Yuki's TBR Challenge 2020

I figured this group is the perfect place to tackle my TBR stack. Some books have been sitting there for years...
So I'll try to get a few of them out of the way:

1. Amy Tan: Saving fish from drowning
2. Richard House: The kill *
3. DNF --> Charles Elton: Mr. Toppit * --> DNF
4. Tim Davys: Amberville *
5. Jonathan Barnes: The Domino Men
6. Wang Shuo: Playing for thrills
7. Morten Ramsland: Doghead
8. Vidar Sundstol: The land of dreams
9. Bjarne Reuter: Hotel Marazul
10. Beth Gutcheon: More than you know
11. Kathy Reichs: Devil Bones
12. Hitomi Kanehara: Autofiction

And a few extra/alternative ones:

- Hiromi Kawakami: Strange weather in Tokyo *
- Yasushi Inoue: The Tea Master
- Yasushi Inoue: The hunting gun
- Yasunari Kawabata: House of the sleeping beauties
- Banana Yoshimoto: Lizard
- Yrsa Sigurdardottir: I remember you

The books will be read in German, except the ones marked with *, which will be read in English.
:)

Welcome aboard! I've yet to read Amy Tan but I'm aiming to get there. And I'm also aiming to read more Japanese authors, especially titles considered classics. I don't think I recognize the ones you've listed. Are you a member of this group? https://www.librarything.com/groups/japaneseliterature Not very lively, but a couple of us still keep it going.

Thank you so much for your comment! I have sent you a message. :)

Welcome! I haven't heard of a single item in your list. I hope you'll post thoughts/reviews as you read each. I'm always looking for more items to add to my ever growing wish list :)

Thanks so much! - Yes, some of the obscure ones I found in the bargain piles of my local bookstore. With some I don't even remember what made me interested in them in the first place, ugh... ...

Others like the Japanese writers on the list seem to be very well known in Japan, like Hiromi Kawakami and Hitomi Kanehara which seemed to be among the young "shooting stars" of literature in Japan a few years ago.
I understand Banana Yoshimoto is an established favourite - many people in Japan read either her or Haruki Murakami. And Yasushi Inoue's work is among the "modern classics" (?).

I haven't read any of the writers of this list yet, either - apart from Banana Yoshimoto (I tried to get into her style a few times and failed... :() and Amy Tan - I read "The Bonesetter's Daughter" ages ago and don't remember anything...

Well, I've started Saving fish from drowning the day before yesterday. It started pretty slow and I was just before DNFing it, but from page 60 or so it started to get more entertaining. So I'm continuing on - it's got around 560 pages, so let's see how long it takes me...

Interesting about Murakami, I'd heard elsewhere that he's more celebrated outside of Japan than within it.

Welcome! I've only heard of a couple of the authors but I'm intrigued by your list. Can't wait to see what you end up thinking of the books you read.

Guys, stupid question, but how do I get the line thorugh the text to mark books as read?
*sigh*... Sorry, I'm so dumb when it comes to technical questions... :(

(strike) in front and then (/strike) at the end; except you use angle brackets instead of the round ones.

Thanks, Cecrow!!! Except it doesn't work with me, as usual when I try something.... :( Touchstones don't work with me, either...
Am I too stupid or what am I doing wrong?

Looks like you tried square brackets; still the wrong kind of bracket. Square brackets is what you use for touchstones; you'll see it tried making links to book pages for you so, ta-dah, you DO know how to make touchstones work. :)

See entry #3 of this topic, for exactly how to do it. Lots of other good help in this topic, too: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104943

**Yay!!** Thank you!!! :D That link helps a lot!

Saving fish from drowning was ok. Sometimes amusing, sometimes moving, sometimes far too long. It would have been better with 150 pages cut. As it is, it's dragged out far too long. The concept was ok, the writing style was ok, I got a good few thoughts and quotes out of it, but overall it was too boring to be anything above 3***...

Recently picked up More than you know by Beth Gutcheon . It took a while till I got into the story because she kept introducing a load of characters and different time levels, but: by the time I really was immersed in the story and wanted to know what happened next, I discovered that my copy of the book is faulty.

There are about 30 pages duplicate in my copy and another 30 pages missing... :S Aargh........ My library doesn't have a copy of this book and the edition I have seems to be the standard German edition. I.e. the other copies will most likely be faulty, too.

I finally discovered another edition on ebay and bought it and now I have to wait for days for it to arrive... :(
Not happy.

(And no, before anyone asks: I don't use amazon, although it's got a quick delivery. I hate amazon with a burning passion and will do anything to avoid it.)

>14 Yuki_Onna:, my edition of Bleak House last year had the same duplicate pages problem, but at least there weren't any missing, I could just skip the duplicate ones. I've never seen that before in my life, and now you've seen it; are publishers getting clumsy?

Interesting that stuff like that seems to happen pretty frequently these days.
Yeah, I most definetely think publishers are indeed getting clumsy or at least have dismissed most of their proof-readers... :( Have you also noticed loads of typos or punctuation errors in books in the last years?

Oh, the missing pages are MOST annoying!!! Grrr... :( I'd have finished the book today if it had been a regular copy... But now I have to wait for the proper copy to arrive... :(
Clumsy publishing s*u*c*k*s... :P

I have definitely noticed more typos in recent years. I wonder if it has to do with the prevalence of self publishing. People trying to get things printed quickly on the cheap so quality suffers.

I've only had one book in recent memory that had it's pages in the wrong order, with some dupes and some missing. I had to buy a second copy of the book, which was fine. That one was from a major publisher too. It was definitely a weird experience.

I ordered a book a couple of years ago that turned out to be missing the last two thirds of the book. Oops. At least they sent me a complete copy, free of charge.

>18 LittleTaiko:, whew, that's a whopper misprint!

>17 Narilka: Narilka:
>18 LittleTaiko: LittleTaiko:

Thank you so much for your messages!! I'm always happy to read comments on my posts, even if we're talking about misprints... Yes, that's a weird experience to have duplicate pages and even more so to have pages missing... You're like: "How come they didn't notice this???"

Yes, it could be definetely be because of people trying getting things printed as cheap and quickly as possible!
OMG, Little Taiko, the last two thirds missing! :-o At least they sent you a free complete copy...

The copy I bought on ebay still hasn't arrived... :( Most annoying...
I've started Playing for thrills in the meantime. That's a tough one to trudge through, at least for me.

Finally finished More than you know .

I'm afraid I don't have that much to say about it. It's supposed to be a mixture between thriller, historical fiction (U.S. during the Great Depression and around 1840 - 1890), ghost story (that's why I picked it up in the first place) and romance. It took me a bit to get into, but then after the first chapter, in which Beth Gutcheon keeps introducing characters and changing time lines frequently, it was an easy read.

I quite enjoyed the budding romance between the main characters and the ghost sightings were really atmospheric. (I still haven't figured out who the ghost was - there are three people who are in the running...) The ending was really touching. On the other hand, the characters didn't grow on me that much and it sometimes dragged on a bit. While it wasn't bad by any means, it left me strangely unimpressed in the overall view.
I'd rate it around three stars.

>21 Yuki_Onna:, those ones are tough, when all the ingredients are there and yet something's making the reading a drag that's tough to identify. For me it's usually something in the writing style.

Finally finished Playing for thrills . Boy, I really didn't like that one! I really had to drag my way through it.
I've got to get a bit of distance between myself and the book first before I can post a review...

Right now, I'm so fed up with my TBR list because of that and have started Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone instead. :) Hope I'll fly through this one and enjoy it - I've never read any HP before...

Yep, Cecrow, I still haven't figured out what it was that made me so indifferent towards More than you know, but with Playing for thrills it WAS definitely the writing style and the ton of cultural references I didn't really understand...

>23 Yuki_Onna:, Harry Potter is a curious series, as its writing style grows with the characters. The first one is appropriate for 11-year-olds, but by the end of the series they are in their late teens and it's quite different. Don't dismiss the series based on the young tone of the first, is what I'm saying. :)

>24 Cecrow: Cecrow:, Oh, that's good to know! I didn't know that the series evolved that much in the writing style. Don't worry, though, right now I'm really in the mood for a "childrens" book! :)

>23 Yuki_Onna: Hope you enjoy Harry Potter :) Thats a comfort read for me, esp the earlier books.

>26 Narilka: Narilka: Thank you so much! I really enjoyed Harry Potter and will definitely be continuing with the series! I really like the world she created, it's great to delve into. Do you have a favourite volume?

After H.P. and the Philosopher's Stone I chose two very quick reads, two R. L. Stine's books.
After those I REALLY needed something "deeper", but didn't want to read anything Japanese from my TBR pile.

So I've been bad again, abandoned my TBR AGAIN and started My cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier today. But I'm DETERMINED to return to my TBR after that! :P

Finished My cousin Rachel and started Strange weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami two days ago.

I really enjoyed My cousin Rachel. Intrigues, love, murder, mistrust and deceit among the landed gentry in Cornwall in the 19th century. My only criticism is that it would have done the book some good if she had cut 50 - 100 pages. The landscape descriptions and the superficial small talk among the characters were often a bit long, and that interfered with the suspense of the story a bit sometimes.
All in all, it was a nice, atmospheric and suspenseful story - exactly what I like and expect of Daphne du Maurier.

Finished Strange weather in Tokyo today.

Really enjoyed that one! It was a quiet (like much Japanese literature, it seems... They often tell their stories really in a quiet, calm, unagitated way...) down-to-earth love story between an elderly school teacher and one of his former students. Very lovely and highly recommendable (as long as you're not looking for action or pretentious kitsch).

>28 Yuki_Onna: Thanks for the review on My Cousin Rachel. I love Rebecca and have never tried anything else by du Maurier. That sounds like a good one for my wish list.

>30 Narilka: Narilka: Exactly why I picked it up, too. I had read Rebecca and a short story collection by her (wonderfully creepy in parts) and love both. My Cousin Rachel is definitely a good pick for your wish list then!

I've been bad again and strayed from my TBR stack yet again...
Read Revenant by John Trenmore last week. An epic fantasy set in The Boundless World - and fantasy isn't even my cup of tea...
It was great though, an entertaining read dealing with the topic of how peoples' beliefs shape the world they live in. All the while the hero had to travel the world with his friends on a quest and fight his way through waves of different kinds of undead creatures. ...

On to The goddesses by Swan Huntley. I just read the first three pages yet, so I cannot say much about it yet...

But AFTER that one, I'm DETERMINED to return to my TBR pile! -Well, you know the drill, don't you? ;)

amazing list! i'm into japanese authors as well, although i have not read much yet (mostly murakami, who is one of my faves right now ^_^). i have kawakami and yoshimoto in my personal wish list. how do you find their books?

i just finished yoko ogawa's "the housekeeper and the professor" and i've fallen in love with her, if you're still looking for more books for your tbr ^_^ also, have you checked out the tales of the otori series and the tales of shikanoko prequel series? they're a fantasy series by australian author lian hearn who fell in love with japan and its history.

i also want to learn german this year and am looking for an easy introductory level kind of book i can start with...any suggestions for me?

>28 Yuki_Onna: - I enjoyed My Cousin Rachel quite a bit, much more than Rebecca. We had quite a good discussion about it during book club.

>34 LittleTaiko: LittleTaiko: Wow, you even enjoyed it much more than Rebecca ? I really also enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was a bit too long for me, so Rebecca stays the winner for me. But then, a good discussion can greatly improve the enjoyment of a book, I know! You're lucky to be in a good book club! :)

-I just started The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes. It started really promising! :)

After the promising start, The Domino Men - an Urban Fantasy set in London - was a quick, fluent and entertaining read, BUT some of the events and descriptions were a bit too nasty for my taste. Jonathan Barnes is a very talented storyteller, though.

I then picked up Mr Toppit by Charles Elton. DNFed it after ten pages or so. Just not my writing style - I couldn't get into it and the plot didn't interest me enough to push through 400 pages. Unhauled it immediately.

Now started what I hope to be an entertaining thriller: The other woman by Sandie Jones.

The other woman was a highly enjoyable read! I didn't see that twist at the ending coming.

Now I've returned to my TBR, started Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara last night.
I'm only a few pages in, but it started very promising. The main protagonist seems to be VERY deranged...

Autofiction is a strange book. It's obvious right from the start that the author is young, cool and not afraid to break with the conventions of society. The result is a short, raw, hard, up-front book with a lot of trigger warnings in it. You mustn't be afraid of reading about sex, loss, drug use, mental health problems and violence along with lots of swearing when you set out to read it.
It's a short book but it took me quite long to get through, don't know why. Maybe because of its inconsistencies, or rather those of the main character.
Right from the start it becomes obvious that the main character, Rin, a young woman of 22 years, has got some serious issues. She's on her way back from honeymoon with her husband and it starts with her telling how sweet she thinks he is and how much she loves him and will never leave him. A few sentences further into the book she swears how rude and cold she thinks him to be and thinks he is cheating on her with a stewardess when he goes to the toilet in the plane. Strange...
In the rest of the book, when she starts looking back upon her life and her past relationships, it becomes clear that she has had these serious mental health troubles and relationship problems right from the start when she was a teenager. She has always handled her relationships in an unhealthy way and in the end it becomes a bit clearer why and how she became like that.

A book about a massively troubled human being. Did I like it? I'm not sure. Do I recommend it? Not sure either. You really must decide for yourself.

Finished House of the sleeping beauties by Yasunari Kawabata.

It must be obvious from the topic, but the reading of House of the sleeping beauties troubled me quite a bit. A tiny book, but certainly not an easy read. The language very old-fashioned, but that might have been the translation.
The book is strangely beautiful in parts, but some of the thoughts of the old man as well as the overall premise are unsettling and nasty. It ends in a strange spot, quite unexpectedly.

After this 'heavy' tiny modern classic, I'm in the mood for a quick, easy thriller.

I'm still there... I have read An anonymous girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Really enjoyed that one.

Currently reading In plain sight: The life and lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies, a very tough and dense non-ficiton account of Savile's life and crimes. Have been trudging my way through this in what feels like ages (10 days in real life or so). And still I have about 200 pages left.
Having to read hundreds of pages through an account of all kinds of abuse, it's hard. Really hard.

Back :) I read a few books in the meantime during my silence, just none from the TBR above. But finally another one of my TBR stack down.
Devil bones by Kathy Reichs, read for the #readyoursign readathon on Litsy.
I don't have much to say about this one. A solid mystery thriller about forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. The TV show "Bones" is based on Kathy Reich's books. I enjoyed this read more than I enjoy the show, though.

Back once more. :)
Was in the mood for a mystery/thriller, so I tackled The land of dreams by Vidar Sundstol.
Haven't got a lot to say about it. Nice landscape descriptions, the internal monologues of the characters, however, were a bit 'meh' for me. The thing that really irked me was that it was the first part of a trilogy, and I had no idea about that when I bought it. It was marketed as a standalone back then and it was a bit too uneventful and way too lengthy for me to pick up the rest of the series, so I guess I'll have to google the ending... :(