Week 7, 2026 — mostly I read books at home
I had three outings, so not in complete cave mode, but close to it. Mostly I did what was needed for work, and then just read book after book.
Kaho Nashiki’s “The Witch of the West is Dead”. It’s a short novel of a troubled young girl who goes to live with her grandmother in the forest for a while, where she learns the ways of a witch, gaining fluency in plants and animals and attunement to self. It was a delightful, easy read, with lots of lovely phrases. There was a bonus short story after the novel—a few scenes of the main character in a period that was not covered in the book, splitting perspectives with another character who was only mentioned in passing in the main story. So you get a sense of what happened in between chapters of the main story, delivered just in that moment when you’re mourning a bit that the story has concluded. An unexpected cherry on top that I would dearly love to see more authors do!
I skimmed Takashi Saito’s non-fiction book “The place where only book readers can arrive”. Saito is a well-known educator and prolific author. But I was put off by the cold and condescending tone and ended up skipping over large swaths of it.
I read Daisuke Kishida’s “Textbook on business for the ‘new’ wealthy“ for work.
Shigeru Mizuki’s “Mizuki-san’s Happiness Theory“ was a wonderful read. The first half was his thesis on happiness, and the second half was a series of autobiographical essays about his life and career. I know Mizuki as a hugely successful and beloved manga artist, and was sucked into reading his accounts on his experience as a conscripted foot soldier in WW2 and decades of struggle as a starving artist.
Keisuke Hada’s novel “Phantom” was a strange one. The set-up is promising—the main character, a 32yo salaried worker obsessed with FIRE and the stock market, has to decide what to do about her boyfriend, who looks down her priorities, gets pulled into a cult that rejects the monetary economy. The story attempts to question what happiness lies beyond the pursuit of financial independence but the cult storyline felt forced and distracting. I was disappointed.
Looking for something casual and entertaining, I read Hisato Watanabe’s “I did an in-depth report on a historic ballet company on the verge of going under—and it was intense.” based on his experience as a hired gun producing YouTube videos for said ballet company. The ballet company takes an incredible risk ‘letting‘ this producer set the editorial direction, as he follows his nose on what’s interesting, and gets into the personal lives of the dancers and handles taboo topics like how much money they make. Their courage and open-mindedness to try something new, because clearly the existing ways are not working, is humbling. There is no promise of success, and indeed, they get tons of criticism. But against the odds, they start selling out shows and building a new audience that had never been interested in ballet before. Incredible.