A Canadian (she/they) Japanese to English translator based in Tokyo. Previously a speaker of English and French, now a speaker of English and Japanese.
Isolated in his Tokyo apartment, 17-year-old Haruo spends all his time online, researching the plight …
Incel: A Novel
2 stars
I don't know what this book was trying to achieve, but it definitely didn't achieve it for me. I spend enough time experiencing the consequences of the incel movement(?) in daily life that I really don't have time for it in my fiction.
I just really can't see what this book was trying to achieve in the format that it's in. A pretty disappointing read honestly and further evidence that the synopsis reading for the books in this series don't have very good expectations setting mechanisms in place.
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground …
Climate fiction with sex workers
4 stars
The title is basically how I described this book to a friend and I think it gives a pretty accurate impression of what the book is like--a criticism of our power structures and how the rich (largely men) move freely through society without facing any meaningful consequences for their actions.
The story is told through three different perspectives, which adds a lot of depth to the narrative because each perspective is told from a very different sphere of society.
Well there were aspects of the narrative that could have been more fleshed out and some people may find a certain aspects or actions of the story to be hypocritical, it's my opinion that this hypocrisy and seeming lack of depth is intentional. I think it adds a lot of value and intrigue to the narrative and asks readers to draw their own conclusions. You're supposed to think and not just …
The title is basically how I described this book to a friend and I think it gives a pretty accurate impression of what the book is like--a criticism of our power structures and how the rich (largely men) move freely through society without facing any meaningful consequences for their actions.
The story is told through three different perspectives, which adds a lot of depth to the narrative because each perspective is told from a very different sphere of society.
Well there were aspects of the narrative that could have been more fleshed out and some people may find a certain aspects or actions of the story to be hypocritical, it's my opinion that this hypocrisy and seeming lack of depth is intentional. I think it adds a lot of value and intrigue to the narrative and asks readers to draw their own conclusions. You're supposed to think and not just be led to some easy answer--probably because there isn't one.
Anyway I thought this book was great. Hope the author writes more.
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground …
I didn't expect this book to be told in several perspectives (and have so many layers because of that) and I'm honestly loving it. I have no idea what's going to happen next. It's getting hard to put down 👀
A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in …
A lot of horse girls
5 stars
I was a bit worried to be interested to a completely new character again without the support of the characters I already know, but I shouldn't have been worried at all. This book was quick and clever and just so sensitively done. It always is, but it felt more noticeable in this story, which starts off with some commonplace childhood bullying and just as commonplace issues surrounding puberty and what it is supposedly required to be a boy or girl. And while I'm certainly no horse girl, I have a lot of respect for just how well that identity fit into the hoof-filled setting.
It's always a pleasure to see how the kids learn to make decisions and process the consequences of their actions. I hope we get to see Regan again in later books!
When I saw the title and description of this book, I was extremely excited to be able to think about translation and gender in a Japanese context. While I translate from Japanese to English nearly exclusively, there's still a lot to learn from translators and linguists who specialize in English to Japanese translation.
The author actually brings up a lot of important points about how translation can introduce new words permanently into a language and how translation choices can impact the understanding readers may have of a character's gender. Well this second part isn't exactly new news since translation obviously impacts how information is presented due to varying language and cultural restraints, it was interesting to see it from an exclusively gender-based perspective. It was also extremely shocking to see just how feminized female characters are in books translated into Japanese.
The problem with the book though is that after …
When I saw the title and description of this book, I was extremely excited to be able to think about translation and gender in a Japanese context. While I translate from Japanese to English nearly exclusively, there's still a lot to learn from translators and linguists who specialize in English to Japanese translation.
The author actually brings up a lot of important points about how translation can introduce new words permanently into a language and how translation choices can impact the understanding readers may have of a character's gender. Well this second part isn't exactly new news since translation obviously impacts how information is presented due to varying language and cultural restraints, it was interesting to see it from an exclusively gender-based perspective. It was also extremely shocking to see just how feminized female characters are in books translated into Japanese.
The problem with the book though is that after that really interesting chapter, half the book was dedicated to talking about a very specific feminist book from English. It's a famous book and it's really important, but the book kind of became an analysis of that book exclusively after that, which was a bit of a let down for me personally.
Either way I'm glad I read the book, and I learned a lot about perceptions of gendered language in Japanese and have a new list of books to look up to learn more about it as a result. So I would say it's overall a win!
An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies …
Reading about someone just like you
4 stars
This book languished on my TBR for a long time as most books do, but I'm so glad I finally had the opportunity to read it. I don't read a lot of stories focused on younger kids anymore, but this book really pulled me back to my own childhood reading--and in some ways my actual childhood experiences too.
KB is such a spitfire of a kid and I loved being in her head as she tried to navigate growing older and her relationships with other people. I couldn't help but smile as she tried to figure things out for herself. And most of all, it brought me great joy to know another book for young Black girls is out there. Our world is a better place when everyone can be represented in media and feel seen and the way this is handled in the book is stunning.
I did find …
This book languished on my TBR for a long time as most books do, but I'm so glad I finally had the opportunity to read it. I don't read a lot of stories focused on younger kids anymore, but this book really pulled me back to my own childhood reading--and in some ways my actual childhood experiences too.
KB is such a spitfire of a kid and I loved being in her head as she tried to navigate growing older and her relationships with other people. I couldn't help but smile as she tried to figure things out for herself. And most of all, it brought me great joy to know another book for young Black girls is out there. Our world is a better place when everyone can be represented in media and feel seen and the way this is handled in the book is stunning.
I did find the pacing at the end to be a bit abrupt, but I'm not the age group this book is meant for at all, so that makes sense. I'll also add that anyone who struggles with themes involving drug abuse, death, sexual assault, domestic violence, etc. may have a hard time.
I'm learning a lot of interesting things from this book, but I do wish it were a little less binary. The man versus woman framing really stands out given the title of the book and it feels kind of like a lost opportunity in a sense.