August 2012 Media Thread

RobertLumley

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. I find that exposure to LW ideas makes me less likely to enjoy some entertainment media that is otherwise quite popular, and finding media recommended by LWers is a good way to mitigate this. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you have a thread to add, such as a video game thread or an Anime thread, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you have a thread to add, such as a video game thread or an Anime thread, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

I finished reading 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami.

My first reaction upon finishing the book was, "Well, if his previous work wasn't enough to merit a Nobel Prize, this one isn't going to help."

Good things: Murakami is still the only currently living master of magical realism, and this could be his last major work. The most charitable interpretation of the book is that it is the culmination of all of his work on loneliness and alienation. It takes very traditional Western magical elements like the fae, doppleganger, and immaculate conception, and weaves them in with traditional Japanese cultural elements like NHK fee collectors, filial piety, and the hikikomori. The title's connection with Orwell's 1984 is subtle and mostly well-done.

Bad things: Too often do characters say or think that something that was clearly arranged by the author happened "by coincidence"; in general the writing is somewhat lazy. No explanation is given as to why, e.g., a policewoman in '84 would know who Marshall McLuhan is. Egregious abuse of Occam's razor (by name) in the third part to mask the author feeding the plot-so-far into the mind of a character he needlessly recycled from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I've been meaning to start reading book one. May I ask what version you reviewed?

0APMason14y

Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie.

0RobertLumley14y

I find this very interesting. My model of most LWers doesn't like Murakami very much. I read Kafka on the Shore for an English class, and it was OK, but I wouldn't exactly say it was in line with much of LW philosophically.

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