Snakes, Earrings and Death By Supermarket
Happy Tuesday! The first book up today, I’m sorry to say is definitely Not a winner. I only managed to read the introduction and part of the first chapter of Nancy DeVille’s Death By Supermarket and was more than turned-off enough by the very strident and accusative tone to simply dismiss it. Ron, however, read most of it and said that many if not most of the academic studies DeVille cites have been dis-credited or dis-proven. Clearly, Nancy DeVille is a woman with a mission to demonize the supermarket and packaged foods industries. While these industries may well deserve scrutiny and criticism, this book is of little value to anyone. Not Recommended.
Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings, translated from the Japanese by David James Karashima and published in the United States by Dutton, is a short, strange novel that I neither loved nor hated. The story of the young, middle class Japanese girl who lives her life surrounded by men who want to kill her while she herself is depressed and cares only for her tongue stud (she is going for a forked tongue Someday) and the dragon tattoo on her back. The young woman seemed extremely strange to me, yet the story was oddly compelling. This one is cautiously Recommended to fiction fans.
