[.ca] Wrong About Japan (ISBN 0679313478)

A Fun Trifle:
Peter Carey is incapable of writing a bad book, and "Wrong About Japan" is proof of that. This is by no means a good travel book - instead it is a dryly humorous look at a very limited part of Japanese Culture. So, if you don't have any interest in Manga, Anime or Japanese ceremonial swords , and you aren't a fan of Carey's crisp, flawless prose, than stay away. If you are interested in any of those things and are in the mood for a good light read, than pick up this book.

Embarrassingly bad:
Peter Carey writes fantastic, best-selling novels, and has been doing so for a long time now. What this means is that he can get anything he writes published. And when authors get to the point where they can publish anything they write, they start to write and publish really bad books. Wrong About Japan is dull on the one hand and irritating on the other. I'm really not interested in knowing so much about what Carey and his bratty son like in terms of movies and manga. I also didn't enjoy finding out what a pretentious jerk Carey is (all those meetings in which he tries to show his Japanese hosts he knows something + the way he kept spurning Takashi). I'll never get back the few hours I wasted on this bad book. It's not worth the paper it's printed on.