Do you have several books on the go at once? I’m usually what you would consider a monogamous reader: a girl who is loyal to one book at a time; occasionally though I read a few books at once, especially longer classics and books that I am reading over an extended period of time. Books that I am slowly reading are kept on my bedside table (nightstand) as well as books that I plan to read next; my immediate to-be-read pile also lies in two stacks: one beside the bedside table and another in the living room, for ease of access wherever I happen to finish a book, depending on what I’m in the mood for reading.

Currently on my night-stand are two Japanese classics: I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume and The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, both of which are In Spring it is the Dawn read-alongs, one of which is coming to an end and the other about to commence. The other titles, To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski and Foe by J. M. Coetzee, are two that I am looking forward to reading and have placed within easy reach to pick up and read when the time is right.

Do you keep books by your bedside? If so, what do you have there at the moment?

I have enjoyed Volume II of I Am a Cat as much as I have Volume I, probably more so as I have become immersed in the novel and attuned to its narrator and satirical humour. I Am a Cat is highly amusing with wry perceptions through the eyes of a cat. Volume II has been more episodic -with the setting and premise established in Volume I- with the cat (or Neko, as I refer to him when posting) venturing out to a Japanese bathhouse, spying on neighbours and being the only witness to a burglary in his master’s home (of course burglars are also known as cat burglars). The scene were Neko attempts to prove his worth by catching rats -before a visitor to the Sneazes’ home takes him to eat- is a moment of high comedy. Neko’s commentary is insightful as well as scathing at times but it is always witty; when he is not participating in his own escapades then he is observing the domestic dramas of his owners, their friends and acquaintances. I also enjoyed a cheeky reference to Sōseki and his poetry by Sneaze and his friends, Coldmoon and Waverhouse.

I am finding I Am a Cat immensely readable and enjoyable and have definitely found my stride with Volume II; the characters are more fully-fledged and less annoying than in Volume I (not that they irritated me that much but Mr Sneaze is rather pompous) and the cat, himself, is more humanised, which is a development interesting to follow. The cat is by far one of the most intriguing and compelling narrators I have ever had the joy of reading. The concept of an omniscient narrator that is a character and a cat is awe-worthy and it still impresses me two volumes on; I am very excited -but also disappointed- to read the third and final volume for January 15th.

How are you finding I Am a Cat? I know that some of you have borrowed it from the library on my recommendation and I hope that you are enjoying it as much as I am.

Some quotes from Volume II:

So who the hell is this that has so blithely appropriated the cushion which was destined, sooner or later, to have eased Suzuki buttocks? Had the interloper been a human being, he might well have given way. But to be pre-empted by a mere cat, that is intolerable. It is also a little unpleasant.

But cats, I can assure you, just like anyone else, feel the heat and feel the cold. There are times when I consider that I really wouldn’t mind, just that once, soaking myself in a bath, but if I got hot water all over my fur, it would take ages to get dry again and that is why I grin and bear the stink of my own sweat and have never in all my life yet passed through the entrance of a public bathhouse. Every now and again I think about using a fan but, since I cannot hold one in my paws, the thought’s not worth pursuing.

I am joining in Tanabata’s first Japanese literature read-along over the coming months. We will be reading the three volumes of I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume, one volume a month. This is a book that I’ve been wanting to read for the last couple of years and was intending to read it anyway for Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge so this is the perfect read-along for me join in.

For anyone who wishes to join in or wants to follow my progress, the schedule is:

Volume One by November 15th, 2009
Volume Two by December 15th, 2009
Volume Three by January 15th, 2010

These are the corresponding page numbers in the Tuttle Classics edition: Volume One (p. 3 – 156), Volume Two (p. 159 – 355), Volume Three (p.359 – 638).

Do you like the bookmark I am using? This was handmade and sent to me a few months ago by the lovely Nymeth. She knew I was a cat-lover and it is the perfect bookmark, of course, to use for this book!

I have previously shared my bottle-green Virago shelf but I had many other lighter green books on my shelves and I brought those together to create the other green shelf.

First of all, there is NO Angela Carter book! I think this is the first shelf, other than the white one (and I do have a white Angela Carter book, but not on that shelf) that doesn’t include a book by my favourite writer. There are, of course, the obligatory Virago Modern Classics; this time they are both Barbara Pym novels and are new additions to my shelves this year. Penguin are as always well-represented in classics (one read and loved and the other currently unread), beautiful John Wyndham novels, and a Gabriel Garcia Marquez one (also a regular feature amongst the colour-themed shelves); Vintage also sneak onto the shelf yet again with another Rushdie novel.

The Rebecca Wells novel is also a new addition and is a vile shade of lime. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is my all-time favourite Children’s novel and this is a beloved copy and one of the oldest books in my collection with Wild Swans by Jung Chang a close second (a fabulous autobiographical family history that has had a place on my shelves since 1997).

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume is a Japanese classic that you will be reading about soon on my blog and the green Jasper Fforde books belong to great literary crime/fantasy novels and I adore the covers with their spoof beat-up appearance. Lastly on the shelf there is another vividly coloured TC Boyle spine.

I love green as a colour and like the freshness of this shelf, what about you?

I have exhausted the range of colours in my possession, covering the spectrum of the rainbow as well as some other core colours, so this will be the last in my colour-themed bookshelves series until I acquire more books! In the meantime, if the voyeur in you is seeking out then you can watch a vlog tour of Eva’s new rainbow bookshelves.

As a prelude to my reading list for the Japanese Literature challenge I read the novella “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles” by Kij Johnson, which can be read here (it is 64 pages). My appetite is now whetted for reading The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson as well as I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume; cats also frequently figure in the fiction of Haruki Murakami. Does anyone know of the cultural significance of cats in Japan? Is it just that they are a symbol of good luck or a more deep-rooted devotion?

I am a passionate cat-lover and adore reading about cats in fiction and one of my favourite novellas is “The Cat” by Colette. “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles” is set in Imperial China and is about Small Cat who lives in a garden in the capital city with other female felines (Tom-cats visit) and share their lives together:

The cats shared another thing: their fudoki. The fudoki was the collection of stories about all the cats who had lived in a place. It described what made it a home, and what made the cats a family. Mothers taught their kittens the fudoki. If the mother died too soon, the other cats, the aunts and cousins, would teach the kittens. A cat with no fudoki was a cat with no family, no home, and no roots.

Small Cat’s fudoki -her sense of self- is the essence of the story; when an earthquake and subsequent fire destroy her home and no other cats are left but her, Small Cat makes a pilgrimage to the North in search of other cats belonging to her fudoki. Her journey of a thousand miles is from the capital (still Tokyo?) to the North, beyond Mt Fuji (which is only 60 miles from Tokyo) to provinces that do not know cats and see them as demons where she encounters a Monk, a Bear Hunter, a Bear, Snow, cats belonging to a different fudoki, and a ferry journey for the first time. At her journey’s end Small Cat has made her own fudoki – The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles – and realises that stories are not just told and learned but are made by ourselves. Anyone who loves cats, mythology, and the nature of stories will enjoy this lovely novella.

Everyone had a fudoki, Small Cat knew now. Everyone had their own stories, and the stories of their families and ancestors. There were adventures and love stories, or tricks and jokes and funny things that had happened or disasters. Everyone wanted to tell the stories, and to know where they fit in their own fudokis. She was not that different.

Claire from kiss a cloud described the entrancing, “solemnity and the subtlety” of Japanese literature and I think that is a beautiful way of describing the characteristic nature of its canon. The lyrical nature of Japanese literature in translation is beautiful and surreal, like a walk through cherry blossom.

I suspect that this short story is a shorter revision of Johnson’s second novel, Fudoki, which Nymeth reviews here. For anyone wanting to read another Japanese short story about cats then this one by Haruki Murakami is good although it is practically identical to the middle section of his novel, Sputnik Sweetheart.

Some favourite passages:

It seemed to snow every few days, sometimes clumps heavy enough to splat when they landed,
sometimes tiny flakes so light they tickled her whiskers. Small Cat didn’t like snow: it looked like feathers, but it just turned into water when it landed on her.

There was not much for them to do but talk and sing, so they talked and sang a lot. They shared fairy tales and ghost stories. They told funny stories about themselves or the people they knew.
People had their own fudoki, Small Cat realized, though there seemed to be no order to the stories, and she didn’t see yet how they made a place home. They sang love-songs and funny songs about foolish adventurers, and Small Cat realized that songs were stories as well.

The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson. Nymeth made this book sound amazing in her review. She loved the book so much that she wanted to share it and buy it for one of her readers; I was the lucky recipient and I have been saving it for this challenge.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I have read four Murakami books (novels and short stories) and have a couple unread on the white shelf (I have one shelf dedicated to white books which happens to be made up coincidentally of only Vintage Books authors: Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami and Andrey Kurkov). Norwegian Wood was the first Murakami novel that I bought and although side-tracked by his other work along the way I have been very much looking forward to reading it. Influenced by The Beatles, it seems fortuitous that this copy finds itself a home on the white shelf.

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume. As a cat obsessive (I have a cat, Mandoo, at home with my parents and I miss him so much), I am desperate to share my domestic space and heart with a feline again and this book will allow me to do that figuratively. I think, however, that I will read it a bit at a time as an ongoing reading project, perhaps throughout the duration of the challenge.

Out by Natsuo Kirino is a book that I actually came across through Dolce Bellezza’s challenge last year and it is ridiculous that I have yet to read it.

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto. I really enjoyed Kitchen when I read it and the synopsis for this appeals to me. In addition to that, it’s short!

It was for this reason that I thought I would read Some Prefer Nettles by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, which is considered one of Japanese literature’s great novels, without being a typical example. I am curious to know what then constitutes as a classic Japanese novel, classic in the sense of standard; I have I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume and Out by Natsuo Kirino on my bookshelves so perhaps one of those fit this elusive sense of Japanese.

The synopsis of Some Prefer Nettles intrigued me:

The marriage of Kaname and Misako is disintegrating: whilst seeking passion and fulfilment in the arms of others, they contemplate the humiliation of divorce. Misako’s father believes their relationship has been damaged by the influence of a new and alien culture, and so attempts to heal the breach by educating his son-in-law in the time-honoured Japanese traditions of aesthetic and sensual pleasure. The result is an absorbing, chilling conflict between ancient and modern, young and old.

The prose is elegant and to begin with I was caught up in the emotional turmoil of the marriage break-up and the rendering of Japanese culture but, in the end, I was disappointed. The ending was abrupt and inconclusive and the passivity of Kaname and Misako irritated me. The descriptions of Japanese drama (puppet theatre with traditional dolls) were lengthy and over-bearing; I was interested in the outset but the frequent and dry history lessons bored me.

What I have taken from the text though is an ongoing interest in Japanese culture and a desire to read more Japanese literature. Coincidentally, the lovely Nymeth has just informed me that I have won her prize draw for a copy of The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson, which she kindly had dispatched to me today. I am very excited as I have been wanting to read this since reading her review of the text; it could not have come at a better time as I find that after a reading disappointment it is best to jump right back on the horse, in this case the horse is Japanese literature.

Don’t get me wrong: Some Prefer Nettles wasn’t awful, by any means, but it did not live up to my expectations. As mentioned above I took other things from it, including the fact that I love reading literature in translation and yet can be unconcious of doing so (it surprises me how many different books in translation I have read this month -Icelandic, French, Japanese- almost unintentionally) and I am going to endeavour to read more.

The meditation upon Japanese culture also provided me with a new-found understanding of Angela Carter’s short story collection, Fireworks, which I re-read earlier this year. The stories collected in Fireworks are mostly set in Japan, written -and influenced by- Carter’s time living there; insight into Japanese tradition and aesthetic from reading Some Prefer Nettles allowed me further appreciation of these stories and the vivid rendering of the culture that Carter achieves. I may even go back sooner than planned and re-read some again, especially “The Loves of Lady Purple” about a life-size Japanese puppet manipulated to life at the necromantical hands of the puppet-master.