Okay, so I checked amazon.com this morning to see when my second package was arriving. To my surprise it said DELIVERED in nice green letters on my tracking page. I laughed and thought: Ooh, foolish Amazon, you got it mixed up! It was the OTHER one that got delivered yesterday! So, I went to check the other tracking page and it ALSO said DELIVERED in the same capital green letters.

Well, I was confused. So I went back to the first page and checked the time stamp. It said it was delivered between 3:30 and 4pm. I thought: Eh? Impossible. Our mailman comes at 11:30am. So I checked the OTHER page again and it said delivery between 11am and 11:30am.

My suspicion grew. I had, previously, had a case of a package being put in our box after the usual time and AFTER I got home from work. Because I had checked the mailbox on the way into the house yesterday, and there was nothing there. So if the box was delivered, it would have been after that and, since everyone knew we got the mail, no one else would have looked.

So I walked out to the mailbox this morning and, lo and behold, my second package!! =D =D =D So now I've got some Haruki Murakami and some Gong Li (I ordered Raise the Red Lantern. =3) to go with my <i<The Crimson Labyrinth.</i>

Amazon even did the old-school shrink wrap thing. ;____; THANK YOU AMAZON! I want whomever wrapped that package to wrap ALL of my packages! <3

But speaking of <i>The Crimson Labyrinth</i>, let's talk about that.... Last night I got 100 pages in. Fast reading, much? =D I mean, I maybe read for two hours, tops. So, really 100 pages is average for me in two hours with a book I like.

Now, initially my brain was like: Eeehh...I don't know. Because the original text of this book was in Japanese, thus my copy is translated. And translated material just always comes out sounding...not the way I'd expect something to sound. Of course, if I were reading it in Japanese (one can dream) it would be perfect. But the English probably doesn't capture quite the same tone as the original. But the translators do their best, so... :)

So that's something I had to remind myself to let go of for the first chapter. After that, I completely forgot about it because, big surprise, I'm interested in what's going on!

This book is reminiscent of <i>Battle Royale</i> in the sense that it's a survivalist story about people taken to a solitary location and left there to, in some ways, fend for themselves.... And there's the possibility that they'll have to fight against people, too, depending on how the game works out.

Oh, that's right. I should mention that. The premise is that nine people have been uprooted (I won't tell too much about how, but I'll just say that) and placed on "Mars" -- not really Mars, but it looks like Mars, and I won't tell you where it is. But anyway...it's a survivalist game... There are messages and items to find and checkpoints to meet. It's like going to the Gran Maze, only on a huge scale, and with people who might well kill you to reach the end first.

The main character, Fujiki, is paired up with a female character, Ai. But, luckily, Ai is pretty interesting. That is, she's not perfect or vapid, and she has good hunches.

So...I'm looking forward to reading this through the weekend. I only wish I'd had it for our Book in a Day challenge earlier in the month! I could easily have done this one. =D