Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 24th, 2025 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I Just Finished Reading
The busy season has struck at work, so my reading has slowed down, but I’m still chugging along. I picked up Genzaburo Yoshino’s How Do You Live? (translated by Bruno Navasky) because I liked the cover, learned from the front cover flap that it’s one of Miyazaki’s favorite books, and therefore of course I had to read it. The novel was intended as a guidebook to ethics for Japanese schoolchildren, and I think would have blown my tiny mind if I read it at thirteen. I’ve missed the window for it to become a formative text for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, as a glimpse of a very different side of Japan in the 1930s. (Yoshino never mentions Japan’s wars of imperialist expansion, presumably because everything he would have liked to say would have gotten him thrown back in prison, where he had already languished for 18 months for his socialist beliefs.)
Mary Stolz’s Ferris Wheel, one of Stolz’s weaker books, as it ambles around without going anywhere. Our heroine Polly doesn’t get along with her little brother Rusty, is losing her best friend Kate because Kate is moving to California, meets a new girl who might be a friend but really seems like kind of a boring friend candidate… Good descriptions of life in Vermont, though.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve reached Part III of A Sand County Almanac. The first two parts are both close observations of places that Leopold knows well, and therefore perennially fascinating as well-considered firsthand observation always is. Part III is more about the Theory of Wilderness, which is less interesting to me, but I keep on keeping on.
What I Plan to Read Next
Despite my reservations about Ferris Wheel, I still plan to read the sequel Cider Days, just because the title sounds so perfectly autumnal.
The busy season has struck at work, so my reading has slowed down, but I’m still chugging along. I picked up Genzaburo Yoshino’s How Do You Live? (translated by Bruno Navasky) because I liked the cover, learned from the front cover flap that it’s one of Miyazaki’s favorite books, and therefore of course I had to read it. The novel was intended as a guidebook to ethics for Japanese schoolchildren, and I think would have blown my tiny mind if I read it at thirteen. I’ve missed the window for it to become a formative text for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, as a glimpse of a very different side of Japan in the 1930s. (Yoshino never mentions Japan’s wars of imperialist expansion, presumably because everything he would have liked to say would have gotten him thrown back in prison, where he had already languished for 18 months for his socialist beliefs.)
Mary Stolz’s Ferris Wheel, one of Stolz’s weaker books, as it ambles around without going anywhere. Our heroine Polly doesn’t get along with her little brother Rusty, is losing her best friend Kate because Kate is moving to California, meets a new girl who might be a friend but really seems like kind of a boring friend candidate… Good descriptions of life in Vermont, though.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve reached Part III of A Sand County Almanac. The first two parts are both close observations of places that Leopold knows well, and therefore perennially fascinating as well-considered firsthand observation always is. Part III is more about the Theory of Wilderness, which is less interesting to me, but I keep on keeping on.
What I Plan to Read Next
Despite my reservations about Ferris Wheel, I still plan to read the sequel Cider Days, just because the title sounds so perfectly autumnal.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-24 08:01 pm (UTC)Honestly, a children's book that ambles around being evocatively descriptive about Vermont in the fall sounds delightful in itself.
I thought I'd heard of How Do You Live? in the context of being the source material for The Boy and the Heron (having not actually read or seen either), but after going down that Wikipedia rabbit role, it turns out that the film's Japanese title is the same as the book, it's not actually an adaptation?? Glad it was interesting— and interesting backstory!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-24 08:27 pm (UTC)The English translation of How Do You Live? was published in 2021 and states that Miyazaki's next film is an adaptation of the novel, so maybe that was the plan at some point? Or maybe people were just confused because of the overlap in titles? If that was the original plan it must have been scrapped, because the book is completely different from the film, with no fantasy excursion into a land populated by birds at all.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-26 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-26 05:22 pm (UTC)