Following my Akaike Memorial Lecture, I was treated to a very traditional kaiseki dinner near Shōmyōji Temple in Kanazawa, Yokohama. The place felt as if there was only room for a single party and the taxi was uncertain he could drive all the way there as the street was getting narrower and narrower!
The dinner consisted of nine dishes, most of which I had not tasted before. Including the one below with abalone and the Japanese equivalent of bottarga. Fabulous experience!
Read plenty of books during my Indian trip, finishing Translation State, by Ann Leckie. Just brilliant. This is indeed a complex and fascinating book, set in the same universe as the Ancillary books, and it takes some (rewarding) effort to get engaged into the different perspectives on the event, as well as the imprecise genders, but this is ultimately flourishing. (Albeit the three central characters are way too nice and positive!) And the recently rediscovered Londres, by Louis Ferdinand Céline. Ghastly in its exposure of the lowest floors of the human soul . But also with more of a scenario and story tension than Guerre. This second book comes as a sequel to Guerre and is in the same spirit, although the main character, Ferdinand, is less sell-shocked than in the first book. The story is somewhat more constructed and the progression (or regression) has more tension. But the main characteristics of Céline’s style and pessimistic views of humanity remain, with a bleak representation of the collection of crooks, pimps, war profiteers, and desertors that people the book. And Les Eaux de sous le Monde by Stéphane Platteau, an interesting, short, side-story linked to the fantastic Les Sentiers des Astres, if on the light side, at least scenario-wise, as the story centres on a male mage trying to stop a spectre from destroying a convent (or two). Apart from him, all characters are female and some play central enough roles that he would have failed otherwise. And A Man With One of Those Faces, by Caimh McDonnell, a comic detective story, very funny but with a definite suspension of (dis)belief in the resolution of the Razpunzel unsolved mystery and possibly an overdose of Irish-ness. And Guinness! The comic side makes the day, though, along with multi-dimension characters. Part of a rather long series of books and novellas. Finished, painfully, Letter from the Dead, by Jack Gatland, a terrible detective story set in London with caricaturesque characters and situations all the way. Surprisingly a best-seller! (And followed by 21 volumes!)
Harvested and cooked so-called Jerusalem and Chinese artichokes (in French, topinambourg and crosnes, resp.) for Xmath, which didn’t suit everyone at the table. But which I liked, despite the annoying harvesting of crosnes, small and highly dispersed roots. Did not cook anything while India but indulged in the infinite variety of new dishes found in the different hotels & resorts we stayed at.
Chose chaos as the most suited of the horsemen for the coming year, with the number one disruptor (re)entering the White House, wars still raging in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, …, the lack of a stable majority in the French parliament, and the rise of populism in Europe. And elsewhere.
Read System Collapse (Murderbot diaries #7) by Martha Wells. A sequel to the previous Network Effect, which I only partly remembered. The originaly of this volume is the unreliability of the half-organic android (on which I cannot expand because of spoilers!), even though the limited scope of the story is rather disappointing.
Made bagels at home with half rye, half wheat. Definitely tolerable (esp. when compared with my earlier experiment) and dense enough but open to improvements (I plan to try with no egg finish!, cooler raising temperature, and a different type of yeast).
Watched Korean Officer Black Belt (무도실무관)), thinking it was a series. Single movie it was, and definitely more than long enough as it aligns stereotypes and predictable battle scenes, with no active female character (but plenty of female victims)… And Japanese Golden Kamuy (ゴールデンカムイ) thinking it was a movie. Which it was except it ends unfinished (and is continued as a live-action television series). Inspired from a popular manga and taking place after the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. The manga inspiration is very clear, but the window on Ainu culture is worth noting, if somewhat shallow. (With the miso joke overstaying its limited comic potential.)
Read (in French) L’Anomalie (2020 Prix Goncourt) with difficulties as the time travel paradox behind the story is extremely shallow and uninteresting, with caricatures of mathematicians and of about any other category in guise of characters. Lazy writing at its worst, floors below a standard Paasilinna. On a whim, decided to read Le Grand Meaulnes (in French) which I had not fully read as a teenager, but was remembering as a “classic” I should have read. Ended up being highly disappointed by the book, except for its literary style and the insights on the daily life of in the French countryside before World War I (during whose first days the author, Alain Fournier, was killed in action). Indeed, the setting is puzzlingly fantastic, with the highlight of a costumed and doomed wedding in a remote castle that Meaulnes stumble upon, but with no clear intention and on such a scale as to be completely implausible for a small rural community, plus other glaring inconsistencies like getting lost in one’s own vicinity and reuniting some characters at the end against all odds and logic. Maybe I should have read it as a teenager! I am still bemused it was ranked in the top 101 French favourite novel list… unless readers share the same phantom memory as I of the book being a “must-read”, rather than of the book itself. As a side story, the edition I read dates from 1967 (number 1000 in Livre de Poche!) and looks its age, presumably one of the few books we had at home, courtesy of a family member with duplicates in her library, just like my version of David Copperfield. printed in 1965.
Cooked more of the seasonal vegetables, had oysters with no consequence (despite the current contamination scare on Atlantic and Channel fields, due to heavy rains saturating the nearby sewage systems), and celebrated our son’s 30th birthday (!) in a nice, friendly, and tiny 8ième restaurant with enough Italian roots they did not blink when I asked for an (off-menu) affogato! Which they made with a miso ice cream, surprisingly well-suited to the espresso. The dishes were all pleasantly surprising, with one of the best sweetbread preparation I have ever eaten. Great meal before a (rather arctic!) stroll to the Musée Guimet.
Watched The Night Agent delivering a moderately convincing conspiracy hunt at the core of the US government with improbable escapes and unlikely hunches and obvious red herrings, but an interesting couple of evil killers. Watchable on a lazy, wet weekend, maybe. Also had a go at Leave the World Behind poor and shallow, adapted from a 2020 bestseller with the same title by Rumaan Alam, heavy going, poor characters, poor actors, unbearable music. Only positive point for being included here, its connection with the (horsemen of the) Apocalypse.
Had to find a fifth horseman of the Apocalypse for 2024, and figured out that Terry Pratchett was the ultimate expert on these characters, witness
“The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow.” Terry Pratchet, Interesting Times
Hence followed suit when he signaled Chaos as the fifth (part-time) horseman. In Thief of Time. (Incidentally, I do not remember ever finishing a single book from his Discworld series, despite several attempts and encouragements from fellow readers.) With the precision of “not [being] the chaos which can be used to draw pretty Mandelbrot patterns”.
Read The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. While I did not like much the author’s later The Priory of the Orange Tree, bought in one of the many Montréal bookstores and read by Lac Saint-Jean, which I found very shallow and predictable [the book, not the lake!], with most of the tropes of the genre (e.g., ninja-like fighters, heroes uncovering long-lost magical artefacts, super-evil entity about to return to life/power, a few predestined characters saving the Universe), unrealistic events, all-too-convenient coincidences, with little efforts put in the construction of the world, of the magical rules, or of the political structure, I still picked this rather heavy volume in a St Kilda bookstore, in [misguided] prevision for the flight back to Paris and read it later over the Winter solstice break. It is actually much better and enjoyable, in terms of world building for certain, involving a modified history of our World, mostly Britain and Ireland, with a non-human dominant species in the background, a no-man’s land gothic Oxford surrounded by zombies (?), and a part of humanity endowed with paranormal powers. The characters have some depth as well, even when remaining somehow predictable and often repetitive, and the scenario is mostly solid, apart from the unraveling finale. (The Guardian pointed out a direct filiation to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which I certainly did not see coming.) I am unsure I am ready for the next six volumes in the series, though!
Watched Gyeongseong, a Korean TV series that is a mix of horror, period, WW II, sadistic, mad scientists, nationalist, colonialist, family, survival, love, comical, soapy, teary stories all at once! Gyeongseong [경성, capital city] being the name of Seoul during the Japanese occupation and the entire series takes place in a recreated city that resembles the one in other period series I watched. Still enjoyable with a complete suspension of belief (as the scenario accumulates convenient coincidences, clueless Japanese occupiers, and bullet proof main characters) and the acceptance of the cartoonesque nature of fights and innumerable deaths.
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