Takashi Nagi by Paul Glynn, Power of Nice by R. Shapiro, Maitre d'heure by Claude Faraggi

Well, Power of Nice was disappointing -- it's a book about negotiating, and I hoped that it was going to be how to have a non-confrontational process, but it seems it's still about winning, but about how winning and leaving hour opponent something, as opposed to nothing, is better. The book about Nagai was very interesting -- this is a physician pacifist who barely survived the Hiroshima nd Nagasaki attacks to become the voice of the conscience of Japan. I learned a lot about Jpaanese culture, and this despite my having worked there and conducted research on its politics. The story is a very sad one, although all Japanese alive in that period pretty much had a terrible time of it. Maitre d'heure is a mystery novel, I think, by Claude Faraggi. I didn't like it. It was hard to read because the paragraphs were not split often enough, and also the style of writing was mysterious as well - hence the uncertainty about it all. I'm now reading a novel called L'imprecateur, and it's a first person narrative of someone in a psychiatric hospital, with a great start. I read about 790 pages of it despite being sleepy... it's been a while since I read something that gripping.