Mandy

I... I don't know what to say. This was a horrible book - not in that it was badly written, but because everything and everyone in it were just horrible. It wasn't depressing though, probably because it didn't touch very deeply on the human condition or society at large. It was just like a competition of how mean can people be to each other. Heathcliff probably now dwells amongst one of my most disliked characters in all literature. Still though, I'm giving this around 2.5 to 3 stars because despite the utter awfulness of everything going on in here, it was still fairly engaging to read. I'd have enjoyed it a bit more if there was actually just a single character worth rooting for but there isn't, and maybe that's a deliberate decision on Bronte's part.The story revolves around two families: the Earnshaws at Wuthering Heights, and the Lintons at Thrushcross Grange. One fateful night, Daddy Earnshaw takes in an apparently orphaned boy of unknown origins who doesn't seem to speak a lick of English. Eventually the boy comes to be known as Heathcliff as both his Christian and his last name, and though Daddy Earnshaw himself is partial to Heathcliff, almost everyone else treats him like dirt, especially the Earnshaw son, Hindley, and their neighbour, Edgar Linton. Heathcliff soon strikes up a strong alliance with the daughter of the Earnshaw family, Catherine, who is also surprisingly nasty.The first time I read this book, I went in expecting some epic romance as pop culture has led me to believe (thanks for nothing, pop culture). No. Wrong. That is without doubt hands down the worst way to read this book ever. I would strongly advise against expecting warm fuzzies or even any kind of ships you would bother rooting for. So this time, I went in expecting a tragedy, which... is slightly better but also not really quite the right expectations to have either. I'd say go in expecting a complete shitshow, something like a crazy soap opera but without any likeable or sympathetic characters. Shit hits the fan pretty early in the book anyway, so you would know what you're in for before you're 30% through. It's a bit juicy like [b:The Count of Monte Cristo 7126 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611834134l/7126.SY75.jpg 391568], but the vibe is different in that at least in COMC you have plenty of people and relationships that you wanted to root for. Here you're really just waiting for everyone to fade to black.So first up, Heathcliff was probably the worst character I've read in a while, and I'm already inclined to be generous because he had a pretty rough childhood and upbringing, being ill-treated and abused as he was by Hindley Earnshaw. His entire motivation in life was basically just Catherine, and to bring down all others who even remotely stands in his way. He cared for nothing else, neither religious redemption, nor any kind of empathy for his fellow human beings. He wasn't just an indolent, brooding misanthrope either - he was actively malevolent towards his neighbours and everyone he viewed to have done him wrong in his life. He's the sort of spider that weaves a web for years and patiently waits and waits until the people he seeks vengeance towards falls into his trap. He doesn't hesitate to use brute force and violence against anything and everyone, whether man, woman, animal, child, adult, etc. I don't know if this is remotely a redeeming factor, but his malevolence doesn't have sexual tendencies (at least as far as we know, although I'm pretty sure he would've had to rape Isabella to get her pregnant since they were estranged very early on in their marriage). It still doesn't remotely excuse him in any way though.Catherine was not really much better but then again she considers Heathcliff and herself soulmates so that ought to give us an idea of her true nature. She doesn't resort to as much physical violence as Heathcliff does, but she's incredibly bitchy, unfeeling, and ungrateful to most of the people around her. She at least shows some capacity for love and some form of sympathy, though remaining incredibly self-centered throughout it all.There were some characters who may be slightly less annoying than the two main ones, namely Mrs Dean, Mr Lockwood, Hareton, and the younger Catherine, although all of them were also at least mildly annoying at some point or other (I especially wasn't a fan of Hareton physically striking Catherine nearer the end of the book. Yes, she was being pretty snobby, but considering what she's been through and the fact that Hareton is also physically bigger and older than she is, that really raised a lot of red flags for me.).Do I recommend this book? Maybe if you were in a particularly masochistic mood and wanted something where everybody's at least a bit of an asshole and sometimes wholly without redeeming factors.

Ah, Murderbot. I've missed its jaded-ass voice, and its obsession with entertainment media is so relatable. “Why am I compelled by my guilty conscience to work, I just want to stay in my corner and watch drama serials all day” is definitely a mood.

I'm starting to think that the episodic nature of Murderbot novellas are probably... deliberate? To perhaps mirror the episodes of the serials that it loves watching so much. In any case, that's completely up my alley and my short attention span these days. This installment was enjoyable, with Murderbot teaming up with some old friends to bring down a nasty corporation.

There're definitely some interesting messages to be had if you dig a bit deeper below the surface - there is criticism about capitalism and big corporations gaining too much power, there is questioning what exactly makes humans human, and then also living through events from the perspective from a robot for whom the boundaries between AI and humanity is tenuous at best. This is the book where Murderbot catches feelings, and it doesn't like it.

I'm not a huge sci-fi reader so there are occasionally passages where I zone out quite a bit. Murderbot can sometimes get a bit technical in its narrative, but even just being there for its hilarious asides and commentary on the events and people around it, as well as the dialogue that goes on between itself and its companions is worth reading this whole series for.

Certainly continuing on the rest of the series.

“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”

Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.

Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.

“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”

So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.

“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”

Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.

There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”

Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.

OK, this was really quite a bit of good fun. According to the afterword by the publishers at the end, this style of mystery is under the subgenre called “honkaku”, which is much more interested in “pure” mysteries without any social criticism. Readers are given all the clues they need to solve the mystery before the end of the book, so there's perhaps less focus on the personalities and backstories of the characters and more emphasis on the actual puzzle.

Indeed, you really do feel like this is a logic puzzle in the form of a novel. Things are laid out for you right from the prologue itself. It's got a sort of narrative thread, but it's really just our two main characters, Kiyoshi and Kazumi, discussing with each other and therefore infodumping every little hint and detail of the puzzle to the reader. It's not exactly a crime-solving journey that the reader is invited on, it's really the author giving you the puzzle pieces and telling you to try solving it yourself.

It takes a while to get used to but I found it pretty fun. Some of the dialogue may seem a bit stilted but I chalk it to translation. I find that East Asian languages inevitably lose a lot of colour and nuance when translated to English, and it results in slightly strange-sounding dialogue sometimes which I don't really mind. Plus, this book was published 40 years ago so I'm sure a lot of the terminology, proverbs, and slang used here is already long outdated.

I didn't quite solve the murder before the last Act, but I'm slightly happy to say that I did guess it just before it was revealed in the narrative, with the final clues that Kiyoshi threw down before he went ahead with the full explanation. The solution was fairly ingenious, but I thought the backstory was more mundane than we might've expected, although I usually find that to be the case for murder stories with the most sensational premises, what with all these astrology elements and bizarre dismemberments.

I'd definitely read more of Soji Shimada's books.

Short but a duly impactful and iconic story. By today's standards, The Call of Cthulhu probably wouldn't be considered remotely scary - except in how dense the writing is compared to contemporary horror - but it's still such a great study in cosmic horror. I like to call it the fear of the vast unknown.

The writing style might not be for everyone but if you're able to stomach it, I strongly recommend it for just about anybody who loves fantasy, sci-fi, and the idea of being tiny and insignificant in a vast and unknowable universe.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.