Max Cairnduff

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto and translated by Beth Cary

2025 reading 🧵
My fourth Matsumoto. This is one of his procedurals, with dogged police work to the fore. Perhaps too many coincidences though? Happily, Inspector Imanishi himself is a gem, conscientious, happily married, prone to overbuying bonsai for his home.

I read this recently too. Apparently Henry James was a fan.

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett Born in Maine, New England in 1849, the American writer Sarah Orne Jewett is known for her works of literary regionalism, a genre of writing in which the local setting, landscape, history, communit…

New on the blog today, I've written about THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS by Sarah Orne Jewett

Through evocative vignettes, Jewett conveys a rich picture of everyday life in small-town Maine. Highly recommended for fans of Elizabeth Strout & Willa Cather! 💙📚
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Normally after a concert I put in some earplugs to cut down tube noise but if I can listen to music then it wasn’t a good concert.

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto and translated by Beth Cary

2025 reading 🧵
My fourth Matsumoto. This is one of his procedurals, with dogged police work to the fore. Perhaps too many coincidences though? Happily, Inspector Imanishi himself is a gem, conscientious, happily married, prone to overbuying bonsai for his home.

Now? FP has been figurine-forward for years now, I’d have thought a decade or two.

Get thee to Gosh!

Sorry yes, I should have been clearer. That’s why I’m excited.

Though to be fair I don’t know the Chamberlain translations so will look into those. The current Pushkin look has grown on me.

Death in Venice

Love and Enchantment: Three Stories

Thomas Mann’s books fall out of copyright (UK/EU) next month, which means - new editions and translations!

Here are two from Pushkin Press: Death in Venice, and three stories (Tonio Kröger, Disorder and Early Sorrow, and Mario and the Magician). All translated by Lesley Chamberlain.

I had noticed Penguin is releasing the Mann translations this coming summer, which I’m definitely looking forward to.

Mannathon ‘26!

Sweet Bean Paste, by Durian Sukegawa and translated by Alison Watts

2025 reading 🧵
Marketed like a Japanese cosy and initially seems a bit like one, before going into more troubled territory of Japanese historic prejudices and injustices. A better novel than I expected. Not surprised it received a film adaptation.

Far From the Light of Heaven, by Tade Thompson

2025 reading 🧵
Another winner for me. A nice slice of SF locked-room mystery with an Afro-futurist twist and a neat bit of Yoruba mythological influence. Not what I was expecting and all the better for it.

Painting is Edgar-Quinet Boulevard (1950) by Japanese-French artist Tsuguharu Foujita.

The illustrations are same cover artwork as for the French editions. The photograph is a crop from a picture by the great Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert. The Cat, new translation just out from Penguin, has yet another style of cover design.

For UK Audible users there are some monthly deals on my books: Service Model, Children of Memory and Doors of Eden are all £3.99 for December.

I think I like the cover type at the bottom best, though I prefer the new ones to the photo ones. They are bright for Simenon though.

They look a bit like Pushkin classic covers. Pretty though.

Penguin drive me crazy with this. They’re constantly changing styles. Trying to create a consistent collection of any series is near impossible. Sometimes they change design part way through a release cycle even.

Expensive novelty gift that then lives in the back of a cupboard as the recipient can’t regift or donate it.

Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell

2025 reading 🧵
Absolutely lovely this. As so often, this is a classic for very good reason. Warm, gentle, very funny, Gaskell brings us into the company of a group of village spinsters and honestly I could have stayed twice as long. Delightful.

Nice still.

I’ve nothing against cats on covers except when there aren’t corresponding cats in the book!

It’s still very much a cosy comfort read. At least though it doesn’t have some supernatural gimmick which doesn’t really make sense and nobody in the fiction questions.

To be clear though, it is still definitely cosy.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, by Satoshi Yagisawa and translated by Eric Ozawa

2025 reading 🧵
Marketed as a Japanese magical-comfort-whimsy book (cats on the cover even though there’s none in the novel), but it’s not really one of them. A young woman shelters in her uncle’s bookshop after a bad breakup and he helps her recover. Later she helps him in turn. It’s rather good.

Correct, though I work near St James Park and they’re there too.

Introduce yourself with five animals you’ve seen in the wild:

Cat
Dog
Rat
Fox
Pigeon

I am a Londoner, why do you ask?

If you won’t allow cat and dog I’ll replace them with:

Tube mouse
Parakeet

Good choice! I was so impressed by that book. It’s an entire world.

Marian Dioguardi (American, b.1954)
"Mocha Espresso," n.d.
Oil on panel
24 x 24 in
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

I liked this one, enough I’d read another by her, but it did strike me as very much a stage play in the page. Four characters come together in one space - by the end of the evening tensions will surface, secrets be uncovered, and their lives never quite the same again!

Just a Little Dinner by Cécile Tlili (tr. Katherine Gregor) Established in 2023, Foundry Editions are still relatively new on the UK publishing scene, but I’ve already noticed their books in several outlets in London, largely due to the striking blue-and-wh…

'The staging had to be perfect and the meal delicious, and now it’s time for her to spruce herself up. That’s what Étienne really expects, of course: “Go and have a shower, it’ll do you good” meant “Make yourself presentable, dress up, match the décor.” ' 💙📚

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Have you read more since? I was so impressed.