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This was a random charity shop purchase and I have no idea what to expect. Translation flows well so far though.

Really rather well written, this. And well conceived. Engaging.

Rather good so far, but in a decent genre novel way - not a Booker Prize shortlist way.

Entertaining enough, despite being surprisingly riddled with racist descriptions of various characters/ethnic groups - kinda hard to tell if this is deliberate, to indicate the prevalent social attitudes of an oddly-divided, confusingly nationalistic world, or just unpleasant. I'm hoping the former.

Forgot I'd not finished this. Had also forgotten how good it is.

"Yesterday, shitting, I did know
The profit to my arse I owe;
Such was the smell that from it slunk
That I was with it all bestunk."

Still wildly variable in quality, and incredibly racist.

A few too many anecdotes about the making of films I've not seen, but still decently interesting and pointed.

Kinda repetitive, many of these stories (mostly like Inception - stories within stories making you forget which story you're in), and filled with selfish, judgemental arseholes. But that makes it pretty easy to dip in and out with gaps of several months in between.

Starting to drag a bit, TBH...

Have had this sitting on the shelf for ages. Immortal talking fish as the source of the patriarchy? What's not to look like?

Absorbed in Letters / Gesaku Zanmai is my favourite so far - a perfect description of writerly prevarication, distraction and self-doubt.

Decently readable, some solid suggestions, and enough acknowledgement of this being easier said than done to make it feel credible. I can see what the fuss is about with this one...

£1.99 on Kindle, so thought may as well. Readable so far, albeit not telling me much I didn't already know.

Slightly old-fashioned in style, with lots of historical exposition early on. But, to be fair, better to do that fast to get to the plot rather than drag it out to work it in more "naturally", and the conceit of the Civil Service exams is a good premise for an info-dump. And it's a good, clean translation. Decent.

This is rather fun.

First story down and, despite some slightly pretentious translation (judging by the introduction, the American translator is a fan of convoluted archaisms), good stuff.

Haven't worked out what the hell this is about yet. Talking cats make it far less annoying than IQ84, though.

"We have a bad habit, encouraged by those concealing ill intent, of insisting that people already suffering should be afflicted with further, unnecessary pain. This is the paradox of tolerance, the reason of free speech: we hesitate to admit that some people are just fucking evil and need to be stopped."