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Reviews
As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in 11th-Century Japan by Sarashina
esmeloa's review
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
5.0
ainiali's review
4.0
The book is recollection of the author's life since she was a teenager up to after her husband died. A lot of what she said about places are incorrect as per mentioned in the introduction, where the translator explained a lot of what's going on in the writing. Also included in the introduction (so you should not skip it) is how her writing was wrongly put together (in term of order; it was written on wood pieces that was string together. remember, this is written relatively in 1050's) and how the researcher put it back to its rightful order.
siili's review
3.0
Very interesting and also a bit difficult book to get into. This is mostly because the of text, because even if it's in logical order starting from youth years and ending in the time the writer is an elderly person, it's at the same time very fragmented and has lots of timely gaps in it, which makes the life of the writer that much more harder to follow. Also, the fact that she used a lot of poetry to express her thoughts adds it's own charm and also some more difficulty to the text. Despite the excellent translation, the very well made preface and added notes in the back of this book I still feel I didn't quite got into this persons life but missed something even if they helped me to understand even more that I would have understood without them.
So overall, I liked what I read but because the timeline was so long and the writer admitted that she forgot or didn't write the text in years at some point, many things got by either very fast or just by a mention which was soon forgotten. Also because the text used on the book is not original (it's a copy or more like a copys copy, because original one was lost at some point) some things have been either lost completely or slightly changed in the copy prosses over time (atleast that's what this translations preface said). So for those reasons and ones stated above, I give this book 3,5 stars rounded down to 3 stars.
So overall, I liked what I read but because the timeline was so long and the writer admitted that she forgot or didn't write the text in years at some point, many things got by either very fast or just by a mention which was soon forgotten. Also because the text used on the book is not original (it's a copy or more like a copys copy, because original one was lost at some point) some things have been either lost completely or slightly changed in the copy prosses over time (atleast that's what this translations preface said). So for those reasons and ones stated above, I give this book 3,5 stars rounded down to 3 stars.