My first Rilke's work to read was this and I actually loved the first few letters so so so much. The ideas and the offices he had for his correspondant were totally magical writing pieces. However I would have preferred to see Mr. Kappus' replies to these letters as well. It would have given it easier for me to understand the context of the corresponding letter Rilke was writing. Towards the 7th letter I kind of lost the pace but overall this has been a great read!

This is what I call clever story building style. Written from a question asked by Matt Haig's 6 year old son about how was Father Christmas when he was a boy. It is amazing to see how he infused the actual facts about father Christmas (chimneys,where the magic came from, why he became a gift giver, the sleigh and even the laughter of Santa) as either part of the plot or immersive world building into this story. I couldn't help but give five stars! 

Read this in the midst of watching HOTD and boy oh boy you can say GRRM wrote this by how seeing how raw the storyline is and how detailed long this book is. I listened to the audiobook which was around 24 hours long. One sad thing was this was written not in fictional form. Genuis of GRRM but I miss the fictional element of GOT. In a way it was a smart way to record the historical events from not just one witnesses but a several. Like how folklores are made of. 

Loved reading this. Had I read this when I was a kid I would have loved thos book extremely how I loved Pippi long socks, Malory Towers or St. Clare's. Judy's character reminded me of Anne of Green Gables. This is a very cozy book if you love country life and Literature. 

The purposeless and the time as main themes. Short but absurd. I loved reading it through. I am aware a lot of people found it too absurd to like this but when you think deeply about how the characters behave. It is exactly how us humans are walking on earth. Not remembering the important details of life but always waiting for something. Godot could be intercepted as the God or even as the good things that we all wait for. We always have something better we wait for. Humans would never be satisfied but they would never give up on that waiting as well. Samuel Beckett is an amazing playwright. 

Surprisingly I didn't like a book from Murakami for the first time. The stories had more absurdity than I expected from Murakami. I prefer his novels over the short stories. Some stories in the book I actually loved. For example 'Sleep' was my favourite. There was so much I could rely on and the Murakami witty writing was evident there. Barn Burning, The Elephant vanishes and Family Affair were good as well. The problem for me with this collection was the incoherent of the other stories. Some were utterly boring and some were just meh. Usually I am able to relate and understand the absurdity of Murakami's stories but here I saw the lacking in such. 
I would like to give this a re-read next year.

Everyone has their fudoki (the tales to tell others) to create community, fani6and friends. When I initially started reading this I thought cats with fudoki was a bit of queer but by the end seeing how the cat Interacted with other animals and people made me realize that we all have tales to tell others. Our parents have told stories from their childhood, from their parents relatives and we have created our own stories to tell the next generation one day. These stories are the base of the community. A wonderful short story!