hi hello welcome back to my channel. if you are returning, if you are new, hello my name is kat
and i usually like to read dark, weird, and translated books. and today
i'm talking about 10 books in translation that i read for the invisible cities challenge.
so i will leave all the links to invisible cities down below, but essentially they announced three
countries a month that you wanted to try to read from. now i believe they're transitioning to two a
month to try to read from. and so these are all books that i was reading from january to june
trying to match the countries. so i have some in here that are new favorites of mine
and i have some in here that are actually completely forgettable unfortunately.
so without further ado, let's get into it. the first book i want to talk about is from argentina.
this is a mouthful of birds by samanta schweblin. so i have read schweblin before and really really
enjoyed her writing style. i think she wrote yeah little eyes which was really weird and
really creepy. but this collection really just left me feeling pretty meh about it. some of the
stories were good, some of the stories were not so good. but i read it back in january and i think
i've pretty much forgotten mostly everything about the collection so i actually don't really
recommend this one as much as it pains me to say it. next we're going to move on to morocco.
and for morocco, i picked up sex and lies by leila slimani. so leila silmani i have also read before.
i have read the perfect nanny by her which is more of a thriller. this one is completely
different because it's a non-fiction account of sex, sexuality, and queerness in morocco
like modern-day versus historical. i thought the information in this collection of essays
was both important and really messily told. so a lot of the times, i would be bored which is not
what's supposed to happen. but i do want to read one quote which i thought was really interesting.
so this is from the book... "these days we're confronted with our own conflicting identities.
sex is associated with the other, the decadent west, while moroccan and muslim identity stands
for virtue and modesty. but we're forgetting everything. we're forgetting that it's we arabs,
we muslims, we who shocked the west with our erotic texts in the 15th century. we've invented
the realm of the erotic. we're now suffering from collective amnesia." so that section of the book was
really interesting because it goes more into the history of erotic texts that were
brought into the west and then now there's more of a really like conservative viewpoint in morocco.
yeah so this is a collection i gave 3.5 stars. it's right on the borderline of
like it could have been so much better and it could have been like a really amazing
essay collection but for me it just felt a little short. alright, next up we're gonna do japan. so
i went overboard on japan because just probably japanese translated literature is my favorite
country to read from. and so i wanted to kick off with a book i've been meaning
to read forever and that is the sailor who fell from grace with the sea by yukio mishima. mishima
was one of my favorite japanese writers of all time. i've read a lot of what he's written and
this was one that i just never got around to reading. we're following kind of a gang of boys, one
boy in particular who is really fascinated with his mother's new lover who happens to be a sailor.
and definitely the evil child trope was in there and that's why i was like really interested
because the kid is vile. there is like animal abuse and animal torturing and he's just like not
a good kid and i thought like things were gonna get darker and darker because he thinks that the
sailor is so tough but then actually when he talks to the sailor more he realizes the sailor is not
the man he thought he was. but unfortunately this is a dnf for me because i was just so bored.
i got halfway through and i was completely bored. there was no action, nothing was progressing,
and there were just more scenes of animal torture. so this was a dnf. i'm sad about it but i don't
think i'll be picking it back up. so after that, i just so happened to get three netgalley arcs
that were all manga from japan. so first up is bakemonogatari volume 1 by nisioisin. it's a
pretty unique spelling of a name, obviously it's down below. and this is following a
high school boy who catches a girl when she trips and it's about their developing friendship.
but i gave this only 3 stars because it was really confusing. you couldn't
figure out what was happening. is she a monster? is she not? are there monsters in
this world? are there not? is he just imagining it? you really can't tell so there's like a
confusing storyline and also interjections by side characters so it didn't gel with me. it
was pretty confusing and i'm not carrying on with it. next i read those not so sweet boys by yoko
nogiri. this one is very reminiscent of ouron high school host club. so there's basically a girl
and on her first day of school she kind of runs into this trio of boys who are known as kind of
like the no good knicks. and then somehow, through bizarre circumstances, she ends up having
to help the boys improve their image. and it's kind of an exchange for a debt that she owes
because she's like a working (what's it called?) a work student like she has to like get good grades
and work at the school to attend. so basically if she helps them improve their self-image
then she could attend the school for free. and i actually gave this 4 stars. i thought it was
really good and i really wanted to read the next one. the only thing i'm not so fond of is like the
potential for love triangles because it's not my jam. but of course this is like a YA high
school manga so of course there's gonna be like a side eye like triangle, you're not sure who
she's with yet because it's only volume one. but i do recommend this one and i gave it 4 stars.
and the last manga that i read in that little section was a sign of affection by suu
morishita. this one really interested me because it deals with japanese sign language. so the main
female in this, yuki, is a college student and she wears a hearing aid and knows sign language.
and it's basically a falling in love story. she falls for this cool guy and it sounds
like it'd be great except for the fact that the characters weren't developed at all so they fell
really flat for me. like i did not care and it's so brutal because i really wanted to be able to
share this and promote this because i've never read a manga that dealt with
hearing impairment. i do know an awesome anime but i hadn't read a manga. however, it fell flat and
was largely forgettable unfortunately. so after that, the last japanese book i read is confessions
by kanae minato. so this one i've already spoken about before in i think my recent wrap up?
this is a teacher revenge story where some students kill the daughter of a teacher
and she's going to get her revenge. a lot of people really love this book because of the twists
and turns that you cannot see coming and i agree you can't see them coming but also i'm not sure
that i really love them? like one of them deals with aids-phobia and like aids panic which
okay... like...
just wish it had been something else. read this book if you like bad people to get bad
prizes. so isn't that... isn't that the saying? like stupid... play stupid games, win stupid
prizes? be an evil person, win evil prizes? this is the book for you. overall i think i gave
it 3 stars so do with that what you will. so next up, i read from china. and i really don't think
i've spoken about this book before and i can't believe this is the first time i'm mentioning it.
it feels like i've wanted to talk about it for so long. this is strange beasts of china by yan ge.
this is phenomenal. i gave it 4+ stars/4.5 stars. i'm currently seeing where
it sits overall for me but it's one that has really stuck with me it is just so weird. we're
set in this fictional chinese town called yang'an. human beings live alongside spirits
and monsters and they're called the strange beasts. each chapter
focuses on a different strange beast, how they came apart, how they came into being, what they're not
powers but what their unique traits are, their weaknesses, their strengths, and how they integrate
or don't integrate into human society. some of the stories in here are so beautiful, some of
them are so creepy, and some of them are so sad. and throughout it all, we're following the main
character who sometimes is loosely and sometimes really strongly tied with certain of the strange
beasts. so yeah this was an arc that i received from netgalley but then also i had ordered it
by the time i was approved. that's how much i wanted to read it. so along the way,
you're not sure how it's going to all tie up but there is a twist in here that is absolutely
done really well in my opinion (not that i want to spoil anything). and overall, this just has
really hazy melancholy dream vibes so if that is something you're interested in, definitely
check this out. i really highly recommend it. it's not perfect which is why it's not like a 5
but 4/4.5. it is one of my favorite translations of the year and it's definitely
a weird like chinese myth/mythological creature book so definitely check it out.
the second to last book that i picked up was for **COLOMBIA** this is delirium by laura restrepo.
and sadly i bought this and had it shipped to australia and then i read three pages and
hated the writing style. so this was an insta-dnf for me. so i'm not going to really get into it
other than to say it's supposed to be about a woman who may or may not be having a mental
breakdown according to her husband. i thought it would be like modern day [colombian] yellow wallpaper
but the writing style... oh my god... was not not for me. so i highly recommend, if you're
thinking about this book in particular, to read the first few pages on amazon book preview if you can.
because i made a mistake and i regret buying this book. and the last one i want to talk about is
for mexico. i read the route of ice and salt by jose luis zarate. and this one was also amazing.
this is a queer oceanic gem of a dracula book. so i have recently spoken about this one as well in my
recent wrap up. we are following a ship named the demeter as it is traveling across the ocean
transporting transylvanian soil. so this is the origin story of dracula which you may be aware
of if you've read dracula by bram stoker. and this is instead from the point of view of the captain
who interweaves his gay longing to have sex with like his soldiers... not soldiers his sailors... and
the weird happenings that are going on onboard. and slowly you're like
okay could we stop daydreaming and maybe pay attention to the fact that like
something very wrong is happening here? but yeah it's just so atmospheric
and gothic and is set on the high seas and surprisingly there was less dracula
than i thought there would be but i still really recommend this. i gave it 4 stars overall and,
again, this one and this one are like two really weird amazing translations
i've read lately and i really recommend them both. this one's from mexico this one is from
china. so that finishes up the 10 books that i read or attempted to read for invisible cities.
so that's it for today and i will talk to you in another video soon. lots of love, bye~