Finished reading: Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir by Craig Mod 📚
I slow rolled this one, it took about two months; it was such a pleasure to read I wanted to savoir it but got bitten by then falling out of the habit of nightly reading. Overall, I liked this book. The potent mixture of travel journal and biography combined with hundreds of anecdotes about Japan was right up my alley. At points I felt like Mod waxed on a bit more than necessary. It didn’t feel like filler, I felt that he struggled in points to condense his own thoughts, or that he wanted to convey something extremely pointed. Unable to find the exact notes to hit he danced around it instead. That’s not broadly true but there were segments that fell flat for me. It may just be that Mod comes from such a different background than my own, although I have a lot of empathy for him (which is the mark of good writing), I didn’t always identify with him (the mark of extraordinary writing).
For the photos alone, even the B&W ones in the mass market print this book is worth a read. But that’s true with any number of things about this book, the photos, the tour around the Kii peninsula, the factoids about Japan, I could recommend this book for any number of reasons and would heartily.