Topic: Nintendo Life Book Club

Time to re-read Ki in Daily Life By Koichi Tohei. Also just picked up a copy of Aristotle's collected works (I'll start that this weekend I think...I've read a great deal of his works but I wanted it in one volume). Reading the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. Trying to get back to reading for pleasure on the regular instead of studying until my eyes bleed.

Finished up Rising Sun yesterday.

It was my first crack at a crime thriller, and I really enjoyed it. The heavy focus on the feelings of the business relationship between the US & Japan at the time certainly made it more interesting as well, IMO.

Are there any other fiction novels (either Western or Japanese in origin) where Japan (or Japanese culture in general) is prominent that I should be looking out for? I know one of the Tom Clancy novels focuses on a new war between Japan & the US, and I'm going to be on the lookout for that, but can't think of anything else.

@shaneoh: I absolutely hate how the main KoTOR characters' eventual fates were written. I haven't read Revan, but from other sources, I kinda have a basic idea of how things go. Just opinion, but Disney could have made some dough, if they made a series of movies, or even a mini-series on streaming services, focused on that era, the "Old Republic". By the way, KoTOR2 is awesome by itself, & totally better with the right mods, specifically the Restored Content mod. The mod also made it to the Steam version of the game.

@Capt_N
Yeah it doesn't go well for them. I'd love a trilogy of movies that covered the original KotOR, I can't get enough of Revan (I even spent a couple of hundred on LEGO SW sets so I would get an official Revan Minifig). The KotOR comics are worth reading too, if you can get your hands on them. The only issue I had with the restored content mod of KotOR2 was the droid planet, there were quite a few bugs and it was quite a dull place. Both games were great though.

@shaneoh: I had no idea there was a Revan minifig. That's awesome! As for the droid planet, mine was buggy, too. I did play a large chunk of the planet, but bugs ultimately prevented my progress. At that point, I just used the warpbelt mod to open doors. Last I knew, the mod team is still working on the entire thing. I knew there were comics about the Old Republic, but I was unaware there were ones specific to KoTOR. Thanks for making me aware of those things! Edit: I, too, thought the droid planet was desolate.

@RR529 Well, there are lots of Japanese authors translated into English! I particularly like both Murakamis (Haruki and Ryu), though they are very different. For western writers, there are James Clavell's historical romps, Shogun and Gaijin, which are both highly entertaining. For something a bit more highbrow there's Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for a Time Being. A personal favourite is David Mitchell's Number 9 Dream - though really it's a Haruki Murakami pastiche.

@Capt_N
Glad it wasn't just me who had issues with the droid planet. The KotOR comics take place during the mandalorian wars, there are plenty of cameos from characters from the games, (Revan, Malak, Atris, Carth and Saul come to mind). Have a snippet:

@shaneoh: Thanks! That image alone is kinda desktop wallpaper worthy.

I just finished reading Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" (the book goes by many names but that's the name mine has). I stumbled upon it quite some time ago when I was researching for other media similar to Zero Escape series but I didn't buy it until recently. I haven't read many books in my life but this one is now my favorite. It is a murder mystery where ten people die one by one on an island. If you like Zero Escape or murder mysteries in general, I highly recommend picking it up. It's also quite short, you can read it in few hours. I'd say anyone can finish it easily.

I also read John Verdon's "Think of a Number" before I started Christie's book. I found a collection of the first 3 books from him for 5€ when I was buying groceries and thought: "Why not, it's cheap and I can start reading them while I wait for my order to arrive". (I had just ordered Christie's book a day before.) It's also a murder mystery but the way it's written differs quite a lot from the previously mentioned book. This one is more slow paced and focuses on retired homicide detective Dave Gurney who is the main character in all his books. This is the first book so it's a good place to start. The book is twice as long as "And Then There Were None" but I never got tired of reading it. The characters are top-notch and the mystery is fascinating. The premise is that there's this person who contacts one of Gurney's old friends, Mark Mellery, and threatens him to send him money or else he'll tell everyone about his past mistakes. Later the person contacts him again and wants Mark to think of a number. He thinks of number 658 and the other person tells him the exact same number. Mark Mellery becomes paranoid about the whole situation and wants Gurney to solve who this person is and how does he know him so well that he can tell which number he's thinking of.

In addition to those, I've been reading The Art of Fire Emblem: Awakening. Or browsed through the pages since it's mostly art... until you get to the last 1/3 of the book which consists of all the support conversations. 100 pages of text printed in very small font.

I also bought The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts. That's waiting until I'm done with Fire Emblem book.

I finally finished the Jurassic Park 2, it included way too much babble between the characters, but it was ultimately fun to read.

I'm halfway through Alien right now.

Studying as usual but just picked up Iwata-san. I read Japanese slowly so it’s gonna take me a few months to get through it but looking forward to it all the same.

Funny that you would revive this thread today, I bought a copy of Coraline a few hours ago.

I like the movie so I figure the book should be fun too.

Edit: yes I did finish reading Alien.

@Eel I just got a third of my books out of storage so I should be in here more. Trying to game less and read more like i used too. Only issue is it is starting to look like Yomiko Readman’s apartment in here.

Maybe it could help to pick and choose a few books to have out and rotate them

Has anyone here read, "No Longer Human" by Osamu Dazai or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," by Ken Kesey?

I need to pick up Coraline (the book) at some point. I absolutely love the movie. Stop-motion is a wonderful art form.

@Static_Fanatic I’ve read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Marvellous book. Any particular reason for asking?

@Krull It's my favorite book and I was wondering if anyone else felt kind of bad for Nurse Ratched. Like yes, she was a bad person, but she did try to keep the patients safe.

@Static_Fanatic Interesting. It honestly never even occurred to me to feel sorry for Nurse Ratched! Always felt she represented The Man, in that Sixties counter-culture sense, deciding what’s best for you without asking or caring whether that is what you want or even what you need. TBH, I should probably read it again. It’s been a long, long time, and I’m sure I’d have a different or more nuanced take on it today.

One upside of the last month’s quasi-quarantine is that it’s given me plenty of time to read, and I’ve finally come to the end of ‘Iwata-san’, the posthumously published book on Nintendo’s former president. Maybe ‘on’ is not the quite the right word, as it’s mainly composed of musings from the man himself, taken from interviews with the Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun and Iwata Asks, but also features contributions from Shigeru Miyamoto, Masahiro Sakurai, and Shigesato Itoi (co-founder of the aforementioned company where Iwata was IT manager).

Due to the fact that the book is largely a compilation of previous interviews (many of which readers may be familiar with through Iwata Asks), not all the information will be necessarily new. However, having it all chronologically assembled does lend the book a coherent narrative which would be hard to appreciate by reading its constituent excerpts in isolation. The switch from Iwata’s own words (which make up the bulk of the book) to the closing contributions from his friends and colleagues means that we get a few different perspectives on the same events, and at times it almost reads like a pseudo-dialogue as we see a single relationship reflected upon from both sides.

Another effect of these interview-derived excepts is that the tone is a lot lighter and chattier than might be expected of something weightier like an official memoir, but this helps give an honest reflection of events at the time they were experienced. We’re largely carried along in the same stream as Iwata as we travel through his thoughts and musings, and it’s only through the contributions of his colleagues in the final chapters, that we catch up to the present where Iwata’s passing has become part of reality. It’s actually quite heart-wrenching to be breezily riding through life with someone, and then looking back upon that life through the eyes of those who had been part of the story.

The musings themselves are thoroughly interesting, and really highlight just how many of the decisions and workings of such a large company were direct products of the corporate and personal philosophies cultivated by Iwata over the course of his career. Exploring his relationships with various other prominent figures at the company is equally fascinating. The mutual respect shared by Miyamoto and Iwata is particularly interesting because the of just how different the two individuals are revealed to be. Miyamoto’s antipathy towards businesswear contrasts with Iwata’s insistence on wearing suits for nearly every occasion, and every time the two would share long haul flight, it would be Miyamoto who fell asleep first only to find Iwata still busying away on a laptop next to him when he awoke several hours later.

Unfortunately the book is currently only available in Japan in its original language, but what with a certain percentage of the contents coming of Iwata Asks excerpts (which have presumably already be translated), and wouldn’t think an English publication of the book need be enormously far away. We haven’t seen any more indications other than the request for individuals not to publish translations personally, but if it does make it overseas I’d definitely recommend anyone interested in the late president’s life and philosophies to give it a read.