Piercing - Six Word Sum Up

You probably know about my Japanese Literature Challenge... and "Piercing" is one of those books read for this challenge and which really made me thankful for having decided to join in, since it is a book you will never forget. If this is not enough for you to read it, then take into consideration that I stopped twice because I was shocked by the images and situations it presented... My first book by Ryu Murakami, but definitely not my last!

Unimaginable obsessions defeated by daring prostitute.

The Guardian has a great review here and I have a tempting passage below :)

"As he opened his eyes he found that his senses of sight and sound and smell were getting entangled with one another, and now came a snapping, crackling sensation and a pungent whiff of something organic burning. Yarn or fingernails, something like that. He moaned beneath his breath: Not again. It always started with the sweating, followed by this smell of charred tissue. Then a sudden sense of utter exhaustion, and finally that indescribable pain. As if the particles of air were turning to needles and piercing him all over. A prickling pain that spread like goose bumps over his skin until he wanted to scream. Sometimes a white mist clouded his vision and he could actually see the air particles turning into needles.
Calm down, he told himself. Relax, you’re all right, you’ve already made up your mind you’ll never stab her. Everything’s going to be all right."

Read for The Japanese Literature Challenge and The New Authors Challenge.

Gods

Ms. Sexton went out looking for the gods.
She began looking in the sky
—expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch.

No one.

She looked next in all the learned books
and the print spat back at her.

No one

She made a pilgrimage to the great poet
and he belched in her face.

No one.

She prayed in all the churches of the world
and learned a great deal about culture.

No one.

She went to the Atlantic, the Pacific, for surely God...

No one.

She went to the Buddha, the Brahma, the Pyramids
and found immense postcards.

No one.

Then she journeyed back to her own house
and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory.

At last!
she cried out,
and locked the door.

by Anne Sexton

Gourmet Rhapsody - Six Word Sum Up

This book is written by Muriel Barbery, the author of the famous and extremely beautiful book "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". I was expecting so much from the book and I was more than "full" :) It is definitely a "must" once you have read "The Elegance...", because you may want to know what other secondary characters in "The Elegance" are doing 'now", but just prepare to get hungry, while reading and looking for that exquisite flavour... Thank you Bellezza for this great opportunity!  

Proust-like cook redefines taste, smell, life.

 P.S. Here's a "taste" of this wonderful book:
"Meat is virile, powerful; fish is strange and cruel. It comes from another world, a secret ocean that will never yield to us; it bears witness to the absolute relativity of our existence, and yet it offers itself to us through the ephemeral revelation of unknown realms. When I was savoring these grilled sardines, like an autistic child whom nothing could trouble at that point in time, I knew that this extraordinary confrontation with a sensation from elsewhere was making me human, bringing its contrasting nature to bear to teach me my human essence. Infinite, cruel, primitive, refined ocean; between our avid teeth we seize the products of your mysterious activity. The grilled sardine suffused my palate with its frank and exotic bouquet,with each mouthful I grew more mature, and every time my tongue caressed the marine ash of blistered skin I felt exulted." 

P.P.S. Don't click here if you are planning on reading the book :))