I only finished these books because I wanted it to be over with ASAP and didn't want to have any unfinished business with them. All of these just suck balls in general. Don't waste your time.
douglas adams
The only good thing about this book is that you get to see where all the references in The Impossible Quiz and the occassional Reddit comment come from.
This series tries so hard to be funny, and yet, I think I only laughed once throughout the entire 700-odd pages of the book. The main mechanism it uses to try to get a laugh is sheer absurdism, but nearly all of it falls flat. After most of the jokes, I just sat there, like, "ok".
So yeah. Don't waste your time.
joseph heller
Imagine reading a mathematical proof, but all the paragraphs are out of order.
I think one of the cover quotes was something like "This is the only war novel that makes any sense." What the hell was that person on?
john dower
I got a bit too used to reading nonfiction that was written like fiction, so an actual fact-dense book like this highkey took me for a loop. I'm not even sure how to judge this. At least 99% of the stuff here is probably true, so I can't judge it on the quality of the analysis.
The most I can do is offer commentary on how entertaining and interesting I found it to be. As for that, it was middling. Names and acronyms are thrown around haphazardly, and each chapter reads more like an entry in an encyclopedia than an actual book. Maybe this book was meant to be used more as reference than as a time-killer in boring lectures, but this post judges things on the basis of the latter.
There were also highly technical segments about Marxism and other philosophies that I'm sure only someone with a degree in the stuff could actually parse. It's almost certainly more of an indictment on me than the book, but no part of the descrptions of intellectual debate in the book meant anything to me. These parts only took up like twenty pages max, so in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter too much, I suppose.
What kept me going through the entire book was half obligation and half general interest in postwar Japan. To my mind, the analysis seemed fairly nuanced, and everything is explored to a very thorough degree. Regardless, I'd only maybe half-recommend this book. Only touch it if you're already interested in the subject.
asako yuzuki
I was NOT in the target audience for this book, even more so than Amy Tan's books. Even then, I still moderately enjoyed Tan's writing. The same cannot be said for this.
This book doesn't really read like a novel. It has the structure of one, with a series of events proceeding in a linear fashion along with a designated start and end, but I think a good portion of it is spent either on winding descriptions of food and cooking or insightful feminist commentary.
I didn't mind the former. Through Yuzuki's words, all the dishes in the book are brought to life with incredible elegance, and I found myself running to the dining halls even faster after certain reading sessions. Unfortunately, that's really the only thing that she really does well in this book.
The latter got old past a certain point. All the observations about the roles of men and women in Japanese society are made very explicit, and certain symbols like a children's books are explicitly called back to ad nauseum. I don't mind symbolism, it's just that I feel like surely there's a better way to execute it that doesn't have the subtley of a brick, right?
Also, I know I said there were a series of events in the novel, but to call it a "plot" would be somewhat generous. There's plenty of character development, but no real resolution. The central case the entire novel revolves around just stays the same, and there isn't any kinda epilogue or whatever to give closure in that regard.
Overall, this feels more like a book a professor would make one read in a GE about society and gender than a book one would actually read on a Saturday afternoon for pleasure. No shade against whoever liked this, though, because who the hell am I to judge?
Also this is irrelevant but the translator was Br*tish, so I found it interesting to see British grammar and spelling in a novel. Through prior experience I actually thought using single quotes for dialogue was an antiquated convention that was dead by now, but no, apparently it's just what those across the pond like to do.