• Richard Marcus writes on Blog Critics that “Inheritance feels contrived and rather forced as the author tried to cram in answers to all the questions he had raised in the earlier books.”
• Matt S on Amazon compares it to a “delicate soufflé, rises to an epic climax before collapsing into a tasteless pile of goop.”
• Dan on SFFWorld finds some parallels in “Paolini’s work… where do I begin? First of all, the plot, is it just me or is it identical to that of Star Wars episode VI: A New Hope?”

Since I’m moving soon and plan to toss any hardcopy Paolini sitting around my home, I won’t be buying this hardcover, nor paying a ridiculous $13.99 (same as hardcover!) for the kindle edition. Any readers braver than me, leave a review in the comments!

Only 152 pages long, Kitchen is full of choppy prose from poor translation by Backus, who at times removes sentences, and other times, replaces Japanese with cliche Americanisms. Reading キッチン in Japanese is certain to be an improved experience.

Kitchen is two short novellas combined together, including a second story Moonlight Shadow. Banana Yoshimoto’s minimalist style is present throughout. In both stories, female protagonists try to deal with loss and death, using different mechanisms. Cooking and food, in the former, and mystical reunion and closure in the second.

I preferred Moonlight Shadow, and would rate it a 2.5/5 due to the light-touch themes of magical realism; Kitchen, on the other hand is only worth a 1/5. It feels pieced together to force a point, almost as a student exercise: write a story about death, use kitchen/food as a coping mechanism, and throw in some strange family dynamics to make it seems strange. In the end, Kitchen fails to even be a solid narrative around cooking, food, or the kitchen.

You can check out the New York Times review, titled “Hold the Tofu”. If you enjoyed Banana Yoshimoto, you may also find a deeper narrative and similar style/themes in Haruki Murakami’s work.

It’s fair to say:

A year from now, Amazon will give a free Kindle (but of course, you gotta buy their books/movies/etc)!

The price history of the Kindle supports this theory:

Kindle 1 – November 19, 2007 – $399
Kindle 2 – February 10, 2009 – $359
Kindle 2 – July 8, 2009 – $299
Kindle 2 – October 7, 2009 – $259
Kindle 2 Intl – June 21, 2010 – $189
Kindle 3 Wifi – July 28, 2010 – $139
Kindle 3 Wifi w/Ads – May 3, 2011 – $114
Sourced from Wikipedia

If you chart the Kindle price over time, you get a fairly plausible R² value of .93, and a relatively linear path towards $0:

My personal theory is that the Kindle will be free for Amazon PRIME members around Christmas season this year, and that by the summer of 2012, it will be generally free in its lowest-priced version. Amazon will hedge out the hardware cost in various ways (ads, PRIME membership, contract requiring the customer to buy XYZ number of books), but ultimately their goal is to deliver kindles into the hands of book-hungry consumers.

The newly announced $114 ad-supported Kindle version is just the latest step in this direction. For the minor inconvenience of advertising screensavers (the Kindle power down / lock screen) and a small advertisement in the kindle bottom bar, you shave $25 off the price–a significant discount! Personally, I have been disappointed with the kindle screensaver pictures that come with the device by default, and wouldn’t mind at all to have tasteful ads when I turn it off.

Here’s what it will look like, from FastCompany:

The way that Amazon is selling this is that you, as a customer, will receive unique “special offers” directly on your kindle, such as discounted gift cards from Amazon/Audible, coupons for MP3s, and other promotions. Either way, we’re looking forward to cheaper kindles. More commercial integration means reduced consumer cost–what’s not to like? We hope also that Amazon can kill the agency publisher model too, and price ebooks at fair value using a dynamic marketplace system.

I highly recommend reading some of the Redwall series if possible, if only to indulge your childhood self.

What’s the point of reading a censored version of the book? By the time that we Americans dilute our literary heritage, taking away both impact and historical significance from what we read, we will have thoroughly become a nation of imbeciles, and may not even notice the loss.

As the famous Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” And in his books, I’m sure he’d prefer that the rights words, as written, continue to be used.

The books that interest me most I’ve added to my Amazon wishlist. These four works of fiction look really interesting:

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason

The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel takes the traditional story told in Homer’s Odyssey and twists the fate of Odysseus. The novel claims to be a translation of an ancient papyrus of “44 concise variations on Odysseus’ story that omit stock epic formulae in favor of honing a single trope or image down to an extreme of clarity.”

Filled with reference to the original text to bring readers back up to speed with their high-school days, The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel serves as a Homeric refresher course!

4½ of 5 on Amazon.

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross

Mr. Peanut is a mystery/literary-thriller about a woman who dies mysteriously of what appears to be a fatal peanut allergy. Her husband, some kind of computer-programmer-writing-genius is somehow involved.

While the story has received mixed reviews due to an unusually dim view of marriage, and a meandering plot, others agree that Mr. Peanut is an excellent debut novel.

3½ of 5 on Amazon.

The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer

The Nearest Exit tells the story of a burned-out spy, tired of committing moral indignities on the CIA’s behest. Technically the sequel to The Tourist, readers will want to direct their attention to its precursor and read that first.

While some of the storytelling and cheap character building “trademark idiosyncrasies” grate on readers, the quick pacing and satisfying conclusion made this one an enjoyable read for the Times.

4½ of 5 on Amazon.

Solar by Ian Mcewan

Solar is Ewan Mcewan’s latest novel, a comical take on climate change, living life to its fullest, and self-righteous, glutenous adventure.

Forced metaphor-mixing politics and personality, staged turns of plot, and other tropes invade in full-force. The unnatural construction of this novel has been offputting to some critics, who claim it is far from his best work. You might disagree!

3½ of 5 on Amazon.

It’s hard to say. Why do you fall in love? If I had to explain it, I would say that it’s because the period is exactly the opposite of the way people imagine it. To me, they were not the Dark Ages. They were a luminous time, the fertile soil out of which would spring the Renaissance.

It’s a pleasure that this literary cornerstone has published so much online, and for free. Check out their archives!

Another interesting A-Z list of books is Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Series, which currently runs the gamut from A (“A” is for Alibi) to U (“U” is for Undertow). We have featured here one of her novels for the letter T, and refuse to use any others.

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