Let me start of by saying this is my first book review, outside of a school assignment. I feel these may be slightly confessional? The act of writing something every week, reflecting on something that I have read, that ideally will resonate with me personally somehow and those personal reflections will creep into the review. Maybe you will get to know me better. Maybe I will get to know myself better. First confession, I am a huge Japanophile. I love Japanese culture, food, fabric, innovation… […]
The Cost of Unintended Consequences
The premise of Blowback is very interesting. It aims to examine the role of shortsighted policy decisions made by the U.S. and the long-term, unintended consequences they created. This is another book I chose to read, rather listen to, after discovering it on the Army Chief of Staff’s recommended reading list for 2013. The book was listed of the CoS’ list under the section for broadening leaders. The list is intended to “complement materials currently used in the Army educational system and can help bridge […]
What is now? What is the story of now/Nao?
For the Time Being has two parallel narratives: Nao is a teenager in Japan, writing a journal that she states is her suicide note; and Ruth, a writer in an island off British Columbia, who has found Nao’s journal, along with some letters and other artifacts, washed ashore. As Ruth reads Nao’s diary, we find out Nao’s story: she lived most of her childhood in Sunnyvale, California while her father worked at a dotcom, and upon returning to Japan, she did not fit in. Her classmates […]
A Tale for the Time Being
A Tale for the Time Being is a novel about Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, writers and readers, writer’s block and reader’s block, hate and love. It moves fluidly through the past and present and involves some dynamic and admirable female protagonists. Small wonder it was nominated for the 2013 Man Booker Prize (and should have won instead of The Luminaries). The narration moves back and forth between Ruth, a present-day middle-aged writer living on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, and Nao, […]