Here are some of my favorite books.
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I'm something of a history buff (the older,
the better), and right now I am interested in traditional
Japanese culture, which is why the first few books on my
list have to do with that subject. I also like science
fiction a lot, and you will find a number of sci-fi books on this
list as a result. The ones at the bottom of the list are the
books I liked when I was little; now I like to read them to my little
brother. Anyway, browse and enjoy, and I hope you find a book
you would like to read.
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The Tale of Murasaki is one of my
favorite books. The author, Liza Dalby, maintains
a website devoted to the book. You can vist the website
by clicking on the picture of the book on the left.
The woman known as Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shoshi of Japan during the Heian period, over a thousand years ago. She is famed as the author of the Tale of Genji , an epic tale ranking with Beowulf and Homer's Oddyssey as a piece of classic literature. Very little is known about Murasaki herself, but Dalby has taken the existing fragments of Murasaki's diary, some of her collected poems, and her knowledge of history (along with reverse engineered elements from Genji ) to create a biography in the form of a poetic diary. I highly recommend this book for fans of Genji, or those who are interested in Japanese tradition and history. It's also good on its own, and it only gets better with each successive reading. Other books by the same author are Geisha and Kimono: Fashioning Culture. |
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After reading The Tale of Murasaki,
I was inspired to go on and read The Tale
of Genji itself. The most recent English translation
of the tale, by Royall Tyler, is the one I picked to read.
Tyler's book contains a great number of helpful footnotes
for the modern reader, as well as many illustrations to give one
a better vision of life in Heian Japan. The end of the second
volume (there are two in the boxed set pictured at left) contains
glossaries, maps, and a synopsis of the tale, so that one can more easily
understand the terms used in the story itself. Each chapter is
also preceeded by a short summary, and a list of the characters who
will appear in the chapter, along with their ages and ranks, to help
the reader keep track of them.
This book is as beautiful on the inside as it looks on the outside, and although the Tale of Genji can be tough to tackle for an English-speaking reader, Tyler's footnotes and other helpful hints make this book a great pleasure - and an educational experience - to read. Click on the picture at left to visit Royall Tyler's website. |
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You may have heard of this book before
- it was on the New York Times bestseller lists a few years ago. This
book was the one that got me interested in Japanese traditions.
Written in the form of an autobiography, this book
is not only a great story, but a captivating and detailed guide
to the world of the Kyoto geisha.
The story begins in a small village on the coast of Japan shortly before 1920, when a girl named Chiyo is sold to the mistress of an okiya, or geisha house, in the Gion district of Kyoto. Her older sister is sold to a bordello in another part of the city. At first, all Chiyo wants to find her sister and run away from Kyoto with her, but, inspired by an act of kindness from an unlikely person, she changes her goal - she decides to become a geisha. The rest you'll have to read for yourself. Click on the picture to the left to visit the Random House site for Memoirs of a Geisha. |
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Have you ever wondered exactly
what a tea ceremony is? Are you interested in Zen or Taoist philosophy?
If so, you should read Okakura Kakuzo's Book of Tea, which
will tell you a lot about all these things and more. Written at the beginning of the twentieth century, this book is meant specifically to explain tea ceremony to Westerners, and to give them some understanding of the culture behind it. The picture at left shows the cover of the latest edition (sorry that the image quality isn't that good, but the picture I got it from was very small), which includes beautiful photographs of the implements used in tea ceremony, as well as an introduction by Liza Dalby. Clicking on the picture will take you to teatime.com's Book of Tea website. |
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Yes, most people consider
this book (and Karen Cushman's other great work of historical fiction,
The Midwife's Apprentice ) to be aimed at children,
but I think that anyone from 10-100 can enjoy it. I still like
to pick up this book and read it again now and then. This book is the diary of a girl named Catherine, the daughter of a knight named Sir Rollo. He holds a fief in Lincolnshire, where most of the story takes place, over the period of a little more than a year (from 1289-1290). She's intelligent, imaginative and stubborn; a great feminist, a few centuries ahead of her time. Her father, who is trying to match her up with a suitor, does not appreciate these characteristics very much, but anyone who reads Catherine's story certainly will. Click on the picture of the book to visit Carol Hurst's Catherine, Called Birdy website. |
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Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond
Chronicles, (written in the 1960's, will appeal greatly
to history buffs. The series of six books takes place over
a period of eleven years, from 1547 to 1558, and follows the adventures
of Francis Crawford of Lymond, a Scottish nobleman. Although
Francis himself is a fictional character, his world is historically
accurate, and Dunnett managed to insinuate him into actual historical
events without changing them. Lymond himself is a fascinating character - a poet, scholar, and soldier of fortune, a real Renaissance man. The picture of him at left is from the Geomaler website, which you can reach by clicking on it. The picture at right is the cover of the first book in the series, A Game of Kings , from Dorothy Dunnett's official website (maintained by Vintage Books, the publisher of The Lymond Chronicles ). Click on the picture at right to visit that website. |
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I've read a lot of Neil Gaiman's
books - from the Sandman series to American Gods to
Good Omens (co-authored with Terry Pratchett), but
these books are my three favorites. The Dream Hunters combines two of my favorite things - Sandman and ancient Japan. It's actually Neil Gaiman's adaptation of a classic Japanese tale called "The Fox, the Monk, and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming." Neil Gaiman's storytelling, as always, is superb, and coupled with Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations, it's a masterpiece. Even if you're not a Sandman fan, this is a wonderful book, something you should read when you have a lot of time - you won't be able to put it down. Stardust, illustrated by Charles Vess, is similarly entrancing in both words and pictures. It isn't the sort of fairy tale that a modern parent would tell their children - it's an "old school" fairy tale, of the sort that was popular in medieval times. But it is also imbued with a modern sensibility that makes it wonderfully endearing. In this book, Neil Gaiman manages to give one the impression that one is hearing the tale from a storyteller, rather than just reading it. I recommmend it for anyone who is a fan of medieval literature. Neverwhere takes place in the London Underground - not just a subway system, but a whole subterranean world, which is only casually associated with the world we know. It was originally a BBC miniseries, which I saw before I read the book. It is difficult to find a tape of Neverwhere, but it is certainly worth the effort. I wonder, is there a secret city like that in the New York subway or the Parisian Metro?... Neil Gaiman's books are all worth reading, and there are, fortunately, plenty of them. There are also a lot of fan sites dedicated to his work (particularly Sandman). Clicking on any of these covers will take you to Neil Gaiman's official website, which contains information on his most recent work, American Gods. |
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I have read this book many times,
but the first time I encountered this story was when I heard it on tape,
during a family road trip. I bought the book shortly afterwards,
and it's still one of my favorites. The story starts off in a prison cell in the kingdom of Sounis, where Gen, the protagonist and narrator of the tale, is doing time for stealing the King's seal ring. He doesn't have much hope of getting out alive - unless he agrees to help the King's top adviser, the Magus, steal a magical stone from a hidden temple. Since the only alternative is a lifetime in prison, Gen agrees to assist the Magus, and sets off on a journey to find the stone's hiding place. Gen is at odds with his travelling companions at first - he is accompanied by a veteran soldier and two of the Magus' students as well as the Magus himself. But Gen earns their respect, little by little, and turns out to be very different from the person from what they - and the reader - expected. There is a sequel to this book, The Queen of Attolia, but I didn't like that one as much. Clicking on the picture at left will take you to the author's (Megan Whalen Turner's) homepage. |
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If you enjoy reading books by Kurt
Vonnegut or Douglas Adams, you'll love Terry Pratchett's Discworld
series. It's a parody not only of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but
pretty much everything else in the world as well. One of the great
things about this series is that you can read the books in any order you
chose. Although all the books are set on the same world, they do
not follow the same sets of characters. There are four different
mini-series within the larger one, each focusing on a different character
or set of characters, as well as a few stand-alone novels. As one can infer from the picture of the Discworld at left, it's a pretty weird place (to us Roudworlders, anyway). It contains such places as Ankh-Morpork (the whole city is sort of like the South Bronx, except for The Shades, which are even worse), the great Ramtop mountains, the Empire of Agatea (sort of a combination between China and Japan), the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi (like ancient Egypt), the continent of Fourecks (which isn't based on Australia at all. Really.), and many other interesting places. My favorite book in this series is a stand-alone called Small Gods , which is a very insightful (and really funny) parody on the nature of religion. Clicking on the picture at left will take you to the L-Space website, dedicated to the Discworld series. |
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This is the tale of an English sailor
named John Blackthorne, who was shipwrecked on the coast of Japan in the
year 1600. At the outset, Blackthorne suffers from a severe case
of culture shock, but in time he comes to feel more at home with Japanese
customs than those of his native land, even as he is drawn into the intrigues
and bloody campaigns of the land's battling warlords. The book is a good eight hundred pages long, so it's for serious readers only - but it's worth every word. Clavell had an excellent grasp of feudal Japanese culture and the minds of the people that lived in it, and it certainly shows in his writing. It's one heck of a historical novel. If you're an Oriental history/culture buff, or a fan of samurai movies, you need to read this book. If you don't fall into one or the other of those categories, then you don't need to read it, but you ought to. :) Clicking on the picture will take you to the unofficial James Clavell fan website. |
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This book was assigned reading for one
of my classes, but I might have found it on my own at some point - as you
may have gathered by now, it's the sort of thing I liked to read. Katsu
Kokichi (1802-1850), the author of this book, was a low-ranking samurai of
the later Tokugawa period who took the name Musui after he retired and became
a lay priest. During his time the realm was at peace, so he could
only use his skill at swordfighting to show off and to get out of the numerous
scrapes that his capacity for troublemaking got him into. Although
he had only a small salary, he made a lot of extra money by buying and selling
swords (considered a grey-market trade) and running a protection racket,
among other things. He's one of the most likeable good-for-nothings
I've ever encountered. :) Kokichi's autobiography, aside from its sheer entertainment value (rather a lot), provides a detailed illustration of the seamier side of life in the last decades of the Tokugawa period. The translator, Teruko Craig, did a great job preserving the colloquial spirit and vernacular language of the original text, and her introduction and notes are very helpful and informative. Clicking on the picture will take you to The Samurai Bookshelf, which lists a number of other books on samurai culture. |
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Lian Hearn's trilogy Tales of the
Otori was another way for me to feed my addiction to anything having
to do with feudal Japan. This isn't historical fiction - the setting
is completely fictional - but it is obviously the product of a lot of cultural
and historical research on the part of the author. This is the story of Takeo, a young man from a simple farming village who is unwillingly swept up into a world of intrigue, violence, betrayal and deception. After his village is destroyed, he is adopted by the kindhearted lord Otori Shigeru, who teaches him the samurai code of honor and virtue. But Takeo is the son of a member of the Tribe, a hereditary network of assassins with mystical talents. He finds that he must embrace his heritage for the sake of his own survival - and also to save the world as he knows it. Only two books of this trilogy have been published so far, Across the Nightingale Floor and Grass for his Pillow. I'm eagerly awaiting the third book. |
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Sandman is my favorite comic
book series, but this one is a close second. Unfortunately for it,
and for other fans, writer Mark Waid had a falling out with publisher CrossGen
over the future of the series, and it was handed over to Scott Beatty, who
was adequate but only rarely approached his predecessor's witty, scintillating
writing. Also, CrossGen later had some financial troubles and the series
ended without tying everything up neatly. Ruse met the same
unfortunate fate as Firefly, Farscape and a number of other CrossGen
titles - it was a good thing ruined by bad management. Despite that, the series is well worth reading. Ruse is sort of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and The X-Files. It is set in the city of Partington, a fascimilie of Victorian London with a mystical twist. In this city resides the world's greatest detective, Simon Archard, and his assitant, Emma Bishop - or, if you subscribe to her point of view, his partner, Emma Bishop. The partner/assistant issue is a constant, and entertaining, source of argument between the two. Simon is brilliant but cold, arrogant and acerbic - therefore one cannot help but like him almost immediately (albeit from a distance). His place of business is a deconsecrated cathedral, which he purchased and refurbished to his liking. The vast Residence contains a laboratory, an arboretum of exotic plants, a collection of some of the most poisonous animals on the planet, and one of the largest private libraries in the world. Emma, a feminist before her time, is not only lovely but intelligent, courageous and reliable. Her sensitivity and amiability make up for Simon's lack thereof, but she also has an appreciably sharp tongue, which she uses to hold her own in her almost constant quarrels with her partner. Although Simon would never admit it outright, he obviously respects her - though not as much as he should - because if he didn't, they wouldn't be working together in the first place. The image on the left is the cover of the first Ruse trade paperback, Enter the Detective, featuring Emma, Simon, and the villainess Miranda Cross. |
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I read William Gibson's Neuromancer
a few years ago and didn't understand it at all. But after the publication
of Pattern Recognition, which I read and enjoyed, I decided to take
another crack at this book. It's dark, unsettling, strangely beautiful
and thoroughly enjoyable. This is one of my favorite kinds of stories - the noirish, nerdy, day-after-tomorrow cyberpunk story. In this world there are cybernetics, habitable space stations and virtual reality, but all seen through the disconcerting and nightmarish eye of an author who knows that technology can endanger the human soul. Still, there is something grittily glamorous about this world, if you look at it from the right angle. The subject matter may be the feature that gets you to pick up the book in the first place, but William Gibson's flowing, imaginitive prose is the thing that will lock you in. |
