Book Review on reesew.com

Book Review: _The Tatami Galaxy_

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I first watched The Tatami Galaxy anime several years ago, and it lit my brain on fire. I loved the recursive storytelling, the unique and unpredictable animation style, and the cocky-yet-downtrodden voice of the main character. So when I saw that Morimi’s original novel had been translated into English, I felt I had to read it, if only because it felt like peering behind the curtain of a work I really admired.

Mini-Review: _Capitalist Realism_

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have very mixed feelings here. This book is an engaging entry point to contemporary left theory (which, caveat emptor, I am not well-versed in, so take this review with that in mind) and makes valuable arguments with respect to mental health as well as the titular relationship between ideology and imagination, but I felt like much of the remainder of the work is imprecise or impressionistic in ways that I found lacking.

Book Review: _Things Become Other Things_

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“I hold on to the hope that contrition is fixed within the steps of the very walk itself. Each step, an apology. A million apologies. I want to kiss the foreheads of everyone I see.”

A quick story of my own before we get to the book:

I can barely feel my legs. The day started with a vertical march: five kilometers of hills. Hills so steep that even hundreds of years ago, when pilgrims far tougher than I walked these routes, they nicknamed it the “body-breaking slope.”

Book Review: _The Way of Kings_

Tue, 13 May 2025 18:58:15 -0600

Brandon Sanderson has loomed at the periphery of my literary awareness for a few years now. An author selling these massive tomes for millions of diehard fans is always someone to cheer for in my mind, and The Stormlight Archive was suggested to me personally as perhaps his greatest accomplishment. Especially after seeing one of the strangest and most un-generous articles I’ve ever read targeted at him, I felt personally compelled to see what books could possibly generate this much discussion.

Book Review: _The Book of Form & Emptiness_

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For the last few months, I’ve been traveling with nothing more than a backpack, and with space at such a premium, printed books were the first thing that had to go. But the months bore down on me and I missed the texture of the pages on my fingertips, the smell of ink, and most importantly the strange comfort and familiarity that one develops with the book’s physical presence. I thought back to my home library, bookshelves overflowing with literary relationships I’ve built over the years, and I caved: I found the nearest English-language book store in Tokyo to find my next read.