What better selection for the book club than the first novel of all time? And of course, we have to read the best possible unabridged translation. No baby mode here at GeekNights
The plot revolves around Genji, who is the son of the Emperor and a low ranking concubine. Genji is removed from the line of succession, and proceeds to go on an epic journey. The journey involves tons of romance and court drama. Spicy!
Despite being older than any other novel, The Tale of Genji has a tremendous amount of relevance to the geeks of the 21st century. The influence of Japan on nerds around the world is undeniable, and a surprising amount of things we see in pop culture are present here in a book from the 11th century. I'm quite confident after reading it how we will notice how many newer stories have been making references to this tale without us realizing it.
Also, I feel the need to point out that this first novel ever written was written by a woman. For all these reasons and so many more, this is more than worthy of book club selection.
Very nice read and also very interesting. Can’t say about english translations, got two diferent versions in spanish. This weekend I’ll start re-reading it. You guys are such a good influence.
The hardcover edition is two volumes, chapters 1-33 and 34-54. This seems like a natural point to pause. I finished the first volume and am taking a break to read some other books.
Thoughts so far:
It starts off as a soap opera and basically continues as one, though the subject matter matures as Genji does.
It took about ten chapters to finally internalize the titles-in-lieu-of-names logic. I still stop to look people up occasionally.
The mix of titles and a heavy use of pronouns can sometimes be confusing, especially if I pause in the middle of a chapter rather than at a chapter break.
A novel usually has scene transitions either explicitly mentioned in the text or annotated with a separator. The Tale of Genji doesn’t do this all and will flit between scenes and people.
This is the first novel where I actually notice and remember the chapter titles and find them useful as a reference, perhaps because they provide structure and context for the reader-derived names of its characters.
A couple of these chapters are hilarious. After hundreds of pages of subtle nuance which sometimes requires the use of footnotes to pick apart, when we see characters barge in without grace it’s as surprising to me as it surely is to the other characters in the story.
Genji is a privileged man behaving badly, albeit in a society that no longer exists. In that sense it’s a familiar story.
Guys, it’s okay to bail on a book. Just stop reading it. It isn’t a sign of lack of character to decide a book isn’t for you or not worth finishing. If you get to page 50 and aren’t enjoying it, stop. Also don’t feel like you should continue just because you’ve read most of it or more than half. Life is too short to stress about it.
I agree. If I felt it wasn’t for us, not worth finishing, or I wasn’t enjoying it, then I would bail on it. None of those things are true. It’s just LONG AS FUCK.
Maybe read a handful of novellas while working on this book, like John Scalzi’s The God Engines, Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate, or Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti. That’ll give you more quick book club content without having to dedicate yourself to separate full-length novel to do so.
I’ve never been able to read just one book at a time… (I guess only exception are very short stories, swallowed under one hour, but even those, sometimes…). I’ve always managed to have around a dozen books open at the same time, and jumping from one to another every now and then… It’s a mess if I ever have a long period of disconnection in my readings, cause when I start again, I usually start from scratch, a new selection of books, which add up to the previous one… It works for me, although I do not recommend it.
I got half way through War and Peace. Then I got dialup internet at home, and all reading-only time went out the window. Thank fuck, as it saved me from that book.
I didn’t realize it existed until my jaunt to the Cloisters yesterday, but there are pretty pictures online, and probably an expensive book you can purchase!
Right now, there’s an exhibit about Kyoto, and its being a poltical and cultural capital, I have no doubt there’s Genji-related matter.
