User Profile

Taylor Drew

mollymay5000@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 months, 1 week ago

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.

Portfolio & Blog → taylordrew.me/ Manga Tracking → anilist.co/user/mollymay5000/

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Taylor Drew's books

To Read

Currently Reading

2025 Reading Goal

32% complete! Taylor Drew has read 17 of 52 books.

reviewed Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

Martha Wells: Fugitive Telemetry (Hardcover, 2021, Tor.com) 4 stars

No, I didn't kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn't dump the body …

Classic Murderbot

5 stars

This one is pretty interesting because it jumps back before the events of the novel. It's also a completely contained story in novella length--unlike the first four that can standalone but ultimately create a single story.

Made the pacing feel a bit different, but it was still the Murderbot I know and love.

Toh EnJoe, David Boyd: Harlequin Butterfly (2024, Pushkin Press, Limited) 4 stars

A surreal novella about the global pursuit of a mysterious writer who somehow writes in …

Compelling ideas, but too short

3 stars

I decided to read this book because the synopsis made it seem like it would be really relevant to translators and other types of wordsmiths. While that assumption wasn't wrong, I think that the length of the work left me feeling a bit unsatisfied with the philosophical concepts that were being explored in the story.

I don't think that stories necessarily need to provide explicit answers and many excellent stories that I love don't, but this one just felt too short to even give me enough time to begin to chew on what I was reading and contemplate the characters and their actions.

Might try to read some of this authors other work in Japanese, since I don't think anything else is published in English, to get a better grip on the author.

Ada Palmer: Inventing the Renaissance (Hardcover, 2025, Head of Zeus) 5 stars

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the …

Witty and somehow relatable

5 stars

It feels kind of weird to suggest that a book about how history has kind of invented this period in time called the Renaissance is relatable, but this book ended up being extremely relatable. I ended up listening to the audiobook (a whopping 30-hour beast) and regularly found myself smiling and chuckling along as I did my daily commute even though I knew and still mostly nothing about the time period or really anything about Italy. I genuinely had never heard of most of the people who were talked about in this book, which I think is a pretty clear indication about how interestingly the information is laid out--though it would certainly be a nightmare for anyone who requires events in time to be explained in chronological order.

More than that though, I think what was really great about this book and something I wasn't expecting was about how hopeful …

安堂 ホセ: ジャクソンひとり (Hardcover, Japanese language, 河出書房新社) No rating

着ていたTシャツに隠されたコードから過激な動画が流出し、職場で嫌疑をかけられたジャクソンは3人の男に出会う。痛快な知恵で生き抜く若者たちの鮮烈なる逆襲劇! 第59回文藝賞受賞作。

第168回芥川賞候補作!

第59回文藝賞受賞 衝撃のデビュー作! 東京に暮らすブラックミックスたちが企む鮮やかな逆襲劇

「実際に生きてるってこと。盗用したポルノごっこじゃなくて」 アフリカのどこかと日本のハーフで、昔モデルやってて、ゲイらしい――。 スポーツブランドのスタッフ専用ジムで整体師をするジャクソンについての噂。 ある日、彼のTシャツから偶然QRコードが読み取られ、そこにはブラックミックスの男が裸で磔にされた姿が映されていた。 誰もが一目で男をジャクソンだと判断し、本人が否定しても信じない。 仕方なく独自の調査を始めたジャクソンは、動画の男は自分だと主張する3人の男に出会い――。

I finally started this book just in time for the Japanese publishing equivalent of the trade paperback to be releasing in two months! Better late than never I guess! 😆