I recommend this one to everyone. A student meets an older man while on holidays and forms a mentor friendship with him, his teacher eventually comes clean and admits to having a troubled past. Sōseki has such a great style, not to mention the story is so intriuging. There's these really short chapters only 2/3 pages long that act as this creeping build up to a very satisfying conclusion.
Jan 2, 2025
Related Recs
About a group of adolescent boys who reject conventional morality and view the world of adults as sentimental, frivolous, and pathetic. One of the boys, Noboru, discovers a hole in the wall in his bedroom adjoining his mother’s, and uses it to spy on her throughout her new relationship with a sailor named Ryuji. At first the boys idolize Ryuji, thinking that he is the only adult who isn’t a “sellout” marred by the problems of the adult world, and Noboru comes to feel that the ocean is the only meaningful thing in the universe and is the only real connection he has. Eventually, the boys lose faith in Ryuji and come to see him as just as fraudulent as all other adults, and decide to do something as a group to assert their place in a world they can’t abide.
“Assembled there were the moon and a feverish wind, the incited, naked flesh of a man and a woman, sweat, perfume, the scars of a life at sea, the dim memory of ports around the world, a cramped breathless peephole, a young boy’s iron heart — but these cards from a gypsy deck were scattered, prophesying nothing. The universal order at last achieved, thanks to the sudden, screaming horn, had revealed an ineluctable circle of life — the cards had paired: Noboru and mother — mother and man — man and sea — sea and Noboru…”
May 21, 2025
when I visited my friend Nico’s house last winter, they gave me their own copy of ‘The Remains of the day‘ presenting it as a book that changed their way of seeing life.
To be honest it is a very powerful and lovely novel, the characters feel very real but also very dreamlike, all of them are described with their own set of traits which makes this short novel a very nice time. it took a while for me to finish it but it’s very light. I wasn’t very familiar with Ishiguro’s work but this was a great introduction.
Mar 22, 2024
Yasunari Kawabata’s best work. a very wistful romantic tragedy about the doomed love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a geisha at a remote hot spring. Kawabata was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel prize for literature, with Snow Country cited by the Nobel committee. pictured here is the back of my copy :)
Mar 16, 2025
Top Recs from @lowartdecay
The first two lines of the chorus:
'You can never be strong,
You can only be free'
Sums up everything great about Robert Pollard's songwriting. Drama, hope and disappointment.
Mar 7, 2025
I'm amazed no one else has mentioned the great Townes Van Zandt. This is my favourite of his, a beautiful voice and songwriter gone far too soon.
Mar 7, 2025
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Same as anyone else. I think the 'male loneliness epidemic' is nearly 100% self inflicted. However, most men don't know how to find meaning, hence why they get into stupid shit for a sense of purpose.
May 25, 2025