Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The first (and only before this) Murakami book I read was 1Q84.  It was not a great book.  It had a lot of unresolved questions at the end and yet also spent a lot of time on things that didn't really matter.  It was a good 400 page book hiding in the midst of 1100 pages.  Then someone recommended Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World to me.  The title sounded interesting and I thought that I could give Murakami one more go.  Boy, am I glad I did.

The book has the unique trait of being almost two books in one.  The odd chapters are in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" and the even numbered chapters are at "The End of the World."  It is not even clear at first how the two stories are related or even if they are at all.  But the two stories are different even in tone so it really feels like you could be reading two different books.

I read that Hard-Boiled Wonderland was slightly inspired by Raymond Chandler and I can definitely see that.  I am a fan of that style of fiction (though I have read more Dashiell Hammett and The Thin Man is great) but this takes it and mixes it with a sort of semi-futuristic experience. Also, unlike those stories, it isn't as much about detective work as it just is sort of the tone of the story is similar to those types of books.

The End of The World, on the other hand, is a subdued, slightly fantastical story.  It has several interesting concepts but there is a lot of symbolism that ties into the other story which really is probably the most interesting part.

This book has a lot of the problems that 1Q84 had: seemingly random pointless details and plot threads that don't go anywhere but this book handles it a lot better.  Possibly because it didn't have 1000 pages to get my hopes up that some of them were going places.  In this book they were slight defects, in 1Q84 they were borderline deal breakers.

I think that the part of this book that will stay with me the longest after I have read it is its discussion of consciousness and the unconscious mind and how they interact.  At the end of the book there are some great points to think on (that I would not dare to spoil here).  Suffice to say, I quite liked this book.

Overall, I would give this book a 96%.

The Man in the High Castle

After reading and enjoying Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I knew I wanted to read more Phillip K. Dick.  I read that The Man in the High Castle was an interesting alternate history story and, without seeing anything else about it, decided to pick it up.  It turns out to be an alternate history where the Axis wins World War II and divides up America between Germany and Japan.

The book follows several characters around as they try to live in this world.  They are related but the storylines do not really intersect to come to a climax, it is more like we just see several people's stories that flesh out the world.  The story focuses generally on people trying to continue to live with their American ideals even a world where those are belittled and unvalued.

The racism in this book is so intense that it actually bothered me to read.  The way that the culture treated basically every non-Aryan, non-Japanese person caused me a moderate amount of stress while reading.  The fact that people could be that horrible to one another, and these people weren't even the villians of the story, just casual people off the street, is amazing and not in a positive way.  History was rough, but this clearly shows it could have been rougher.

Almost every character in this book consults the I Ching which I am not exceedingly familiar with but my understanding is that it is a fortune telling device like tarot cards.  The way that the people tend to read whatever they want into it seems like a minor critique of fortune tellers while at the same time showing how much America has changed from the one of the real world 60's.

I think the part that will stick with me the longest is a quote towards the end of this book: “We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.”  The quote has an interesting sentiment and I like the concept that doing good is hard but it is worth doing anyway.

Overall, I would give this book a 92%.