House of the Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata

I am participating National Novel Writing Month right now, so this review will be brief. House of the Sleeping Beauties is a very weird book made up of three bizarre short stories. The first, House of the Sleeping Beauties is about an old man that repeatedly visits a house where old men can, for a fee, sleep with naked young girls. Sleep but not have sex. It is really creepy in a lecherous kind of way because the old man is not very pleasant. The second short story, One Arm is a surreal tale about a man that borrows a young woman's arm and takes it home. He talks to it. He substitutes it for his own arm. This one was just plain weird. Of Birds and Beasts is about a man that has a number of pets, many of which die through his negligence. I didn't really get this story at all.

The bottom line, if you are looking for good modern Japanese fiction, don't look for it here.

1.5/5

The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins

As soon as I heard about the publication of Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth I got really excited. As an atheist, I find the theory of evolution credible. I am always surprised when I hear or read about the lengths that creationists go the make it sound like evolution is not credible, especially when they are arguing against teaching evolution in public schools. So, I was looking forward to reading a book on the evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

Dawkins book, however, is extremely disappointing. He does cover the evidence supporting evolution, but does so in an awkward manner. He constantly digresses from his main point or cuts a discussion off by saying that it is too complex for the layperson. My overall opinion is that there is a much smaller book in The Greatest Show On Earth that would have been much better. I think I might try Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne to see if I like it better.

2.75/5

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan

I must admit this was the book that I read at the end of the Readathon, so my recollections of it are vague. Black Dogs is about a woman's encounter with two huge, menacing black dogs while on a walk in France. Her husband out of earshot, the woman is attacked by the dogs. She manages to fend them off, but her life and the life of her husband are deeply altered. For Bernard, the encounter was just an unpleasant event. But for June, the dogs are the incarnation of evil. This rift drives them apart, opening a large metaphysical gulf between them as she becomes a devout Catholic and he remains an atheist.

It is really hard to rate this book because I don't remember it very well. But I do remember my impression that Black Dogs was not as good as my previous McEwan read, Amsterdam.

3.0/5