Swan Song

Swan Song: The intriguing, suspenseful, gripping, dark, humorous and cosy cozy classic detective fiction novel adored by Golden Age crime and modern mystery fans alike by Edmund Crispin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the author from the first sentence - "There are a few creatures more stupid than the average singer...".
Arrogant man on the stage... it was some relief after few years of politically correct books.
I liked his narration, presentation of characters, dialogues... and the main topic - music. I just felt well in this atmosphere, the only trouble was... some improbable murder, maybe more than one.
I had trouble to follow the investigations and I was not interested in outcome.

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Convenience Store Woman

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At the beginning I liked this book for bringing me into a different world.
Apparently it is written from a position of a autistic person who got a rather one-dimensional vision of life.
After few chapters I got enough of it, the author did not show a full picture of main character (Keiko) life so when in the later chapters she "discovers" people around her and learns their opinions, I found it not convincing.
Another point - in my opinion the translation to English is bit rough.
Even the title - Convenience store - such term is not used in plain language, I have no idea what kind of shop it is in Japan. I noticed that in German and Polish translations they just used Japanese term - Konbini.
Another example - Thank you for your custom - this phrase is used by the store personnel, sounds artificial to me.

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