On the same page

At last the Old Man seems to have come to the realisation that, with a half dozen unpacked boxes stuffed full of paperback lit in the library, perhaps he doesn't need to go on Amazon and order a clutch of books every time he's looking for something to read. I had so much fun going through my big box of East Asian lit and giving him the rundown on those titles which I thought would most appeal to him. In the meantime, I realised that I'd never gotten around to reading either Tanizaki's Naomi or Mishima's Thirst for love so I pulled them out for myself. I also grabbed Kawabata's Snow country, though I can no longer remember whether I've read it or gave up early on.

Fortunately they're all pretty short. If I knock off one a week, I've got a chance of finishing them all before this Japanese kick runs its course. I've finished all the Nakagami I could get my hands on, and while there was a certain amount of diminishing returns with his tales of erotic obsession, I'm still glad of discovering him. Dazai is in my bag, as is the Shōwa anthology. (That's actually how this started, with monshu spying it on the table and asking if he could read it.)

It's funny to think about, after so many years of our reading running in parallel channels, we're flowing together again as in the early days of our courtship, wherein we both read Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetrology and met regularly over lunch to discuss it. Lately our literary conversations have generally revolved around me asking, "Have you read [famous author]?" and him replying, "Oh, ages ago." Now maybe I can turn the tables on that.