I generally have a few English books on my shelves that I am saving for transcontinental flights to pass the time. On this past trip to Italy, before getting on the plane on an impulse I purchased SAGA Jun’ichi’s Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan’s Underworld (translated by John Bester.) It was a fast read, lots of fun, but not heavy reading overall. I don’t know much about the Yakuza, so I can’t comment on that aspect, but it is an interesting character study. I’m now a bit more interested in that side of Japan, but I don’t know that I’ll pursue that interest with any intensity.

On the flight from Italy to Japan, and then Japan to New York via Chicago, I started reading Ian M. Banks’ Excession, a complex science fiction novel set in his Culture universe. It was a very interesting read, focusing mainly on the response of the large scale artificial intelligence system of the Minds of the Culture ship to an unexpected impossible-seeming phenomena.

I’ve read a few other Culture novels, Consider Phlebas (good, but not great), The Player of Games (also good), Use of Weapons (this one was very memorable, very good), and now Excession. There are a few more novels in this universe which I’ll try to track down; Banks is a very enjoyable author and he really has quite a wide range of plot types.

While in New York I picked up five additional books, so I should have plenty to read on the trip home. Once I get back to Japan though, I had better concentrate on trying to finish Murakami’s Kafka by the Sea, which I’m slowly reading in Japanese.