I recently picked up reading again and have gotten more serious about it. Surprisingly, I managed to take the time to read multiple books -something I haven’t done in years.
“It’s so great to finally be able to drop that smartphone and read books!”. I was convinved I would think that, but actually I’m not sure I really enjoy reading? I want to keep on going because I don’t have anything better to do most of the time and also because I might end up enjoying it over time.
This post is mostly for me not to forget which books I read. If I have enough motivation and am able to reflect, I will also write a small paragraph with my thoughts on the book.
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- Kafka on the shore, by Haruki Murakami
- Vers la beauté, by David Foenkinos
- L’Inconnue du portrait, by Camille de Peretti
- Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, by Jorge Almazán, Joe McReynolds, and Studiolab
- Welcome to the Hyunam-dong bookshop, by Hwang Bo-Reum
- Sanshirō, by Natsume Sōseki
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Vers la beauté
~February/March 2025
A novel. I liked it okay. I was invested in the story, but I think I did not like it because I struggled to find what happened to the main character believable. I know it’s a fiction, but the setting is contemporary and the main character is a normal guy; so I kind of identified myself to him? I guess.
I though was really hooked into the last 1/3 of the book.
L’Inconnue du portrait
~March 2025
A novel. It just felt okay to me. I was invested in the story, but I was not particularly moved by anything.
Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City
~March/April 2025
I had nothing to read and a friend of mine kindly lent that one to me.
I don’t think I particularly enjoyed reading that one. This is a book that describes Tokyo’s architecture. It especially focuses on the historical reasons that led Tokyo neighbourhoods to become the way they are now: mostly political reasons, events (e.g. Olympics) and natural disasters. The author inserted designs of places like streets or building blocks and what they looked like over the past 50~ years, highlighting the most notable changes each time.
Even though I did not really have a good time reading it, I must admit that it was sometimes interesting. I learned many facts about Tokyo’s architecture, it kind of makes me happy to understand better the world we live in 🤔. I guess.
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong bookshop
~April 2025
It’s probably one of the books I enjoyed the most recently. I read that one pretty quickly.
I liked especially the first half. Some sentences/paragraphs felt super poetic or moving to me.
It’s also a bout about books, so it was helpful for me because I am not exactly sure how to feel with reading in general. It put clarity for me on a specific point. Sometime in the book, the main character of the novel interviews a writer. The writer goes “Books are not meant to remain in your mind, but in your heart. Maybe they exist in your mind too, but as something more than memories. (…) Personally, I feel like the books I’ve read led me to make the choices I’ve made in life. While I may not remember al the details, the stories continue to exert a quiet influence on me.” Reading that was soothing to me! It’s because I tend to forget what I read and what I learned from books and feel guilty about it. It made me realise that it is okay to not take away tangible memories or learnings from what I read. Maybe I do not know it but my outlook on life changed because of a book I read and I do not even realize it -it’s okay.
Sanshirō
~April/May 2025
Tough read. I basically had to force myself to make progress.
It is an “old” book, 1908. That maybe explains why it is more foreign to approach as someone who does not read much. I read it in English, not my native language, which probably made it even harder for me to read.
I kept on reading and eventually finished it because it is not too long (200+ pages), it is apparently a “classic” from Japanese literature and most importantly, I felt it would be interesting for me to commit. And in fact, the first third or half of the book was painful, but eventually, I started to identify myself to the main character; it made me reflect. Also, the writing style seemed to me, at times, very smart.
The main character is a timid, unconfident young adult. He has no certitude in life yet; in that way, he is still a child to me (and so was I at this age and even later on). The author really nailed describing some interactions. From an external point of view, it seems obvious what is the right thing to do or say -however, I could recognize myself so many times in what Sanshirō did or specifically did not do, out of lack of confidence and guts. A great example to me is the following dialogue between him and a woman he feels intimidated by. She painted a picture and he asks to take a look at it:
- “May I look?”
(…)
- “Pretty good,” he said.
- “This?” said Yoshiko with a start. There was nothing forced in her reaction, as there had been in Sanshirō’s compliment.
It was too late now for him to make light of what he had said or to insist that he had meant it. Either way, Yoshiko would be contemptuous of him. He went on looking at the picture, blushing inwardly.
It’s a shame that the did not have the guts to be true to himself from the beginning. If only he was true to himself, the conversation would have gone much better with her and he would have felt more at ease.