Reading

Novels I've finished reading in the last week or so:

• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Very funny and moving account of a thirteen year old stammerer and covert poet in a Worcestershire village at the height of the Falklands War and Thatcher.
• Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. Short, sweet, enchanting story about the forbidden literary re-education of two young men sent to Phoenix Mountain during Mao's campaign against intellectuals and radicals.
• The Book Of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. Dense and overly introspective ramblings from a young man who does nothing but sits in his office or flat in Lisbon dreaming. I would have found this thought-provoking had I still been an existential, self-absorbed teenager.
• In Praise Of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. An exquisite 80 page treatise on a range of topics from architecture to food around the theme of the collision between traditional and modern Japanese aesthetics.