Tale of Genji: A Reader's Guide

Tale of Genji: A Reader's Guide by William J. Puette 199 pp.

Since I've been reading the eleventy-billion pages of The Tale of Genji as part of the Summer Big Book Challenge, I found this relatively short guide on Kindle to append the sometimes confusing novel. It does give explanations of some of the content that is unusual to Western readers. It includes a chapter by chapter summary of the story, a list of the characters and their connections, maps of the story's locations, and the emperor's palace. Unfortunately this guide is written specifically for two other translations of "Genji", by Arthur Waley and Edward G. Seidensticker so not all the interpretations match up with the Dennis Washburn translation we are using. However, I did find it helpful and will refer to it as I complete the novel. Too bad I didn't find it sooner.

The lonesome bodybuilder

The lonesome bodybuilder: stories / Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda, read by a full case, 219 pgs.

Eleven stories that are wonderfully quirky and sly.  The titular bodybuilder is a woman in a loveless marriage.  She gets quite buff but her husband does not even notice. Will they be able to recover? A woman working in a clothing boutique goes the extra mile to be sure her customer is satisfied. A newly wed notices she and her husband starting to look alike.  Where will the similarities end?  Each story offers an odd glimpse into lives that seem average on the outside but reveal something much more interesting.  The cast does a great job making each selection special on the audio recording.

Penance

Penance by Kanae Minato, 229 pages.
An odd, disjointed, angry book that starts with the murder of Emily, a twelve-year-old girl. The murder takes place near where she had been playing with four of her friends. After the murder is discovered, none of the other girls can describe the murderer, event though they had all seen him. And, as it is the festival of Obon, and there are lots of family and friends visiting the small rural town, the police have no luck hunting down the killer. A series of recent doll thefts in the town convince many that the thief and the killer are the same person, but  Emily's mother blames the girls and vows revenge. Her vow, and the letters she writes to the four of them detailing her plans for vengeance don't really help the girls with the trauma they have experienced. Somehow the blame, and the guilt and the lives they live cause the girls to be drawn into weird violent scenarios (that don'r really strike me as particularly probable) that cause them all to have to kill someone themselves. Like I said, a little odd and disjointed.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel, 277 pages

Nana the cat was a stray before Satoru took him in, and in the five years they've lived together, the cat and his human companion managed to form a loving bond. But now Satoru is seeking someone to adopt Nana, for reasons that he does not explain to either the cat (who can, of course, understand him perfectly, despite what humans seem to think) or to any of the friends he asks to take the cat.

Much like the wonderful memoir Cats I've Known, The Travelling Cat Chronicles isn't so much the story of a cat as it is the story of Satoru's life. It's a wonderful, beautiful story of an independent and intelligent boy making friends as he moves from one part of the country to another, told through flashbacks and punctuated by modern-day sections, some of which are from Nana's point of view (which, I've got to say, is a fantastic point of view). I loved Arikawa's sparse, beautiful writing (wonderfully translated by Philip Gabriel), which gives the same sense of peace and adventure that I get from watching My Neighbor Totoro. A truly wonderful book.

Battle Royale

Battle Royale by Koushin Takami  617 pp.

Before there was The Hunger Games this Japanese author gave us Battle Royale. The premise of both stories is the same: in a dystopian society young people battle to the death until just one survives. In this case the teens from a junior high school are sent off on a "school trip" which turns out to be the government sponsored death match. The students are given one of a variety of weapons, a small amount of food and water, a "security" collar that can be detonated, and then released on an island to fight each other. Some form groups to provide themselves protection while others go it alone. The groups shift and change and sometimes end up destroying themselves. Some of the students evoke sympathy, others use this opportunity to ruthlessly demonstrate their anger and frustration against their classmates. It's not a bad book, just overlong.

Men without women

Men without women / Haruki Murakami, 228 pgs.  Read by Kirby Heyborne

Seven short stories by Murakami.  All are interesting and a little odd, as anyone familiar with Murakami would expect.  The stories feature men who are lonely and often wondering what has happened to their lives.  The first story features an actor who befriends his dead wife's lover.  We learn the story as he tells it to his new chauffeur, a young, confident woman who has been driving him since a problem developed with his eyes.  "Yesterday" tells the story of two male friends who work at a coffee shop together.  One wants the other to date his long term girlfriend.  Why would he encourage such a thing?
Kino is a bar owner who is making a go of it after he walked in on his wife in bed with his best friend from his old job.  The theme here shows itself in all of the stories.

This book is narrated by Kirby Heyborne who reads the translated stories as I assume Murakami himself would read them.

The diving pool

The diving pool: three novellas / Yoko Ogawa, 164 pgs.

Three novellas that are each a bit bizarre which makes them memorable.  The first is The diving pool which tells of a one-sided obsession of a girl towards her foster brother.  She has a few issues of her own but is the one biological child of her parents who run a large foster home.  She obviously feels some neglect but is also counting on her actions not being noticed.  Over time, she realizes Han, the focus of her obsession seems to know of all of her slightly evil deeds.

Next is Pregnancy Diary which is the diary of the sister of a pregnant woman.  She recounts all the odd behavior of her sister and then sort of reveals that it isn't really the pregnancy that is to blame for much of it, her sister is just pretty odd.

Finally Dormitory takes a woman back to the place she lived in college and the manager of the dormitory.  An out of town cousin is coming to go to school and is too late for regular housing so she gets him into the private dorm where she used to live.  She becomes obsessed with the manager, a man she had few dealings with as a student, and returns each day to care for him. A strangely moving tale.

Japanese literature with more than a passing resemblance to Murikami.

Wind / Pinball: Two Novels

Wind / Pinball: Two Novels by Haruki Murakami, 233 pages, translated by Goossen
Two of Murakami's earliest works, long out of print, or rather the only English edition was only available in Japan.
The first, Wind, involves a young man on break from college. He hangs out at a Tokyo bar with his old friend, Rat, and meets a young girl with 9 fingers. Pinball follows the same character, I think, but explores his relationship with his twin girlfriends, whom he refers to as 208 and 209. Rat and the same bar appear in this one as well. Both stories, written in the 1970s feel like Murakami, but don't quite go down as far down the roads that he so expertly travels later. The audio is read by Kirby Heyborne.

Wind / Pinball

Wind / Pinball: Two Novels by Haruki Murakami  256 pp.

This is a release of Murakami's first two novels Here the Wind Sing and Pinball which had not been translated to English before this publication. Both are about the same unnamed narrator and his friend Rat who has a tangential role in the stories. The first book is a bit rambling and never seems to focus on a plot but involves the narrator's life as a college student and his encounters with a nine fingered young woman. In the second, the narrator is a few years older, living with an odd pair of nameless twins he refers to as numbers and working as a translator. He develops an odd and brief obsession with a particular pinball machine called "Spaceship" eventually finding it in a massive and somewhat scary warehouse of machines owned by a collector. His friend Rat, meanwhile seems to spend his time drinking beer and pondering his life situation throughout both books. An new introduction by Murakami describes how he came to write these first books which ultimately led to an amazing career as an internationally recognized author. The introduction and Pinball are arguably the better parts of this compilation.

After the Quake: Stories

After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami, 181 pages. Translated by Jay Rubin, audio read by Rupert Degas and Teresa Gallagher.

Six brief stories, all in some way revolving around the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, by one of the world's great writers. "UFO in Kushiro" tels the story of a man whose wife leaves him after the quake, accusing him in a letter of having nothing inside him. Events later in the story reinforce her claims.
The first half of the book is very good, but the second half, containing the stories "Thailand," "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," and "Honey Pie," is even better. The stories are strong, resonant with odd details, and filled with deep repressed feelings. Each of these tales has there own unique charm. The stories dwell on their character's unrelieved loneliness, their own emptiness, and the failed communications in their lives. The characters each attempt to restore normalcy and balance to their post-quake existences.
I particularly liked that the character Frog, in the story "Super Frog saves Tokyo" tries to impress on his human counterpart the importance of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, audio read by Bruce Locke, 386 pages.
Similar in tone to the author's 1Q84, though lacking the slipstream (is that still a genre-blending term?) qualities of that massive book.
Tazaki is part of a group of five friends; they are all but inseparable throughout high school. When Tazaki leaves their hometown to attend university in Tokyo, everything changes: he is banished from the group, but no one will tell him why. This banishment causes profound changes in his life , and Tsukuru is left to live out a rather lonely existence. Sixteen years pass before circumstances cause Tsukuru to seek answers and find some sort of resolution. Deftly handled, and quietly engaging.
Murakami is among the best.
Why would you not give this man a Nobel Prize for Literature?

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, 386 pages

As a teenager, Tsukuru Tazaki had four close friends. The five of them were an exclusive group, an insular community that relied on each other for everything. But when he was 20, Tsukuru was unceremoniously kicked out of the group, with no explanation and no further contact from any of his four friends. Sixteen years later, Tsukuru is still dealing with that sudden loss and isolation when his girlfriend suggests he track down his former friends to bring some closure to that part of his life.

Based on the description of this book, it would be understandable to think that this would be a dense, slow-moving tome. But it's not. Instead, Murakami has created an easy-reading exploration of self, of loss, of confusion. His simple, concise writing style is excellent, and made this a swift read. I read it as an eBook and I was honestly surprised to see that the physical book has almost 400 pages; I would have guessed somewhere closer to 200. It's a wonderful book, and I can't wait to try out more Murakami.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, 925 pages.

Aomame, a fitness center instructor with a secret side-job / "mission in life," finds herself transported from Japan in 1984 to a slightly off kilter almost Japan; one wherein only she notices the changes. She calls this time and place 1Q84. Aomame is comfortable with the fact that she has never fit in with those around her. Tengo, a writer and "cram school" math teacher, knew Aomame twenty years ago, when they were both ten-year-olds. They shared a brief, strong connection all those years ago that neither has ever forgotten. When the world subtly shifts because of a book written by a seventeen-year-old girl, a book that Tengo secretly revises, both main characters become targeted by a strange religious cult that seeks to undo what Tengo and Aomame have done in the altered world. Convoluted, complex, and sometimes creepy, this is a great book and well worth the time needed to get through all 925pages.
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami  386 pp.

As Murakami novels go, this one is probably the most accessible to a wide audience. It is without the convoluted story that is prevalent in his previous books. The main character, Tsukuru Tazaki, tells the story of his, in his words, colorless life. He undertakes a quest to find out the reasons for a devastating episode in his life when he was inexplicably cut off from his dearest friends at their request. Now in his mid-thirties, solitary and insecure, with very low self-esteem despite a successful career in a field he enjoys, he finally seeks out answers to that long ago hurt which has haunted him for half his life. On the surface this is a simple story but the emotional depth is what gives it the punch to make it much more.

After the quake

After the Quake: stories/ Haruki Murakami 181 pgs.

A series of stories from Murakami (becoming a favorite of mine) about his usual themes and issues.  This set of stories feature the events following an earthquake in Kobe Japan.  The quake is a life changer in each story but at the same time seems to be a very background detail.  Murakami is always interesting and this book is no exception.

Dance, dance, dance

Dance, dance, dance/Haruki Mirakami 393 pgs

Mirakami is becoming one of those authors that I want to read all the time. I'm behind on his work so it will take a while to catch up. This book revisits the themes of loneliness, loss, abandonment. The main character is a writer who takes jobs for magazines. He just writes what they want. He refers to it as "shoveling snow"...it is just something he does for a living not as an "art". He experiences several absurd incidents like finding himself in a dark almost empty room with 6 skeletons that he thinks represents people he has known who have died and people he knows who will die. He befriends a 13 year old clairvoyant girl who has a very troubled relationship with her parents. He is confronted by "the sheep man" in a dark dream-like alternate reality while visiting a hotel. All of this is hard to explain and hard to explain why I appreciate it so much. An interesting book that I enjoyed in audio.