Welcome to Litsy!

This book is wild. An architect has won a competition for designing a tower in Tokyo for prisoners, for whom we need to feel sympathy, cause aren‘t we all human beings? She feels conflicted about this, consults AI and a younger boyfriend and it‘s all pretty meta but so Japanese and I devoured it!

Thank you Helen, for sending me this one!

📸Teshima Art Island, Japan

I‘m reading a book set in Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan.

It‘s weird to keep reading almost-but-not-quite my name!

#HaikuADay #HaikuHive

Skipped yesterday‘s haiku but I‘ll go ahead & post today‘s which is inspired by this picture & it being Wednesday & Hump Day 🐪 & me thinking how even if I‘m excited for the upcoming weekend, the 2 long days to get there will be exhausting. 😵‍💫

Hump Day Dunes

Getting over the
Midweek hump, descending fast
Like climbing sand dunes

Putting all the books I want to read/finish reading by the end of the year in one place was probably a mistake. 😜 This is a lot! I do plan on listening to the audiobook for several of them (and switching to audio for a couple that I can't get motivated to finish), so that will help.

4.5 Stars • No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai follows Yozo Oba, a young man alienated from society, masking his despair with a clownish persona. Through his notebooks, we see his troubled childhood, failed relationships, addiction, and suicide attempts, reflecting his profound sense of being "inhuman." Set in early 20th-century Japan, the novel explores isolation, identity, and societal pressures, culminating in Yozo‘s tragic self-destruction.

Pensive and atmospheric, Kawabata‘s last novel, left unfinished when he died. We never hear from the young woman brought to an asylum by her mother and fiancé in an attempt to cure her “body blindness,” her inability to see her lover in times of excitement. Communication through the pealing of bells. Father‘s life lost in a riding accident on a cliff. All very dramatic, almost Gothic. Trauma, memory, couples, bodies, guilt. Trans. 2017

I was grabbed by the cover of this and went in blind. Early on, it seemed like it was going to be an exploration of language, but at the halfway point it‘s doing nothing for me, so I‘m out.

I just couldn't resist a book with a cheeky title, now could I???

Online #independentbookshopday #bookmail!