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August reading aka these long gaps in my memory, where do they come from?
English
Buried for Pleasure
Japanese
Phantom Moon Tower 2
Aoneko 5
--both rereads
Kasho no Yume
-half of which I read in July anyway. This month I only read the title story and almost all of the last one, because the so above it all prince of Sou annoys me, wandering the world and observing tilting kingdoms (yes OK, that's 'declining' but tilt is what the kanji means) to see what will happen to them. Also because I can make *no sense at all* of the arrangement of the palace of Sou whither our prince has gone to report, so screw that.
Kasho no Yume itself is not bad as a murder mystery, bar the detail of not saying what the mysterious artifact at the centre of the mystery is, that I can recall. I know what it does, but is it ever described anywhere? Maybe a bit pat in the resolution, but better than Buried for Pleasure where, for the first and only time in my long life, I figured the murderer before the denouement.
I have a lovely reading lens now that lets me read without glasses. (Have to keep reminding myself that even with bifocals I always needed glasses for Japanese.) Why haven't I read scads more this month? Well, I fancy it's because I only have one lens, and the other eye is the non-dominant, badly astigmatic, cataract-glazed one that simply isn't much help whatever kind of lens it's wearing. So yeah, one eyed reading = tired. Still better than both allergy-dried eyes in fuzzy bifocals and reading glasses, at least in terms of frustration factor. (Though they were fine for reading in July, I note.)
English
Buried for Pleasure
Japanese
Phantom Moon Tower 2
Aoneko 5
--both rereads
Kasho no Yume
-half of which I read in July anyway. This month I only read the title story and almost all of the last one, because the so above it all prince of Sou annoys me, wandering the world and observing tilting kingdoms (yes OK, that's 'declining' but tilt is what the kanji means) to see what will happen to them. Also because I can make *no sense at all* of the arrangement of the palace of Sou whither our prince has gone to report, so screw that.
Kasho no Yume itself is not bad as a murder mystery, bar the detail of not saying what the mysterious artifact at the centre of the mystery is, that I can recall. I know what it does, but is it ever described anywhere? Maybe a bit pat in the resolution, but better than Buried for Pleasure where, for the first and only time in my long life, I figured the murderer before the denouement.
I have a lovely reading lens now that lets me read without glasses. (Have to keep reminding myself that even with bifocals I always needed glasses for Japanese.) Why haven't I read scads more this month? Well, I fancy it's because I only have one lens, and the other eye is the non-dominant, badly astigmatic, cataract-glazed one that simply isn't much help whatever kind of lens it's wearing. So yeah, one eyed reading = tired. Still better than both allergy-dried eyes in fuzzy bifocals and reading glasses, at least in terms of frustration factor. (Though they were fine for reading in July, I note.)
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My favourite of his for sheer entertainment value is The Moving Toyshop, I think, with Holy Disorders, Frequent Hearses, and Love Lies Bleeding coming in shortly afterwards... well, you see, I discovered him at boarding school in the library, and then read everything of his that I could find. You know how it goes.
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(In retrospect, we had a very good school library, thinking about it.)
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Sou is set up so that each member of the family has some important office or duty. The family runs the country like a family business or oligarchy(?). Prince's official job appears to be "do nothing playboy" but his unofficial job appears to be spying on other countries, as far as I can tell, and offering a strategic poke to the precariously balanced, if necessary and opportunity available. His father can't do it, as explained in the anecdote about the king/kirin pair that fell dead the instant their army crossed the border into another country, but because he's technically a "free agent" it gets around the restriction. I like the implications that countries actually have a lot of interaction and information about each other in spite of the gods restrictions. It makes me want entire books of spy/politics stories set in that world.
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