July 17, 2024

Two short essays on life around whiskey

This book contains two short essays on whiskey, but also relates to travel, and the lives of the people who make it. It is also ~50% pictures of Ireland and Scotland, taken by his wife. (So is a quick read).

The first mostly centred around distilleries on a small Scottish island called Islay, and the mainly around pubs in Ireland.

Some of the prose is a little dry, e.g. descriptions about what single malt is. But peppered throughout are some beautiful turns of phrase from Murakami.

Having travelled to Islay as well, there was lots I found very heartwarming. But even if not, if anyone has an interest in whiskey, or Islay or Ireland, I would say it's a good read. If you're interested in none of those, then maybe give it a miss.

The language is pretty accessible, there's only a couple of whiskey specific terms, e.g. 蒸留所 (distillery), 樽 (barrel/cask).

I rated slightly lower on langauge learning, as there's also a decent number of English words in there (e.g. people, place names, and stuff). But it's still all in Japanese, just katakana.

Gradings:11
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urikk2npg graded
on December 10, 2024
easier thanマスクL31
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harder than木になった亜沙L26
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on July 17, 2024
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similar in difficulty to死体は眠らないL29
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similar in difficulty to西の魔女が死んだL28
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on July 17, 2024
similar in difficulty to木曜日にはココアをL27
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on July 17, 2024
harder thanスーパーカブL28
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similar in difficulty toむらさきのスカートの女L27
urikk2npg graded
on July 17, 2024
urikk2npg graded
on July 17, 2024
easier thanコンビニ人間L29