Breaking Into Japanese Literature

Kudos to Giles Murray for a great idea and a great execution of that idea. Breaking into Japanese Literature contains seven unabridged short stories in their original Japanese and in English translation. Each page layout is complete in itself. The Japanese is on the left, the English on the right, and a complete dictionary for the page at the bottom. The dictionary enables you to decipher the Japanese without other references.

The masterstroke, however, is that you can download audio files of the stories being read by Japanese actors. Although a lot of English teachers in Japan complain about being used as "tape recorders", I think they sometimes forget just how valuable it is to follow along as a native speaker reads a passage.

Another thing that sets Breaking Into Japanese Literature apart from textbooks and other readers for foreign students of Japanese is that the selections are, as the title says, classics from modern Japanese literature.

I only hope that this book is a big success so that Giles Murray's publishers can be persuaded to do more like it. Highly recommended!

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
June 24, 2003

Comments

I'll second that ! Bravo Giles.

Comment by: ジョージ. Posted July 5, 2003 04:42 PM.

Hooray! At last I can access your blog. (New hard drive, maybe that's why?)

Comment by: Lisa. Posted July 28, 2003 09:51 PM.

A good friend of mine edited that book. He is mortified at some of the mistakes that made their way past his eyes into print, but he's hoping it will be popular enough that the first printing will sell out and the problems can be repaired in the second run. Hope you enjoy it!

Comment by: Durf. Posted September 24, 2003 02:32 AM.

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