The Book of the Dead (Posthumanities)

The Book of the Dead is great, but the reader should be aware that most of this book is dedicated to literary criticism about Orikuchi's story. The actual story by Shinobu Orikuchi covers only pp 61-158 of the 338-page book. In addition, there is so much repetition it becomes annoying. The 58-page Translator's Introduction is fascinating, until you realize that much of it is a reiteration of the footnotes throughout the book. By the end of the volume, I had read some information four different times at various points in the book. It seems to me that a lot of this could have been edited out. Japanese language allows for much more repetition than English does, and it would have been nice it the translator had accounted for that.