Friday Face Off: The Box Man

Posted on March 11, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

The Friday Face-Off was originally created by Books by Proxy:
each Friday, bloggers showcase book covers on a weekly theme.
Visit Lynn’s Books (@LynnsBooks) for a list of upcoming themes.
Please visit also Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy (@tammy_sparks)
thanks to whom I discovered this meme.

This week, the theme is
“The most recent book you’ve read that has covers to compare”

And that would be The Box Man, by Kobo Abe.

I usually enjoy Kobo Abe and his quirkiness, but this time, it was over the top, and I basically didn’t understand what was going on, as I explained in my short review.
BUT it does make for a fantastic diversity of covers.

📚

Click on the picture if you want to identify the various editions
You can also right click and ‘open image in new tab’ to zoom in

WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?

My favorite is the Turkish edition, encircled in red
I think it conveys well some themes in the book, and the eyes are very important, as it is the main way the person under the box can interact with the world around him.

But I also enjoyed a lot the Persian edition (encircled in pink), for its cleverness.
There are actually so many good covers here, some eluding to the disintegration of personality for instance #12, 13, 15 and 16 – at least that’s how I interpret these covers.

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
Next Friday:
Somewhere over the rainbow – a very colorful book cover

Book review: Les Dimanches de Monsieur Ushioda

Posted on February 21, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

Les Dimanches de Monsieur Ushioda
by Yasushi Inoue
First published as 欅の木 in 1970
Translated from the Japanese
by Jean-François Laffont and Tadahiro Oku
Stock
2000
317 pages
Literary fiction / Japanese literature
Goodreads

Les Dimanches de Monsieur Ushioda doesn’t seem to have been translated into English, so I read it in French.
It’s more light weight and humoristic than the Japanese books I usually read, so I found it just ok in its style, though the content is good and quite modern.

Click to continue reading

Friday Face Off: Hate to love

Posted on February 18, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

This week, the theme is “hate to love“

Last week, when I saw what the theme would be for this week, I had no idea what to do with this. And then I reviewed The Waiting Years, a fabulous classic Japanese novel, and I happened to write the following lines:
“Women are shown in their rich complexity, sometimes even experiencing opposite feelings at the same time, and in their often difficult relationships with men and other women. At one point, Tomo can’t even point out if she feels love or hate for her husband.”

As I realized I had written the words love and hate, I knew this was the perfect book to feature today!

Click on the cover to read my review

Several publishers went with the “waiting” part. Though in other languages, like in French, the title is very different: Chemin de femmes, something like, the way of women, which seems to be closer to the original Japanese.

Click on the picture if you want to identify the various editions
You can also right click and ‘open image in new tab’ to zoom in

WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?

My favorite is the first cover, the Japanese-American edition (Kodansha-US).
It shows less the idea of waiting than some type of resignation and sadness, which is so important in the book. I especially like the dull sepia like colors.
Lots of covers are cute and very colorful, with gorgeous flowers, but really they don’t reflect at all the ambiance of the book.

And I totally encourage you to read this excellent novel.

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
Next Friday: Made for each other