If you want to know how cool author Haruki Murakami is, just know that Patti Smith decided to write a review of this book in the New York Times. That is how cool he is. The novel centers on Tsukuru Tazaki. He’s a train station designer in his mid-30s. Tsukuru lives alone in Tokyo, although he was raised in Nagoya. He has a quiet life that, by objective standards, is going quite well. He got into a difficult engineering program (mission accomplished). He is fulfilling […]
A Non-Western Immigration Story
Buzzfeed actually had a semi useful quiz a few weeks ago along the lines of, “answer these questions, and we’ll recommend a book.” My result was Pachinko so when I saw it prominently displayed at Barnes and Noble, I figured it meant I should go ahead and get it. Pachinko is one of those books that is always harder to review because while very well done, as a multi-generational family drama, there is a certain amount of familiarity to the general strokes of the story. “Poor […]
What would you do if you knew who was responsible for the death of your child?
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder A little girl is dead. Her mom knows who killed her. She wants revenge. It sounds like a simple enough plot, what could be more straightforward and relatable than a broken-hearted mother wanting to punish those responsible for the death of her child? But this is not a simple story. As the story starts, Moriguchi, a middle school teacher, is telling her students that she is retiring from teaching. Moriguchi has recently lost her 4-year-old daughter, Manami. She […]
We were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve.
Well, this was a lovely discovery! Kitchen was in a stack of books given to me very randomly by a friend who moved away a couple of years ago and did a big purge. She has great taste, but also loves to buy books, so I’m finding it all a little hit and miss. I wish I had picked this up the day my friend gave it to me. It is incredibly, beautifully written, so also I must give due credit to the translator, because […]
Still couldn’t stop the words from pouring out.
The Great Passage is the first that I’ve actually read of the many, many “Kindle First” books that I’ve downloaded for free in the past year or so since I became aware of the Amazon program. I can’t ignore the opportunity for a free book, but I’ve been so on top of my library queue and meeting self-imposed reading deadlines that I just haven’t gotten to any of these, which I mostly choose either based on the description being the least irritating of the group […]
Origin Story of an Icon
While the link is for the entire Musashi saga, this review is of the first paperback volume which seems to be out of print or otherwise unavailable from Amazon directly. There are five or six volumes of the paperback version of the story. One of the first RPG videogames I ever played was Brave Fencer Musashi on the original Playstation. While the game was fun and lighthearted, I learned from a video game store employee that Musashi was actually an iconic Japanese figure. I wanted to learn more, but […]
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