Spinster’s Comments (group member since Dec 29, 2014)

Spinster’s comments from the ##books group.

It sounded intriguing and not spacey which turns me off most of the time.

Awesome, Grid. Scifi's not my thing so I think I'll pass but I'm glad if it results in group activity again. Though I do have one new scifi on my tbr list...

I'm nominating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, purely for selfish reasons.

I haven't read the book yet so I shouldn't really comment, but what (so far) is bugging me most about the book are the two main female characters. I can't relate to either of them thus far, as they're very stereotypical and just so... female in the worst sense of the word. I love a good strong female character and these both have yet to show any signs of real strength as one's an obedient little housewife and the other one's a self-centered child.

Obviously I understand I'm only 10 chapters in and a lot will hopefully happen. Hopefully they'll both grow a little. But as they seem to me right now, I don't think I'd be like either of them in the same setting. I don't think I'm codependent enough.

I agree with all of you, the book was just bland. It had potential, and it not rising to it was mostly annoying. There were times when it could have been a decent book, but then nothing happened. I'll just copy-paste my review because I don't have much else to add. Except "Bored now."

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I have a very mixed history with the works of Nobel prize winners. Some I've loved (Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, William Golding) and some I haven't understood - at all (Herta Müller, Saul Bellow). As you may have guessed from my rating, Yasunari Kawabata joins the Müller-Bellow power group. However, it only took me a day to read Snow Country. Which is years less than it took me to read The Land of Green Plums or Humboldt's Gift.

I love it how the translator has added his own notes, asking the reader to read the book "less Europeically". OK. Right. How exactly does a European person do that? I'll be the first one to admit that I don't know much about the Japanese culture, unlike half the internet these days it seems. Though frankly, I'm not that interested in getting to know the cultural settings of the world Kawabata is depicting.

So there's this middle-aged dreamer, Shimamura, living and supporting his wife and kids on his late father's money. He gurgles, yawns, travels, walks hills and spends his money on hookers. Or geishas, whatever they are. He seems more or less colorless and bland, with a whiff of unpleasantness in his character and behaviour.

And then there's this young geisha girl, Komako, who looks older than her age (early twenties instead of 19, how horrid!) and has hot skin, and who for some inexplicable reason falls for this good-for-nothing Shimamura dude.

It's probably because of my personal views and interests that I noted this, but to me a lot of Snow Country concentrates on the inequality of men and women. Shimamura has a family, but it's barely even mentioned because his yearly visits to a young, adoring girl are much more important. And there's another girl he lusts after too, possibly even younger one. They're desirable and lovable because they're young and pure and clean, have the perfect skin or voice or lips, and not because they are who they are. The feminist in me really didn't like the book.

And that's pretty much all of it. I didn't understand the relations between any of the characters, I didn't understand the weird behaviour, I didn't understand the mood swings and reasoning, I didn't understand all the vagueness, I didn't understand anything. I don't know if it's me not understanding Kawabata or me not understanding what Japanese culture is all about in its core, like the translator suggests, but the end result is the same. The only reason I managed to read this book and read it so fast was because there wasn't much else to do at work.

I don't think Snow Country is a bad book. It's well written and has some really nice depictions, but on the whole it's just... irrelevant. And pretty boring.

I'm nominating Kafka.

The Metamorphosis

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