48 posts tagged “books”

Synopsis: "This book offers a balanced introduction to and examination of contemporary Japanese education. The postwar system of schooling has led to some unfavorable developments such as excessively competitive exams, stifling uniformity and an undervaluing of non-Japanese ethnicity. This book examines the main developments of modern schooling in Japan and includes analysis of the most recent reforms, presenting a new picture of the role of schooling for individuals and the wider society. Essential reading for students and educators alike." (from back of book)

Impressions: Outdated but interesting.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Assembled in Japan investigates one of the great success stories of the twentieth century: the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. Contrary to mainstream interpretation, Simon Partner discovers that behind the meteoric rise of Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and other electrical goods companies was neither the iron hand of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry nor a government-sponsored export-led growth policy, but rather an explosion of domestic consumer demand that began in the 1950s.
This powerful consumer boom differed fundamentally from the one under way at the same time in the United States in that it began from widespread poverty and comparatively miserable living conditions. Beginning with a discussion of the prewar origins of the consumer engine that was to take off under the American Occupation, Partner quickly turns his sights on the business leaders, inventors, laborers, and ordinary citizens who participated in the broadly successful effort to create new markets for expensive, unfamiliar new products.
Throughout, the author relates these pressure-cooker years in Japan to the key themes of twentieth-century experience worldwide: the role of technology in promoting social change, the rise of mass consumer societies, and the construction of gender in advanced industrial economies." (from back of book)

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over. Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her. She idolizes those who were imprisoned by the Shah, fascinated by their tales of torture, and bonds with her Uncle Anoosh, only to see the new regime imprison and eventually kill him. Thanks to the Iran-Iraq war, neighbors' homes are bombed, playmates are killed and parties are forbidden. Satrapi's parents, who once lived in luxury despite their politics, struggle to educate their daughter. Her father briefly considers fleeing to America, only to realize the price would be too great. "I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" he asks his wife. Iron Maiden, Nikes and Michael Jackson become precious symbols of freedom, and eventually Satrapi's rebellious streak puts her in danger, as even educated women are threatened with beatings for improper attire. Despite the grimness, Satrapi never lapses into sensationalism or sentimentality. Skillfully presenting a child's view of war and her own shifting ideals, she also shows quotidian life in Tehran and her family's pride and love for their country despite the tumultuous times." (from Publishers Weekly)

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love--affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Masterful without being magisterial, this book's wise, gentle, candid reflections on the virtues and dangers of love draw on sources from Jane Austen to St. Augustine. The chapter on charity (love of God) may be the best thing Lewis ever wrote about Christianity. Consider his reflection on Augustine's teaching that one must love only God, because only God is eternal, and all earthly love will someday pass away: Who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground--because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving? Would you choose a wife or a Friend--if it comes to that, would you choose a dog--in this spirit? One must be outside the world of love, of all loves, before one thus calculates. His description of Christianity here is no less forceful and opinionated than in Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain, but it is far less anxious about its reader's response--and therefore more persuasive than any of his apologetics. When he begins to describe the nature of faith, Lewis writes: 'Take it as one man's reverie, almost one man's myth. If anything in it is useful to you, use it; if anything is not, never give it a second thought.'" (from Amazon.com)

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: A collection of stories and essays by humorist and NPR commentator David Sedaris based upon his own experiences and the hidden perversity that can be found in Anytown, U.S.A. Here are images and blasphemies that nice people don't dare look at--blatantly exposed and told with the clear, casual voice of intimate knowledge. Sedaris' humor is born of compassion and his tales range from the sharing of cheery Christmas letters featuring infanticide, to experiences of the Gay and Famous (Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Dole, for example), to the lives of siblings named Hope, Faith, Charity and Adolph and to alcoholics and chain smokers you can laugh with. (from Amazon.com)

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Big shopping spree on books yesterday! Nicholas Spark's The Choice, Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons, Jean-Dominique's The Bell and the Butterfly, Kenzaburo Oe's The Pinch Runner Memorandum, Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon, Brian Jacques' Eulalia!, Rachel Herz's The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell... should make for some amazing read! :) Can't wait!

Synopsis: "Holidays on Ice is a collection of three previously published stories matched with three newer ones, all, of course, on a Christmas theme. David Sedaris's darkly playful humor is another common thread through the book, worming its way through "Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" a chipper suburban Christmas letter that spirals dizzily out of control, and "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," a vicious theatrical review of children's Christmas pageants. As always, Sedaris's best work is his sharply observed nonfiction, notably in "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," the tale of a memorable Christmas during which the young Sedaris learns to see his family in a new light. Worth the price of the book alone is the hilarious "SantaLand Diaries," Sedaris's chronicle of his time working as an elf at Macy's, covering everything from the preliminary group lectures ("You are not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.") to the perils of inter-elf flirtation. Along the way, he paints a funny and sad portrait of the way the countless parents who pass through SantaLand are too busy creating an Experience to really pay attention to their children. In a sly way, it carries a holiday message all its own. Read it aloud to the adults after the kids have gone to bed." (from Amazon.com)

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Hip radio comedy fans and theater folks who belong to the cult of Obie-winning playwright/performer David Sedaris must kill to get this book. These would be fans of the scaldingly snide Sedaris's hilariously described personal misadventures like The Santaland Diaries (a monologue about his work as an elf to a department store Santa) seen off-Broadway in 1997. In a series of similarly textured essays, Sedaris takes us along on his catastrophic detours through a nudist colony, a fruit-packing plant, his own childhood, and a dozen more of the world's little purgatories." (from Amazon.com)

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "David Sedaris became a star autobiographer on public radio, onstage in New York, and on bestseller lists, mostly on the strength of "SantaLand Diaries," a scathing, hilarious account of his stint as a Christmas elf at Macy's. (It's in two separate collections, both worth owning, Barrel Fever and the Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice.) Sedaris's caustic gift has not deserted him in his fourth book, which mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France. Though his anarchic inclination to digress is his glory, Sedaris does have a theme in these reminiscences: the inability of humans to communicate. The title is his rendition in transliterated English of how he and his fellow students of French in Paris mangle the Gallic language. In the essay "Jesus Shaves," he and his classmates from many nations try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim. "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber," says another. Sedaris muses on the disputes between his Protestant mother and his father, a Greek Orthodox guy whose Easter fell on a different day. Other essays explicate his deep kinship with his eccentric mom and absurd alienation from his IBM-exec dad: "To me, the greatest mystery of science continues to be that a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests."

Every glimpse we get of Sedaris's family and acquaintances delivers laughs and insights. He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist ("for whom the word pen had two syllables") by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn't share his obsession with breasts, and sings "Light My Fire" all wrong--"as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match." As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign "guessays" on what would happen in the next day's episode." (from Amazon.com)

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Like many of Murakami Haruki's English reading fans, I read A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance without knowledge that the former book was the third in a trilogy and that the latter book was an addition that came a few years later. However, if the reader pays closer attention to A Wild Sheep Chase one can really see that the characters within the book seem to be established and that they already have their personal histories which are not coming completely new from the pages of A Wild Sheep Chase. Almost a year after picking up A Wild Sheep Chase for the first time, I read Jay Rubin's highly informative book Haruki Murakami & the Music of Words and learned about Murakami's first two novels: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 both of which had been translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum.

Hear the Wind Sing begins with the narrator, aged 29, talking about writing and how difficult it was for him to finally put down words on paper. It took him eight years in fact to put down his thoughts on the summer of 1970 and the people he was involved with during that year. Why 1970? 1970 was the year after the student activist group the Zenkyoto was forced out of the building they had commandeered and soon afterwards those who had been its greatest supporters were sucked back into the system to become automatons of mainstream society. For Murakami, the destruction of the student movement left a deep wound in his being and it pained him to see his fellows go to a more conservative, rightist path.

However, within the being of the narrator it might be hard to find a politically charged individual. This is instead found within the being of the narrator's best friend the Rat. Yet, the Rat's sense of aggravation towards modern society is quite impotent, so he instead fills his emptiness with beer and liquor. The Narrator, a more introspective fellow, spends his time consumed in the books of dead writers, the memories of his dead girlfriend, and pursuing the girl with four fingers on her left hand.

At the time he wrote this thin tome, Murakami owned a jazz bar called the Peter Cat and had little time for actual writing so his sentences within this volume tended to be quite pithy. Also, the short, pithy styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan influenced his writing. The book itself is more a collection of vignettes than one coherent novel and the order of the book was originally quite different that the final version.

While it does not hold a candle to some of his later works, Murakami's first novel is quite important in his body of work and it shows his early interest in such subjects as language, memory, China, and the student movement. Definitely a book worth seeking for the Murakami fan, hopefully, one day, along with Pinball, 1973, it will be given a wider release to Murakami's English reading fans." (by Michael W.)

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) was a leading figure in the cultural revolution that transformed Japan from an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged player in the modern world. He translated a wide range of Western works and adapted them to Japanese needs, inventing a colorful prose style close to the vernacular. He also authored many books, which were critical in introducing the powerful but alien culture of the West to the Japanese. Only by adopting the strengths and virtues of the West, he argued, could Japan maintain its independence despite the "disease" of foreign relations.

Dictated by Fukuzawa in 1897, this autobiography offers a vivid portrait of the intellectual's life story and a rare look inside the formation of a new Japan. Starting with his childhood in a small castle town as a member of the lower samurai class, Fukuzawa recounts in great detail his adventures as a student learning Dutch, as a traveler bound for America, and as a participant in the tumultuous politics of the pre-Restoration era. Particularly notable is Fukuzawa's ability to view the new Japan from both the perspective of the West and that of the old Japan in which he had been raised. While a strong advocate for the new civilization, he was always aware of its roots in the old." (from back of book)

Rating: 2 of 5 stars.