Book Review - THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE by Haruki Murakami

Recounting the journey the reader makes with the protagonist, Senan Tuohy-Hamill explains why The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is his favourite book.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is a breath of originality. Murakami is known for his unusual blend of the mundane and the fantastical, and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle epitomises this style. 

This book is my favourite because it really resonated with me, the way it links together seemingly unrelated ideas into a meaningful story is incredibly unique

Set in 1980s Japan, in the capital of Tokyo, the book begins as a portrayal of the relatively normal life of the main character Toru Okada along with his wife, Kumiko. 

However, things begin to take a strange turn when their cat disappears. As the couple’s relationship deteriorates, and the world of the everyday becomes more and more distant, Toru begins to feel alienated from reality. 

The characters he meets throughout the story highlight his descent from the surface world of normality to the dream-like, illogical world where he begins to feel more and more at home.

If, like me, you love delving into new and different characters, and following their development and arc, then this book is perfect for you. 

There is a constellation of unusual and bizarre characters, ranging from psychic sisters to war veterans, all of whom intrude upon Toru’s life and contribute to its increasing bizarreness. 

Murakami manages to create the perfect juxtaposition of the ordinary and the fantastical, leaving the reader confused, just like Toru as he tries to navigate these strange happenings. 

The use of magical realism is what makes this book so unique as it combines events that would otherwise have no contact with each other.

Murakami has a knack for creating a dream feel, one that gently carries you along to the end. It almost feels like an easy read, except for the amount of questions left unanswered. 

Though this can be frustrating for some, if you focus less on loose-ends and more on the exploration of a person and their development you will get more out of this novel.

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Original review on: http://www.universityobserver.ie

Book Review - The Odyssey Homer by Emily Wilson

Emily Wilson has succeeded in making me like The Odyssey, after years of other translators have failed. She has created a refreshing and easily readable text that maintains its poetic sense without beating you in the face with rhyme. 

It features a succinct glossary and an interesting translator’s notes section that brings to life some of the choices one is presented with when translating such an epic and well-known work.

Book one begins with “Tell the old story for our modern times,” and the translation succeeds. Lines are easy to read, without losing nuance or character. 

The heart of the story remains, not dumbed down to insipidness or cluttered with obscure wordage. It was made with real people in mind; for a world where anyone can buy and enjoy the work. 

We are presented with a world where names may be unfamiliar, but the tribulations of life are not. Parents worry about children, wars cause chaos at home and abroad. If you prefer a more fantastical tale, it has monsters and gods, as well.

Now, some of you may say, “It is 24 books. It is a poem from a million years ago; it must be hard!” Let me point a few things out: a “Book” in The Odyssey is roughly equal to a modern chapter; with lines being not a full page in width. 

Taking that into account, and not dealing with the notes sections, you are left with something roughly the size of a small novel. Do not let your unfamiliarity with epic verse drive you from learning a story that has been told for ages and is one of the earliest adventures. Dig in, and enjoy.

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original review on: www.bleedingcool.com

Book Review – WWE #11

The Boom! Studios WWE series has been fairly consistent in recent months, so it was a shame when last month’s WWE #10 failed to continue their impressive streak, delivering a rather pointless entry into their canon. 

Thankfully, WWE #11 gets things back on track with an amusing, if not slightly silly outing.

The comics are currently dealing with the most difficult of the three Shield members – Roman Reigns. While the other stories were fairly straightforward to tell, Reigns’ attempts at climbing the mountain were hindered not by his in-ring ability but by an unfortunate suspension for the use of a banned substance. 

WWE #10 made a bit of a mess of this, keeping Reigns away from the ring and basically giving us an issue where he just sulked about before having a little scrap with Dean Ambrose.

In this issue, Reigns is still moping about, this time in Paris, but he does end up back in the ring through a series of ridiculous circumstances. While throwing his dummy out of the pram, Reigns is confronted by everybody’s favourite superstar, John Cena. 

This leads to the two of them scrapping all over an arena and ultimately ending up in the ring, giving artist Serg Acuna a chance to show off those delightful square circle based animations of his. 

While Cena does look a bit questionable, everyone else looks pretty great here and Acuna gets the chance to show off some more of his superstars, with Sasha Banks being a standout. 

Talking about good artwork, the cover y Dan Mora is also one of the best in recent issues.  The story itself is, obviously, ridiculous but it’s fun to read and is a clever way of dragging out Reigns’ suspension.

The issue’s backup story ‘The Viper’ is a strange little addition to the comic. It’s a two-page piece about Randy Orton wrestling Eric Rowan, of all people. 

Again, the artwork here by Rodrigo Lorenzo, who worked on the ‘Debut’ story in the recent Survivor Series Special is nice, with Rowan looking pretty impressive and some nice artwork featuring some bulls, but the story itself just seems to have no relevance.

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original review on: www.flickeringmyth.com

Book review - Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ in the 21st century by Mong Palatino

In 1917, Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin published “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” which provided the working class with a theoretical tool to understand the capitalist crisis, the great war in Europe, and socialism as a feasible alternative.

Since then, the book has become a standard Marxist reference in analyzing the global economic situation and in particular, the real cause of the recurring social crisis engendered by capitalism.

Its continuing relevance was recently affirmed by Ibon’s Institute of Political Economy which published “Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ in the 21st Century,” highlighting the contemporary manifestations of imperialism.

Lenin’s thesis on imperialism was applied in assessing the legacy of neoliberalism, rising militarism, rivalry among superpowers, and the prospect of the global socialist movement.

In the book, Antonio Tujan Jr. discussed how imperialist powers led by the United States exploited neocolonial economies. Paul Quintos explained how the financialization of production could lead to war. 

Demba Moussa Dembele linked primitive accumulation in Africa to the rise of colonial capitalist powers. Pao-yu Ching traced the history of Chinese integration in the global economy and its impact on workers. Fred Engst debunked some myths about China’s rise as a superpower and its relationship with the US.

Roland G. Simbulan updated the status of the American military empire and hardware. Pio Verzola Jr. focused on inter-imperialist rivalry and the various proxy wars of the 20th century. 

And finally, Joma Sison gave an overview of the proletarian struggles across the world while emphasizing the superiority of the socialist alternative.

It is instructive that all contributors summarized Lenin’s famous five characteristics of imperialism. More significantly, the contributors updated the features of monopoly capitalism by identifying old and new bubbles such as the tech implosion, the property and housing crisis, and rising debt induced by neoliberal austerity measures.

Lenin expounded his ideas on imperialism by citing economic statistics and other data available during his time. 

Ibon’s book retained this format by supplementing the descriptive text with the latest information on global trade, production, capital investments, military deployment, and the everyday situation of the working classes.

Also useful was the succinct presentation of how Lenin’s ideas on imperialism reflected the earlier works of progressive economists and thinkers.

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Original review on: http://bulatlat.com

Book Review - Black Man in a White Coat by Anna Farlane

The White Coat Ceremony is a common rite of passage in American medical schools that is intended to welcome physicians-in-training into the institution of medicine. 

The white coat is meant to signify professionalism and trust with patients and the ceremony is a time to emphasize this. With students and physicians alike clad in their white coats (albeit coats of different lengths), the message is clear: In the practice of medicine, we are all equal.

However, once the glow of the ceremony has waned, and the white coats are shed—revealing the black and brown and white bodies underneath—the question remains: Are all physicians and, more importantly, all patients, treated equally?

In his memoir, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine, Dr. Damon Tweedy addresses this question through an examination of race and its interactions with medicine at all levels of his medical training. 

His goal for Black Man in a White Coat was to ‘paint a fuller picture of the experiences of black patients, as well as that of the black doctors who navigate between the black community and the predominately white medical world’ (7).

Though Black Man in a White Coat focuses primarily on Dr. Tweedy’s thoughts and reflections on his medical training, he is far from the book’s only source. 

Drawing from other memoirs, history books, public health studies, and various other resources, Tweedy weaves a complex tapestry of information in support of his observations. This is most prominent in Part 1: Disparities, which includes the first four chapters of the book.

Chapter 1, ‘People Like Us’ explores Dr. Tweedy’s experiences with the tensions of being a black medical student and recipient of a diversity scholarship to Duke University School of Medicine. 

In Chapter 2, ‘Baby Mamas,’ Tweedy explores the complex interactions of health disparities though the stories of black mothers Tweedy met as a second-year medical student. 

Chapters 3 (‘Charity Care’) and 4 (‘Inner-City Blues’) document the socioeconomic challenges of access to health insurance and health education that patients faced during Dr. Tweedy’s time at a rural community health clinic and an inner-city emergency department.

The most compelling section of the memoir is Part II: Barriers, in which Tweedy shifts the focus of the memoir from the role of race on people’s health to the role of race in the practice of medicine. 

He recounts his experiences during his internship year through the lens of dealing with prejudiced patients (Chapter 5, ‘Confronting Hate’), prejudiced doctors (Chapter 6, ‘When Doctors Discriminate’), and prejudice against the LGBTQ community (Chapter 7, ‘The Color of HIV/AIDS’).

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Original review on: http://blogs.bmj.com

Book Review - Murder Ballads by Gabe Soria, Paul Reinwand, and Chris Hunt

Shit, they say, happens. For instance: Sometimes you try to create a decent blues record with a notorious and reclusive producer out in the boondocks beyond Shreveport and several people end up dying violently because of it.

That is, the whole end-up-dying-violently scenario plays out after you add a little desperation, a couple of guns, and more than a touch of drug-enhanced stupidity to the mix.

Sounds like a Coen brothers movie, maybe, right? Or: Tarantino? Macon Blair?

But, no, it's a graphic novel that's near the level of films you'd expect from any of those three camps – which is to say: quality, pretty fucking high – and it's called Murder Ballads, appropriately enough, and it's by Gabe Soria, Paul Reinwand, and Chris Hunt, with the whole full-color and grisly Macbeth-with-music mayhem of it released in an excellent package a bit earlier this year by Z2 Comics.

Macbeth-with-music, we say, and package. Because the book comes with its own soundtrack – via a download card featuring music by Robert Finley and Dan Auerbach, the latter of whom you may know as the frontman of the Black Keys. 

And damned if that soundtrack of four original songs and one Leadbelly cover, fully incorporated with the modern noir narrative, isn't some primo shit for your ears to appreciate during the reading or anytime thereafter.

So you'll probably want to find out what happens when a couple of young Brooklynites try to move their bankrupt-record-company past and their failing-marriage present to California and get sidetracked by some bluesmen called the Fontweathers brothers in a Louisiana dive bar, track down the habitually fucked-up Frank Bonisteel to render the best engineering of sound, and then figure that, huh, perhaps a skoshe of armed robbery is the perfectly logical solution to their dire financial needs, and – yeah. You get the picture. Or, if you get this book, the pictures: vivid and moody and tightly paced, a fitting evocation, as drawn by Reinwand and Hunt, of Soria's fierce script.

Oh, wait, like that's not enough? Damn, Z2, look at you including a black-and-white bonus story – "The Ballad of Frank Bonisteel" – in which Soria's deeper character dive is limned by no less an artist than Warren Pleece. 

We'd be glad to read this thing even if we had to do it in the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines. So much better that we've got a clean, well-lighted place, instead; and that this solid volume of tunes and treachery will set a body back only $25.

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Original review on: www.austinchronicle.com

Book Review - The Savage by Frank Bill

Frank Bill might be Indiana’s most prolific novelist, but he doesn’t live in Indy or one of our college towns. 

Instead, he resides in Corydon. He still works at a factory. And in his latest novel, The Savage, he has perfected his literary formula: a stylized and extraordinarily violent version of the Southern Indiana he knows.

Bill’s previous books—Crimes in Southern Indiana, a story collection that remains his best work, and Donnybrook, a novel—take place in the present-tense Midwest. He might focus on the worst parts, the suffering small towns and murderous men. 

But he’s trying to capture something true. You can tell the time is our own, although you can also tell that time has passed his places and characters by.

The Savage switches things up. It’s based in Harrison County, where he lives, but much of it occurs in a dystopian future, where the grid has been unplugged and society has been broken. Many Americans, angry at corporate evil and a collapsed economy, have enlisted in militias that specialize in killing and stealing. In this bleak future, a teenaged loner named Van Dorn tries to survive.

Given this plot of populism gone sour, Bill understands readers may find echoes of our current age. “I started writing it around 2012,” he says, “and it’s weird. It’s not that what happened lately influenced the book. It’s that what happened back then has come to a boiling point now.”

The novel also features flashbacks to Van Dorn’s father, along with a few familiar, beat-up faces from Donnybrook. It adds up to Bill’s longest and most ambitious book yet. 

The Savage should appeal to anyone looking for fiction that’s aggressive and bloody, where every sentence swaggers.

Based on the success of Bill’s first two books, it seems like a lot of people are seeking precisely that. He has traveled to Europe, where French and Norwegian readers adore his fiction and its dark, working-class themes. 

In America, he has done events on both coasts. At one book festival in California, a woman seemed concerned. Were his books what Indiana was really like? Had he been mistreated as a child? Bill had to smile. “It’s not a nonfiction book, ma’am,” he replied.

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Original review on: www.indianapolismonthly.com