Japan and Elsewhere

So I mentioned ages ago that I was reading 'The Long Earth' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. When my brother Bart spotted it he said it was much more Stephen Baxter than it was Terry and I think I would concur, as the Pratchett humour was there but it did not feel anything like the discworld books. Apparently he collaborated a great deal in the latter years of his life as he had trouble holding stories together as his mind declined. It is testament to his amazing creativity that he never stopped writing. In the book a scientists creates a device that allows people to 'step' sideways into parallel earths, each one having taken a slightly different evolutionary path, but all empty of human beings. It follows Joshua who was coincidentally born in another world and can 'step' without the device, and an epic journey across the earths in a stepping airship. I enjoyed this book. It was very clever and I relished the story and the concept, it was hugely imaginative (though in some ways depressing at the thought of human beings fucking up multiple earths) but that was about it. 

'Abroad in Japan' by Chris Broad is about a guy doing JET like Monkey Sensei and basically acts as a kind of introduction to living in Japan with chapters about food and onsen and Mount Fuji and shrines and so on. So was just like chatting to Monkey about how she's getting on and what she's been up to. It's just life, that is kind of the same, but kind of completely different, but it does get across the peculiarities of learning to live in another country. I kind of enjoyed it because I am already interested in Japan and its culture but in truth I'd rather spend the afternoon video chatting with Monkey while she cooks her gyoza for dinner. 

"Breast and Eggs" by Mieko Kawami came from Monkey's bookshelf and follows two sisters and a niece as they wrangle with the nature of being in a female body. It starts as the older sister is visiting the younger with the intention of getting breast implants, pursuing a lost youth somewhat. Then in the second part, a decade later the younger sister is contemplating the process of having a child via sperm donation, something not available to single women in the somewhat socially conservative Japan. She encounters a support group for children of anonymous donors and spends a lot of time debating the ethics of the choice she feels bound to make. It was a lovely book of relationships between the three women, bound together by only having each other. I liked Natsuko because she seemed so vulnerable, sometimes still this child who had to fend for herself as her mother and then grandmother had died and left the two girls as teenagers. It was all very much inside her life, day to day stuff like coping with the heat and worrying about her life, and big existential stuff contemplating sharing her life with another person. 

In between reading and working and stuff my lovely Ady had her third birthday. I searched for an hour on the interweb for a freebie pattern to make her a dress and then gave up and went to the library and found this fab book, Wild Things by Kirsty Hartley. It is full of lovely simple designs and contained patterns to trace (and adapt, I did some dungarees and turned them onto a dress instead). I bought the monster fabric down in Leons last year some time. She had a 'pretty dress' ready for the party so she didn't put it on for a photo but whatever. I am pleased as punch with it.

Stay safe. Be kind. More catch-up posts coming ....