I'm lying on the floor of the night before

[venta]

Book #12 (as recommended by pm215):

David Mitchell no, not that David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Given that I've really enjoyed every David Mitchell book I've read to date, it's a bit of a mystery why I haven't made more effort to seek out the outstanding ones. Anyway, this is one more off the list, and I loved it.

Mr de Zoet lives, throughout the book, on Dejima - an artificial island built off Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. Dejima was intended to allow foreigners to trade with Japan whilst remaining safely coralled outside the (deliberately isolated) Japanese empire. The whole book is an amazingly detailed description of life on Dejima, with warts-and-all descriptions of the Dutch traders, the Japanese officials and interpreters, and a few passing Britons.

It's loosely based on fact, though the characters are mostly fictional. It seems amazing now that people left Europe for five year trade postings to Japan, a land they didn't know and were not allowed to know, and where their only contact with their families would be a yearly delivery of letters - if they were lucky, and if the boat arrived.

I can't say my knowledge of seventeenth-century Japan is very good, but I'm given to understand it's a very well-researched book. It's worth reading for the historical detail alone, never mind the intricate story.

Book #13 (as recommended by snow_leopard):

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus

For some reason, I was expecting this (rather lovely-looking, black and white) book to be some kind of feminist polemic. I'm not sure why, because Snow_Leopard isn't in the habit of recommending such books (or not to me). Instead I got a rather beautiful fairy story, about an actual circus.

(I did get a little cross with it, because Ms Morgenstern stole several ideas from my writing and wrote them first, and even stole the name of my damn circus. But that's a separate issue.)

The book is filled with fantastical characters - but they do also remember to have actual characters. They are real people; not especially good, or especially bad, just people who are sometimes noble and sometimes selfish. The imagery in the book is delightful. It's exactly the sort of thing someone will probably try to make into a film, an really shouldn't.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Whilst I agree with your review of The Night Circus I would add as a footnote that the plot has - to me at least - the air of a thing rather reluctantly added to what is, at its heart, a book-long description. As such, whilst I loved the imagery of the whole thing it was a very 5/10-ish sort of book for me.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I agree it's not exactly a cracking, fast-paced plot, but it didn't strike me as quite as much of an after-thought as it clearly did you.

I have to concede that I don't really mind books with no plot, so long as they funny or informative or educational or entertaining while not having one :) So I was quite happy going along with The Night Circus for the journey.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I've also liked everything of Mitchell's I've read but not stirred myself to pick up the remnants. I found 1000 Autumns very hard going at first, with a huge cast of characters each with a long Dutch or Japanese name, but it really picked up in the second part.

Not read The Night Circus as I suspect I'd be jealous (it started life as a NaNoWriMo novel...).

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty dreadful at picking up character names, so struggled a bit, but hadn't registered it as more difficult than other books. It does have the problem where characters are referred to by first name, and family name, and title, and job description... and it can take a while to work out those things are all the same person.

Not read The Night Circus as I suspect I'd be jealous (it started life as a NaNoWriMo novel...).

Goodness, did it really?

Ooh, and it seems Failbetter did a game (http://nightcircus.storynexus.com/s) based on it. Which I absolutely shouldn't look at if I want to get anything done...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The game is OK but gets v repetitive rather quickly. More of interest as a proof of how their software could be used for other settings (iirc it was the first such) than as an actual game.

[crankst-girl.livejournal.com]

I loved the night circus. Put me in minds of bits of Glastonbury festival in the early hours of the morning.