Thursday, July 12, 2007

litpicker

my recent bookshop excursions yielded four books. while we're at the threshold of stringent measures of austerity, still remains sufficient room for literature.

Ring Koji Suzuki
Spiral Koji Suzuki
The Return of the Dancing Master Henning Mankell
The Foreign Correspondent Alan Furst

Suzuki's books are the staples of Japanese horror. and almost everybody who jumped into Asian horror bandwagon of the early 2000 would be certainly familiar with Ring and Sadako. yep. the movies were filmic adaptations of Suzuki's novels, which created quite a hit when they were released in Japan nearly two decades ago.

Henning Mankell's is a police procedural according to the blurb. this would be my first Mankell book, and while I am awed at James Ellroy and his prose, I decided to tryout other crime authors as well. somehow, i've noticed that the best books i read recently were all English translations (Suzuki's Ring, Takami's Battle Royale, Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, to name a few).

i was an Alan Furst fan for quite sometime now, until I hit cul-de-sac with his Night Soldiers. his overnarration and particularity to detail dragged the book to gravel pit and took months to finish it. i'm giving him a second chance.

Labels: books