June Reads

a busy month with little time for reading

Not one I’d particularly recommend to the casual reader: Oswald Wynd was born in Japan of Scottish parents and is one of the subjects of my current research project (for which I received a four-year research grant!). This is the fictional story of Mary MacKenzie, and her life in China and Japan from 1903 to 1942. It hits all the major historical points seen through the eyes of a “fallen” woman (she has an affair, gets pregnant, kicked out by husband…) making her way in modernising Japan. As someone who grew up in Japan in this period, Wynd has an interesting take on relationships between foreigners and Japanese people as Japan begins to engage with the outside world. In particular this quote amused me:

The Japanophiles, those Western converts to the Japanese way, are simply objects of amusement to the natives, who laugh behind politely raised hands. I laugh, too, these days, but without raising my hand.

There is a TV adaptation apparently, starring Samantha Bond, from 1989 (the book is from 1977) which might be better.

The season 2 finale of Books About Bands was an excellent episode thanks to our amazing guest, Tana Haugo Kawahara, who was around for a lot of the bands covered in the book (for example, she saw Fugazi in a park!). It’s out now wherever you get your podcasts (or here). We’ll be back in the autumn with season 3 and if you want to come on and talk about a book, drop me a line.

Another music book but this is unlikely to be of much use for the podcast (unless someone who went to a bunch of Lollapalooza shows fancies coming on to talk about them). Instead, this is background for the big book project. It’s pretty interesting if you’re a 90s alternative music nerd (check) and enjoy seeing how many different ways people can find to call Billy Corgan a dick (oh so many) but beyond that it’s more useful as an oral history repository than a fascinating narrative.