After spending a leisurely year perusing the 760 leaves of Don Quixote, I hurtled through the 616 pages of Battle Royale in a single week. Thanks are due mostly to the all-night marathon, ending at 6:10 this morning, during which I read 182 pages. I just wish I could read it in Japanese. It was a pretty good book - entertaining, and all that - but I hated the translation. I haven't read the original, so I don't know if it's fair of me to dislike the translation: the translator might, in fact, have been completely faithful to the original, and captured the style and atmosphere, etc., but if that's the case, I feel it'll be much better to read it in Japanese than in this American-English outfit. But I did enjoy the book, and will endeavour to learn Japanese to a sufficient standard to read it in it's proper language. I know that will be very difficult. But I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't listen to that Japanese CD more often while reading the book. Reading quickly is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, you get the stuff into your head quicker and can then move on to the next book on the shelf; but, alternately, you can forget to put on the relevant music, and only when you're right near the end of the book do you remember. Bit of a shame, but never mind. It wouldn't have been a completely Japanese experience, anyway. And another thing I was thoroughly disappointed about (and this goes for the CD of Japanese music as well), was: there wasn't a single Japanese character on either of them. How do they expect me to learn the language when they write everything in the Roman alphabet? Ridiculous. Not the Japanese, of course: it's the damn foreigners who manufacture the gear. They're the culprits. Making everything more 'user-friendly' for the xenophobic English-speakers.
More positively, the previous book, Don Quixote was a translation from the original Spanish, and was so well written that it could easily have been the original. Out of the two, the Don wins on counts of style, story, and translation. But those two are in the past now: my next destination is France, to see how The Count of Monte Cristo fares.
