Banana

What a ride. Reading this in anticipation to the Nolan movie. This book drags on quite a bunch and it felt like the pacing was very off. The last portion felt very repetitive at moments and dragged out. This is more of a me issue, but found it hard to remember the greek names and sometimes I forgot who is who. The Fagles translation tries to keep it more poetic and that causes it to be a bit harder to digest.

Overall I'm glad I was able to read this, but I don't think i would want to reread it.

A little slice of life story about 3 sisters coming back together to support each other in times of needs. It felt like watching a movie where the plot itself doesn't matter and is all about how the characters go through life. Outside of the great cast of characters, you also get the exploration on what it means to be a half japanese person leaving in japan, and their treatment of people who stand out in such a homogenous society.

The world building and the characters were great, the plot a bit cliche but it served its purposed. Unfortunately is the beginning of a long wait for the second book.

It was pretty fun read, saw it at a bookstore, bought it and finished it on the ride home from the bookstore. You can definitely feel how he influenced the current landscape of Japanese Detective Novels, If I didn't know that Rampo was from the 1920s, I would have mistakenly believed he was influenced by current authors like Keigo Higashino. The plot points can be a bit cliche by current standards but I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it given how short it was.

It starts strong but overall I kinda lost the sense of what's going on. There didn't feel like a overarching plot line besides the world is fucked, what can we do about it, instead there are tidbits of a bunch of characters and other scenarios. It felt like a chronicle of life, rather than a book.