Review: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I just love reading Murakami, even if this wasn't my favorite so far. This book begins in the first person, for two characters; from which I never quite recovered. I enjoy better how he creates characters slowly, and at a near distance. On the other hand, the author puts it best when he writes,"I love Maugham. I’ve read The Razor’s Edge three times. Maybe it’s not a spectacular novel, but it’s very readable. Better that than the other way around."

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Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
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New Article in Today's NYTimes about the Jewish Museum, New York

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Ed Rothstein's done it again, by way of paying tribute to the work we all do in museums and by way of thorough honest and throught provoking analysis of something happening in a museum -- in this case the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

His review is pretty scathing. Overall, I agree. But that's not really the point, more Rothstein's a teacher.

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...the potency of the underground “Bibliotek” memorial built in the mid-1990s on the Bebelplatz, where the Nazis held a book burning in 1933, consigning thousands of volumes to the flames. The memorial’s creator, Micha Ullman, knew he couldn’t reproduce the magnitude of th…
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