Day

Someone recommended Day by Michael Cunningham to me and I picked it up in a rare visit to an actual bookshop to buy actual books (which I don't feel like I do very much any more, and yet I still have an unending pile of books to read...).

Anyway, it tells the story of a family on the same day, three years in a row - April 2019, April 2020 and April 2021. So you can see where this is going...

Interestingly, the 2019 day takes up nearly half of the book, with the other two days being progressively shorter sections.

I thought the first day might end up dragging - but it was so incredibly well observed that the mundane minutiae of one day in a connected group of people's lives was absolutely mesmerising.

That continued through most of the 2020 day as well, which I thought was fantastic since, for a great many people (myself included) that period of time *was* incredibly mundane in a way that daily life had never been before. Though I realise, for many others, it wasn't mundane at all and I'm certainly not discounting that.

I do wish, however, the second two sections of the book had remained entirely mundane as I think that would have held more power in some ways than the direction the story ultimately took.

But the whole thing was still extremely well written and absorbing.

Komi Can't Communicate

Komi Can't Communicate is a manga by Tomohito Oda, about a high school girl who is so painfully shy that she can't speak to people face-to-face. The other students think she is aloof and untouchable because of her beauty and grace but Tadano, a boy in her class, figures out the problem and breaks through to her by having a conversation through writing on the blackboard. He discovers she wants to make 100 friends and vows to help her in her quest.

It's a fun concept and it's well-drawn. Initially, I bought into the cute storyline, though it did get a bit over the top and ridiculous by the end of the first volume, so I decided not to carry on with the series. I liked most of the characters, though, and it's a good idea for a long series of books.