Book review: Haruki Murakami – The wind-up Bird Cronicle

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The Wind-up Bird Cronicle is Murakami’s eighth novel and was first published in English 1997. I’ve read it for two reasons:
- The first Murakami novel I’ve read, Norwegian Wood, was excellent.
- One guy in the security software company I used to work in recommented it to me.

As “Norwegian Wood”, also the “The wind-up Bird Cronicle” was demanding to read for me, because things for the characters in the story are not easy. Not easy at all.

Toru Okada, an aimless guy in his early 30s, had quit his job to find out what he really wants. He assumes the role of a househusband while his wife Kumiko holds down a job at a food magazine. They start hearing the strange sounds of a bird from their garden every morning, a sound very similar to a spring being wound up – the spring that keeps the world going.

But things start to change – their cat, which is called “Noboru Wataya” (the real name of Kumiko’s brother, who appears often on TV as a political commentator) disappears. The cat had been their talisman and had kept problems away for the six years that they had been married. Kumiko brings in a female fortune teller to find the cat, but suddenly, unexpectedly, disappears herself.

Being abandoned by his wife comes as a total shock for Toru, as he had trusted her 100% and wasn’t aware that there were any problems in the marriage. He can’t believe that his wife’s farewell letter should be the last thing he ever hears from her and begins the painstaking, life-threatening and bizarr quest to save her from whereever she might have fled to. With the help of a 16 year old girl who almost kills him, an old  lieutenant, advice from dead and living fortune tellers, a special fashion designer and her mute son, Toru works his way inch by inch to the place where his wife is kept…

I don’t want to give away the end of the story, but if you read the book, remember that Murakami doesn’t write shallow stories. I guess that’s why it is exciting for me to read them. Something really unexpected might happen just next and there is no guarantee for an happy end.

 

GUERILLAWALK

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great idea: a musician and an artist, carrying the broadcast equiment right on their backs, broadcasting straight to your headphones, showing you places u never saw before.

Quite crazy stuff: 50 people visting a 30m2 flat of a stranger, opera-singers in stone-old shops, customes in hidden gardens, theater, food, wine, a live concert in a tram, angry rap and soft record clothes and much more…

http://www.olliwood.com/onear_wiengws.html

 

 

 

VID_20110609_193119 VID_20110609_190908

A .kml-File of most of the walk

Book review: How The West Was Lost

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Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane (January 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781846142352
ISBN-13: 978-1846142352
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  (Amazon)

Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead

Summary: Dambisa Moyo reviews the global post WWII hegemony of The West and the US in particular. But because of  bad desicion making and a less and less globally competitive workforce The West has passed its best. All things equal she predicts it to further lose ground to the emerging “Rest” but makes the case that it is not too late for The West, given the right decisions are made.

My Opinion:

Having had very high expectations raised by her former book “Dead Aid”, Dambisa’s latest work did not engage me as much. How come? It mainly boils down to two reasons: Firstly, I don’t like the notion of The West having to fight for its hegemony in order to dominate The Rest. Why does it have to be domination? Why can’t it be equal partnership?

Secondly, there is one paragraph suggesting that after the 2008 financial meltdown the markets should be further deregulated and taxes should be cut in order to “unleash the entrepreneurial spirit”. Hasn’t precisely the crises shown that markets, left to themselves, do not self-regulate? Whereas introducing more regulations will also not help (bankers are clever and will always find a loophole) and incentive schemes erode moral standards, “practical wisdom” might help but is out of reach. While it’s true that deregulation may stimulate the economy, it also may favour the ones already holding capital more, deepening the divide between rich and poor.

In HTWWL Dambisa uses her strong analytical skill to shed light on the workings of US (and to a lesser degree European) economy, explaining the mechanics that led to the 2008 financial crises. Some of the calculating examples to illustrate why companies are so fond of leverage (debt) were boring to me.  She connects the dots to give an outlook on the near future and advice to leaders how to deal with it.

All in all an interesting read for anybody interested in global economic developments, written with a competitive edge of someone who worked for years in one of the world’s biggest investment banks.

Related Links

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

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Jaron Lanier writes in his book “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto“
Every save-the-world cause has a list of suggestions for “what each of us can do”: bike to work, recycle, and so on.
I can propose such a list related to the problems I’m talking about:
  • Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
  • If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don’t yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.
  • Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.
  • Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.
  • Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.
  • If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.

Noam Chomsky: Crises and the Unipolar Moment

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It is widely felt that the fall of the Soviet Union left a unipolar world, dominated by the remaining superpower, and that the “moment” is coming to a close with the collapse of the Anglo-Saxon “free market” economic model. Investigation of this two-decade “moment” can provide considerable insight into what came before, and possibilities for shaping the future.

http://www.soas.ac.uk/events/event52739.html