the Japanese people to the peculiarities of their social institutions, right down to the alacrity with which they obeyed the Meiji Emperor's command to modernize and industrialize, all these things have their roots in the ancestor worship at the heart of Shintō. And despite the enormous changes that Japanese society has undergone in the century since this book was written, a lot of what Hearn writes still has relevance.

Now this is interesting. I've always been interested at the unique way of thinking the Japanese have. Not only because I love the culture but also of the many issues that surround them and how they respond to those issues like Yasukuni Shrine, Historical Revisionism and their stubborn refusal to admit that they made mistakes in the past. Maybe this book has the answer. But I think I might have to order from the net. I doubt this is available in my country.

Do you know any material that talks about the Japanese Imperial Family or life inside the Imperial Palace? I love those sorts of stuff. Not the gossipy kind, but the real, factual stuff. Unfortunately the Imperial Household Agency isn't exactly the most open of organizations. But hey, I might get lucky.

[erilaz]

But I think I might have to order from the net. I doubt this is available in my country.

It's old enough to be in the public domain, so it's easy to find free (and legal) online versions, such as this one on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books/about/Jap ... 0eAAAAMAAJ

But if you want a physical book, yeah, you may have to order it somewhere online. I was lucky enough to find a reasonably priced 1904 second printing at a used bookstore in my neighborhood.

Do you know any material that talks about the Japanese Imperial Family or life inside the Imperial Palace? I love those sorts of stuff. Not the gossipy kind, but the real, factual stuff.

The only really relevant thing that turned up when I searched on amazon.com was this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Yamato-Dynast ... 767904974/ — but the customer reviews aren't too positive.

[questorminator]

Ah the Yamato Dynasty. I have a copy as well as that one about Princess Masako.

Yeah, I've read the reviews. It's really unfair seeing as the things he exposes are pretty much what you'll read in other articles about the Japanese Imperial Family. Why some readers claim that they are all conspiracy theories is beyond me. Some might sound wild to you but others? I mean, it's not exactly a secret here in the Philippines that the Japanese stocked gold somewhere here. Whether that gold was ours or other country's is unknown.

It also provided interesting insight on the power play behind the curtains in Japan's government. Do people really think the Emperor holds any authority in his own country? Respect, yes. Authority? No.

Well I guess that'll be as close as I can get to learning stuff about them.

[erilaz]

Right now I'm killing two birds with one stone by reading Baldur Ragnarsson's Esperanto translation of Snorri Sturluson's Edda, our most important primary source of information about Norse mythology.

[erilaz]

Right now I'm reading Norse Inscriptions on American Stones by Olaf Strandwold, published in 1948. I'm a sucker for crackpot runology.* It's quite entertaining to see how Strandwold tries to interpret all sorts of random scratches on stones found in North America as runic inscriptions carved by Norsemen, especially followers of Leif Eriksson at the beginning of the 11th century. In one 26-character inscription, Strandwold interprets four distinctly different characters as all having the value A, and his system of runic numerals is even more preposterous. Only two of the American inscriptions that Strandwold includes in his book really look like they were written in runes: one is the famous Kensington Stone, which is generally regarded as a hoax by runologists and linguists, and the other is the Leif Eriksson monument from Nomans Land Island, Massachusetts, the discoverer of which admitted that it was a forgery in 1970.

*Such a sucker that the most expensive book I've ever bought is George Stephens's copy of Finn Magnusen's Runamo og Runerne from 1841, in which the author interpreted an ancient runic inscription on a rock in Blekinge, Sweden, as a poem about the legendary Battle of Brávellir. A few years later it was proven that the "runes" were nothing more than natural cracks in the rock.

[erilaz]

Feed by M. T. Anderson — It's a satirical YA sci-fi novel about some teenagers in a future America where people get feeds of information, shows, games, chat, and advertising through a chip implanted in their brain in infancy. In other words, it's set in the not-too-distant future.