An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

“It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.” An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro

I was expecting this book to be of a similar style to the only other book I’ve read by Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, but it wasn’t. It’s not that I don’t understand that writers can write more than one genre, but the title of this book had me thinking that this one might also be written in some alternate world to ours. That isn’t the case, but I still enjoyed An Artist of the Floating World.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

“See you’ll b’lief in a mil’yun diff’rent b’liefin’s if you reck’n jus’ one of ’em may aid you.” Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Going into this book, all I knew was that it had been made into a movie with Tom Hanks in it with the vague idea that it was set sometime in the future. However, when I started reading and found it set in the 1850s, I was confused and made my way to Goodreads to see what I was in for.

Foundation

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

“The snow had ceased, but it caked the ground deeply now and the sleek ground car advanced through the deserted streets with lumbering effort.”
-Foundation, Isaac Asimov

This was one of the books from my library haul a few days ago. This is the only book of the series that’s on my list of books to read, and I’m a little disappointed about that, because it was really good and the ending wasn’t the kind of ending where things are at least temporarily resolved, but the kind where it just kind of ends, and some events are resolved, but the bigger picture isn’t. But in this series, the bigger picture isn’t going to be resolved for quite a few books, I imagine. I wish the library had the rest of the books in the series, but if I remember correctly, they only had this one.

The Master

The Master by Colm Toibin

“It suddenly occurred to him that the best way of clearing this woman out of the room was by waving his two hands at her and making a noise as though she were a flock of hens or a gaggle of geese.” —The Master, Colm Toibin

I was surprised to see on the cover of this book that it was one of the 10 best books of 2004 according to the New York Times’ Book Review. This was before I read it, and my surprise was based solely on the fact that I’d never heard of it before. But let’s be honest, in 2004, I wasn’t reading books like The Master.