A curmudgeon writes.
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson.
My rating: five stars
A short review for a short book: read it.
Look, I should probably do a bit more than that.
This is the first collection of short stories by Shirley Jackson that I’d read, and from what I gather it’s the only one I really need to. (That’s not to say that I won’t, just that this seems to be the prevailing sentiment.)
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The Guesthouse at the Sign of the Teetering Globe by Franziska zu Reventlow and James J. Conway (tr).
My rating: four stars
Franziska zu Reventlow isn’t anyone I’d heard of before, but she certainly had a life. Born into German nobility, she believed the abolition of marriage (and embrace of sexual freedom) were key to women becoming equal to men. She was known for kicking on in Munich’s Schwabing entertainment district, for hanging out with Rilke, and for philosophical jousting with an intellectual circle brought together by appreciation of Ibsen and for freaking out the squares.
(And, later, their embrace of, er, antisemitism.)
She also was a translator, and wrote stories. Several of them are collected in Rixdorf’s presentation of The Guesthouse at the Sign of the Teetering Globe, which originally appeared in 1917.
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Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Generated its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger.
My rating: three stars
Japan is a country that’s had a Bit Of A Time. At the end of WWII is was bombed into atomic submission (twice) by the nation that would become the defacto dictator of political structure and positions of power, it experienced unprecedented growth and became one of the richest countries in the world.
Then, of course, there was a bubble and everything went tits-up. Security was no longer assured. Birth rates fell. Productivity fell through the floor. Entrenched ways of working started to inhibit growth, rather than spur it to nation-envying heights. And millions of adults locked themselves away from the world in voluntary seclusion, becoming hikikomori, individuals choosing to withdraw from the world entirely, often placing burdens on the familial unit.
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Yeah nah. 