Kafka on the shore

What a fantastic book! A great story, characters I liked, wonderful writing, oh and the references to mythology and literature. And it was pretty much a page-turner, not much more you can ask for really.

Haruki Murakami tells two stories in alternating chapters. One is of a 15-year-old boy named Kafka who runs away from home and is trying to make sense of things on his own. The other is of an old man named Nakata who as a child had an accident and after which he lost his memory and with it any education he'd received - he ended up alone and considered dumb. Oh and he can communicate with cats.

Their two stories are somehow connected, though not necessarily in the physical sense. While reading this book I had moments when I thought I understood what was going on, but they'd disappear fairly quickly. Even now, I'm pretty sure that there are many layers of the book that I just didn't get. Apparently Murakami himself said that the secret to understanding the novel lies in reading it multiple times...

I really loved the way normal life intertwined with the characters' inner life, how their physical quest mirrored their internal quest. And I loved the references to japanese literature, history and religion - it makes me want to read more Murakami and learn more about Japan.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 1% Well-Read Challenge, 10 out of 100 out of 1000, Chunkster Challenge, Japanese Literature II, Orbis Terrarum, Seconds 2008, What an animal!

Non-Fiction Five Challenge Completed!

I managed, though with only a few days to spare... The Non-Fiction Five Challenge was hosted by Joy and ran from May to September. If you see my original post, you'll find that the books I chose at the beginning aren't at all what I ended up reading. Not one from my original list. I guess I have my list for next year's challenge now! ;-)

This is what I ended up reading:

Dziennik Irlandzki by Heinrich Boll

The Celts, First Masters of Europe by Christiane Eluere

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

The Truth About the Leprechaun by Bob Curran

Getting Things Done by David Allen

So a mixture of memoirs, history, folklore and personal development. I'm very happy with my choices - there isn't one book on here that I didn't enjoy.

Thanks Joy for the idea and for hosting, I hope that this challenge happens again!

Getting Things Done

I think I've been slowly reading this since January... I wanted to go through David Allen's Getting Things Done methodologically so I wouldn't miss anything. And to implement his advice as I went along. Well, I was a bit too lazy to do much of the implementing, but I still think I will.

Getting Things Done has a subtitle: The Art of Stree-free Productivity. Is there anyone out there who doesn't want to know how to achieve that? Seriously, it sounds fantastic! Does it deliver? I don't know - I guess you can only ask that of someone who has been following the advice for a while... But I think it just might.

Allen offers advice on getting oneself organised, both at work and at home. To set up a system where things don't fall through the cracks, a system that is trustworthy and so stress-free. Since we're dealing with so many things coming at us from all directions these days, we need a new way of looking at how to handle it all. The difference between this and earlier systems is that Allen's aims to capture everything, both big and small, in the same system. The idea is that we're stressed because of all the unfinished things on our minds - so if everything that we need to do and want to do is captured in our system, we won't worry about it any more. The trick seems to be to capture everything - from needing to pick up milk to possibly wanting to learn Italian one day.

So after the initial organisation phase it should be fairly straightforward. Allen's system makes sense, it's logical. Oh and it requires lists!! Yay! :-)

Have you read this? Has the system worked for you?

Challenges: 888 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge