Mr. Happy Booker and our eldest booklet are in Tokyo this week. Our 9 year old attends a Japanese immersion school where half his day and most of his subjects are taught completely in Japanese.
Why Japanese? We have no idea. But whatever inspired our public school go this route, we're pretty happy at the results as our gaijin kid is now pretty fluent and can actually read and write the language.
While the men of chez Booker are far from home eating soba noodles, hunting for pokemon, and visiting friends, we have been busy here catching up on our reading and writing. We have also been busy with early morning phone calls filled with strange information—Japan has 7-11's (no slurpees) and Did you know you can buy Pokemon socks in the vending machines? Or maybe we dreamed this, the phone has been ringing quite early when we're still in a dreamy haze.
Anyway, in the spirit of international relations, we bring you a few good links from around the world, starting in Japan, where the top literary prize was recently awarded to Ito Takami for Hachigatsu no Rojo ni Suteru ('Throwing Stuff Away on a Road in August'). (Via the Literary Saloon)
South of the Border, Madam Mayo goes to Mexico to bring us the presidential election results.
Further south, the Village Voice reviews 3 new titles from Latin America and finds traces of Borges between the covers.
In London, the Times announces the 100 Best Summer Reads:
50 fiction titles
50 nonfiction titles (includes biography, memoirs, history, current affairs, arts, travel and a category called "general" —kind of makes us wonder what Caroline would say about this definition)
Also, don't miss this recent profile of our friend Vikram Chandra in Bookseller discussing Sacred Games, the novel where Chandra "puts an Indian spin on the noir thriller." (We hope to have Vikram on the blog soon, watch this space!)
For all those who enjoyed Happy Booker guest blogger James Zug's take on the World Cup, we suggest this post which also made us smile.
News from our own backyard: The DC Places Issue of Beltway Quarterly has arrived. The Washington Post gives the issue a little love here.
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