![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
- japan,
- mbot,
- reading_26,
- rl_26
(no subject)
We have definitely changed seasons now, after three days of high 20s. The temps may be back in the teens but it's a different teens. Windows open, fans on, t-shirts almost too warm, no need for jackets. I mean maybe tomorrow's forecast 10/50 will feel cold but if it's sunny then it will still be warm. This is when one stops dreading the gas bill and starts dreading the Hydro. But all the lilacs are blooming up and down the street, which is the smell of May.
Can't think what I finished last week aside from a Desmond Merrion or two. Am currently hacking my way through two supposed mysteries, both in translation. Open Grave by Kjell Eriksson is all about an associate professor heartburning over a colleague getting the Nobel prize, being neurotic about What's He Really Thinking About Me, and generally getting in the way of the plot. I don't know if anyone is going to get murdered or not-- the title would suggest it, but so far everyone is safe as houses. Eriksson has this annoying trait in common with Robin Hobb, that he talks too much but one can't skim his prose, meaning that it's like wading through molasses.
Then there's The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama, which is all about an architect who designed a family's dream house, his crowning achievement. But then he finds that no one moved into it, and that the couple who commissioned it were in fact divorced long before they consulted him in spite of presenting themselves as a happy family with three children, and that the father has vanished from the apartment he was living in by himself and no one knows where he is now. Architect naturally concludes that this must be a long-considered plot by the father to ensnare him into.... something. This is getting into Strange Houses territory of 'why would you automatically think *that*?' Unless this is just another case of The Japanese Are Like That and it has something to do with homogeneous cultures being able to pick up on clues invisible to yer average gaijin ie me.
Also a lot about Bruno Taut, last seen in Broken Homes I believe, and his chairs. Or chair. Architect thinks Taut's chair is the key to the mystery.
But between neurotic Swedes and neurotic Japanese I'm tempted to DNF both and take them back to the library. And to forge ahead with Murderbot. Just, first reads of Murderbot are both high anxiety and high confusion for me. Anxiety because bad things are going to happen oh no, confusion because I can never visualise where Murderbot is and what it's doing at any time. And must remember that Murderbot is an it, Alexander Skarsgård notwithstanding.
Can't think what I finished last week aside from a Desmond Merrion or two. Am currently hacking my way through two supposed mysteries, both in translation. Open Grave by Kjell Eriksson is all about an associate professor heartburning over a colleague getting the Nobel prize, being neurotic about What's He Really Thinking About Me, and generally getting in the way of the plot. I don't know if anyone is going to get murdered or not-- the title would suggest it, but so far everyone is safe as houses. Eriksson has this annoying trait in common with Robin Hobb, that he talks too much but one can't skim his prose, meaning that it's like wading through molasses.
Then there's The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama, which is all about an architect who designed a family's dream house, his crowning achievement. But then he finds that no one moved into it, and that the couple who commissioned it were in fact divorced long before they consulted him in spite of presenting themselves as a happy family with three children, and that the father has vanished from the apartment he was living in by himself and no one knows where he is now. Architect naturally concludes that this must be a long-considered plot by the father to ensnare him into.... something. This is getting into Strange Houses territory of 'why would you automatically think *that*?' Unless this is just another case of The Japanese Are Like That and it has something to do with homogeneous cultures being able to pick up on clues invisible to yer average gaijin ie me.
Also a lot about Bruno Taut, last seen in Broken Homes I believe, and his chairs. Or chair. Architect thinks Taut's chair is the key to the mystery.
But between neurotic Swedes and neurotic Japanese I'm tempted to DNF both and take them back to the library. And to forge ahead with Murderbot. Just, first reads of Murderbot are both high anxiety and high confusion for me. Anxiety because bad things are going to happen oh no, confusion because I can never visualise where Murderbot is and what it's doing at any time. And must remember that Murderbot is an it, Alexander Skarsgård notwithstanding.