BGM: The Style Council - My Ever Changing Moods
Today was a day off. Even though it was raining, I went to AEON as usual and read Natsuki Ikezawa's "The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matias Guili" step by step. But it didn't go smoothly. Of course, I even think that I shouldn't read books only, but I don't have any other plans to do. Enjoying Silent Poets' "Potential Meeting" as yesterday I did, I kept on listening to the narrator's voice from this novel. A really great entertainment for "adults". It can be a suspense novel that describes how the president Matias Guili goes downward, how ghosts appear and a bus disappear with the style of magic realism, and also comical entertainment. Really rich. The country Navidad is like Japan which has been blown by various countries in the world politic. Then, I can see how Ikezawa tries to deliver the messages and ironies by this novel. Yes, it is quite a funny and also interesting one.
I had lunch and took a nap. After that, I read "Nautical Chart and Logbook". When was the first time I had read this book? It was when I was a college student... at that time, I had been really impressed by the amount of the books he has read, and thought that I couldn't be a reader like him (yes, I am basically a coward but can't become a loser). Now I am getting the same age like him in this book, but I still am impressed by his flexible and fair reading across various genres. I need this kind of "mature" mind. I often dig the genre I am interested in deeply only, but also my interest changes really easily so I often stop that digging so rapidly (probably because of autism). Yes, that's really wasteful, but it is really difficult for me to take a certain time to face and try reading one genre (although I believe it isn't impossible).
This evening we didn't have a meeting that we do on Thursdays because the host was busy. So I had nothing to do. I even thought I would enjoy a movie, but it didn't come to me as an interesting idea, so I finished "The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matias Guili" completely. Yes, it was really "delicious" and impressive novel. If I translated this novel into English, then foreign readers would also accept this as an impressive one? If I tried to do so... but thought about it again as I shouldn't overrate my skill of English. Of course, it is quite different from the action I try to translate my diary into English. It must be really difficult to translate Ikezawa's clear and great Japanese into neat English steadily, and deliver Ikezawa's Japanese's nuance. But, as one of my opinions, I feel that it is really a loss because Japanese literature has various works that should be read by more readers in the world.
TBH, a person asked me how I have read books in my life. My reading history... I never have any great history of reading. Actually, my parents had a collection of "The Complete Global Literature" but I have never read them. This is an embarrassing fact but I have read the books as I have wanted, not read the books I "must" read. But it would be nice if such random reading could help someone else. Even now, I feel impressed and think that I am a loser if I hear "Dostoevsky changed my life in my teenage days". But all I can do is just going my way. I would live my future by not reading any great classic that I "must" read (for example, Tolstoy's "War and Peace" would be the books of my coming 60s or 70s). But I never can say any certain thing about my interest so I might read James Joyce or William Faulkner tomorrow. That's my way.
