Specs
Reviews
(3.89/5)Office politics and the subtle drama of everyday life
Despite the 3/5, I did enjoy this book. It's a book focused around three different characters and their office and personal lives, and how those two opposites combine to intersect with societal expectations to shape them into the people they are in the book. With such conflicting sources of self, you'd expect some level of disfunctionality, and おいしいごはん does deliver. It's all very "everyday", though; there's very little overt drama, people smile and agree to each other's faces, and they go through their day-to-day drudgery. Bring your thinking hat to this one, and treat it like the literature you read in school. If I had to pin a genre to it, slice of life would probably be closest.
The vocab used in this book was fairly simple; very few technical words, and only a scattering of office-specific terminology. Sentences can get very long, however, and the author enjoys relaying people's speech without quote tags, so it can trip you up if you don't realize you're reading someone thinking about something someone else said.
I listened to the last 40% of this book with the audiobook, and I found it to be helpful. The book switches perspectives between two different characters, and it's typically not immediately obvious who's talking, or even what gender they are when you first meet them. There are textual hints, but for those struggling to figure out who's narrating, the audiobook does have separate female and male narrators, making it quite easy to keep up.
Interesting idea, but utterly boring...
I just didn't like or care for any of the characters, so the thing that the author was trying to do (basically a commentary on Japanese work environment, societal pressure etc.), ended up being extremely boring for me. If you give me petty characters causing drama, I need proper drama, otherwise everything is just meh.
The language is fairly simple and once you get used to the shifting POV it's easy to read/listen to.
If it hadn't been for the language learning aspect, I'd skipped to the end or DNFed altogether.
I read this book in one day because I could not put it down. The writing flows spectacularly and pulls you along for the ride.
Mundane office politics turned into a stream of petty actions, insecurities, social expectations, and meanness. Do not read this for a happy, lovely story about home cooking. Read this because you are the type to bring your own popcorn to a car crash.
Difficulty wise this is mostly everyday vocabulary, but the narrator is often left opaque at the beginning of section changes so be aware of that. There's also a lot of long sentences and casual ways of speaking. Many things are left vague on purpose. This is a book where you'll want to read between the lines.
An ode to why not to work in an office
I loved this. It's filled with unlikeable characters, おいしい food, and an intensive office gossiping.
Language wise, it's very everyday language, nothing specialised or technical.
It could at points be easy to lose track of who was speaking, and at points there could be very long sentences. I often had to read the more complex paragraphs a couple of times to understand what was going on.
There wasn't anything completely indecipherable.