User Profile

bookafnd Locked account

agafnd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years ago

i read a lot of science fiction but also a lot of other random stuff. libraries are good. i also like the little free variety of library, used bookstores, & the high seas. he/him

my fake and arbitrary rating system: - 5 stars: good. i recommend it - 4 stars: fine, but not entirely my cup of tea - 3 stars: not good, but with some redeeming qualities that might make it worth reading - 2 stars: bad, with a few redeeming qualities - 1 star: horrible

mastodon: @agafnd@www.librepunk.club

This link opens in a pop-up window

bookafnd's books

To Read (View all 5)

Currently Reading

Tomihiko Morimi, Emily Balistrieri: The Tatami Time Machine Blues (Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers) 5 stars

In the boiling heat of summer, a broken remote control for an air conditioner threatens …

tatami time machine blues

5 stars

The timeline of events seems to have been this:

  • Makoto Ueda writes the play "Summer Time Machine Blues"
  • Tomihiko Morimi writes the novel "The Tatami Galaxy"
  • "Summer Time Machine Blues" is adapted into a film
  • "The Tatami Galaxy" is adapted into a TV anime series; Makoto Ueda writes the script, as well as the scripts for other Morimi screen adaptations
  • Tomihiko Morimi writes this novel, which is a retelling of "Summer Time Machine Blues" using the characters and setting from "The Tatami Galaxy".

The film "Summer Time Machine Blues" is pointless drivel; that's what makes it good. I think I liked it better than this book. Morimi's protagonist has too much bitterness in him to replicate the fun environment of the film. On the other hand, I do have a certain fondness for "The Tatami Galaxy", so it was nice seeing further adventures of these dubious characters.

Thinking about it, …

reviewed Tatami Galaxy by Emily Balistrieri

Tomihiko Morimi, Emily Balistrieri: Tatami Galaxy (2022, HarperCollins Publishers) 4 stars

tatami galaxy

5 stars

If you can penetrate the thick layer of irony that the protagonist's self-aggrandizing narration is coated with, it's an amusing book. I often like familiar things more, so the repetitive structure worked to its advantage – I grew fond of these characters, as dubious as most of them were.

Actually, I can't give a general recommendation for this book. It's the sort of work that makes me wonder what kind of person the author is. It's perhaps a book for someone who wants to examine a particular Type of Guy under a microscope.

John Darnielle: Devil House (Hardcover, 2022, MCD) 4 stars

devil house

5 stars

this is the kind of book that takes itself and puts itself back together again. it's full of john darnielle's typical preoccupation with small towns, houses, people, & the small details of people's lives. the kind of writing you can smell the asphalt from. i listened to the audiobook, so i got to hear john darnielle read his work out loud, which of course suits the text perfectly.

quoted The Journey to the West Volume I by Anthony C. Yu (The Journey to the West (revised edition), #1)

Anthony C. Yu, 吴承恩: The Journey to the West Volume I (Paperback, 2012, The University of Chicago Press) No rating

Anthony C. Yu's translation of The Journey to the West, initially published in 1983, …

In a small boat o’er ten thousand miles of misty waves I lean to the silent, single sail, Circled by sounds of the mermaid-fish. My mind cleansed, my care purged, here lacks wealth or fame; Leisurely I pick stems of bulrushes and reeds.

Counting the seagulls is pleasure to be told! At willowed banks and reeded bays My wife and son join my joyous laugh. I sleep most soundly as wind and wave recede; No shame, no glory, nor any misery.

The Journey to the West Volume I by , (The Journey to the West (revised edition), #1) (Page 231)

John Darnielle: Devil House (Hardcover, 2022, MCD) 4 stars

For his contribution, Derrick meditated a moment on the things that make people afraid to enter a place. In his literature class, when they did Edgar Allan Poe, they spent almost the whole time talking about fear of the unknown; to him this was a sort of training-wheels fear. The unknown is too vast and shapeless to be a threat. To Derrick, harm, the prospect of it, was the deciding quantity: the possibility that something inside will hurt you. That’s the stuff that makes you cross the street to avoid a house. It’s the chance that there’s something inside that might leave a mark on you. You’d be even more scared if you knew what it was.

Devil House by  (Page 221 - 222)
https://bookwyrm.social/user/agafnd
bookwyrm.social
CC-MAIN-2024-22
113892
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:G36DLTWJTANRORDIPOHM23ADXLWVCSI2
<urn:uuid:625f8a62-9bc0-4ff4-8bf7-ff293b9965bf>
2024-05-26T15:04:21Z
143.110.147.80
text/html
sha1:H5TCHOUE5ZILIGAWGPHHBJPEC2P3QQBV
<urn:uuid:f8475bcc-5cbf-4a2e-8b39-7a5a38038e37>
https://bookwyrm.social/user/agafnd
response
<urn:uuid:2923574f-79fb-454b-835a-47b9748d2fe2>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-22
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-21
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/