Margaret wrote in with the question:Why does there not exist (or if it does exist, why isn't it easy to find) a website for books analogous to
Rotten Tomatoes for movies? Wouldn't that be one way to drive traffic to newspaper book reviews? (In their online form, at least; that would have the added benefit of being trackable, and proving the number of people that actually do read book reviews.) I'm imagining something that would index reviews from major newspapers, magazines, and blogs, all together in one place, so that I can say "Hey, I wonder if Title X is any good" and I don't have to hope that the
New York Times reviewed it, or figure out who did. Metacritic
did this for a while, I think, but their coverage was spotty, and their "metascores" seem sort of antithetical to what good book reviewing ought to be. In any case, they've stopped, so whatever they were doing to fill this hole isn't exactly helpful any longer.I realize this is a bit un-questiony, but I really would like to know your (and the other Millionaires') take on such a thingThis is actually a very common question, up there with: "Why isn't there an
IMDb for books?" I've often wondered about these questions and my best guess on the paucity of such sites is that there are number of factors in play.The first is volume. There are a huge number of books put out every year, and even if we narrow those down to the books one might read for fun, the number is still quite large. And so, putting together a comprehensive site would be a Sisyphean task. Still, thousands of albums come out every year and Metacritic makes short work of many of them (and
allmusic dutifully catalogs them), why not so for books? Especially considering that even looking at twenty books a month in this fashion would be at least adequate for many readers.The second reason might be competition.
Amazon has been around a very long time, is very closely identified with books, and, in a way, already serves the Metacritic function. Most of its pages for relatively current books have a number of reviews, or at least blurbs, listed. Combine that with the reader reviews and other meta-data and it's hard to imagine how a competitor might improve upon it. Meanwhile, sites like
Goodreads and
Librarything do ample cataloging and aggregating on a more user-centric model.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, book fans aren't quite like film and music fans, and book reviews aren't quite like the film and music reviews. Film and music are far more likely to be consumed in group settings than are books, and so large group endeavors devoted to the cataloging of those media seem more fitting somehow. Even as there is an amorphous and no doubt large community of avid readers, it is a solitary enjoyment that does not always lend itself to the scorekeeping at the heart of the big meta-review sites. Likewise, book reviews are rarely as easily classified as film and music reviews (which often come with their own arcane scoring system, so as more easily to be averaged in with the rest). To my mind, it is a relatively poor book review that simply describes how good or bad a book is, while those that mine the book's context in the service of a broader discussion tend to be more rewarding. How do you score something like that?Having said all of that. There are a few spots worth checking out (some of which I've already mentioned).
The Complete Review is well known and much beloved by many readers. In Metacritic fashion, M.A. Orthofer parses the coverage available for the book in question and assigns scores accordingly, adding his own often insightful reviews to the mix. For some readers, one drawback is that Orthofer's taste in books is a departure from the mainstream, with a heavy bias towards books in translation. Of course, the Complete Review's fans see this as a strength, and avid followers of the site are sure to be introduced to many unfamiliar titles.
Reviews of Books is a very lo-fi site that may be closest in spirit to what Margaret is looking for. The site aggregates the reviews of a handful of the most notable books of the week. The site can be useful, but the number of titles is limited and it's not the easiest to navigate.
Bookbrowse does some aggregating (see the "thumbs up icons.") But here again, I find the navigation a bit challenging.
The Week, one of my favorite magazines,
aggregates reviews on a handful of books on a weekly basis. There are no archives to dig through or anything, but it's not a bad way to keep up to date.Amazon actually has a pretty great page called "
Best of the Month." It doesn't explicitly aggregate book reviews but it does a good job of pushing to the fore the handful of books that would probably rise to the top as a result of such aggregating. Plus they add a sprinkling of intriguing meta-data and stats to give a sense of what's "hot" right now. It's worth bookmarking.Finally, there's no aggregating going on there, but I should mention them again. LibraryThing and Goodreads emphasize just how much word of mouth matters when it comes to books, often at the expense, I might add, of book reviews.Those are the sites I'm familiar with, but if you know of any others, please let us know about them in the comments. Thanks for the question, Margaret.
If you have your heart set on Murakami, I recommend you start with Norwegian Wood, the bittersweet love story that propelled him to superstardom. It lacks the fantastic elements of much of Murakami’s more popular work, but it contains perhaps the best depiction of modern Japanese life that Murakami has ever written.
If you really want to learn more about what it means to be Japanese, you might consider picking up a copy of Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki. Kokoro is a, perhaps the, great modern Japanese novel (at least most Japanese would tell you that) in much the same way that The Great Gatsby Is a great American novel. Kokoro trades Gatsby’s wit and panache for a solemn melancholy that I, frankly, find off-putting, but it’s unquestionably one of the most “important” Japanese novels, and a great introduction to the soul of modern Japan.
On the non-fiction front, I highly recommend Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan, which provides an excellent, entertaining encapsulation of Japan’s modern history. At a mere 174 pages, you can read it on the plane ride over, and still have time for two terrible movies. For a bleaker take on modern history, you might consider Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons, a dystopic look at Japanese bureaucracy and the country’s appalling environmental legacy. It can be a bit of a downer, but it provides an insightful behind-the-scenes look at what makes the country run.
I would also recommend anything by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, particularly “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids” and “Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness.”
Thanks a lot Ben! Any recommendations on historical fiction? I’m usually a sucker for those. Kokoro sounds intriguing, too.
But can’t Murakami’s obsession with the West be seen as the crux of post-war Japan? The US occupation force-fed consumerism to the Japanese and I have always read Murakami as the standard bearer of that incredibly complex legacy. If the anxiety and conflict present in Yukio Mishima novels wrestle with how to cope with the loss of certain cultural traditions, the way Murakami’s characters embrace Western tastes speaks to how Japan has changed during the intervening years. Yes, Murakami’s characters love American music and films but their crises of self, as I see it, reflect many aspects of contemporary Japan, especially among the young urban set.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima is a wonderful historical fiction based on the true story of a monk who sets fire to a Kyoto temple.
The Housekeeper and the Professor (novel) and The Diving Pool (3 novellas) by Yoko Ogawa. I had to wait months to get the novel from my library despite there being 8 copies and a short book–really special book.
I’m going to have to agree with Buzz; you can learn a lot about Japan from Murakami. I’ve both lived there, and lived with Japanese friends in America and Murakami was a way towards mutual understanding for sure.
I’d second his recommendation of Mishima, though I’d maybe give a heartier recommendation to The Sound of the Waves
I’d also recommend (and I’ve mentioned it here before) The Road to Sata by Alan Booth. It’s a travel book by a Brit who lived in Japan for most all of his adult life and he really gets at all different aspects of Japanese culture.
And why not read the first Nobel prize winner, Kawabata. Snow Country or The Old Capitol is a good place to start with him.
Kawabata is good… but maybe The Master of Go? Semi-sort-of-non-fiction-fiction about a single Go match which took place just before WWII, stressing both the differing styles and the physical and mental vulnerabilities of the players.
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, perhaps? The Makioka Sisters is wonderful (and is sort of historical fiction in that it deals with Japan’s changing culture post-westernisation through the differing actions and reactions of the sisters), but you might get a lot from his essay In Praise of Shadows, which is short and deals illuminatingly and concisely with the differences between western and traditional Japanese aesthetics.
I strongly recommend Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short stories, particularly ‘In A Grove’ and ‘Spinning Gears’.
If you wanted to look at something older, you could take a crack at The Tale of Genji, the sweeping and psychologically fascinating eleventh-century novel by Murasaki Shikibu. That’s rather a long read, though, so maybe instead try the Penguin selections from the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, which is a sort of diary, a collection of her funny and insightful remarks on the characters and quirks of the Heian court of which she was part.
I was actually in this exact situation a few months ago–visiting Japan for the first time, never having read any Japanese literature, and polling my friends as to which books I should bring. I decided to read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” for my first experience with Murakami, because the back cover described it “as an attempt to stuff all of modern Japan into one book,” or something like that. While I agree that for long stretches of the book the characters don’t seem “Japanese” (they could be the alienated inhabitants of any large city), some of the best writing in this novel is an attempt to reckon with Japan’s militaristic legacy and the atrocities of WWII. I recommend it and am looking forward to trying more Murakami soon.
I was interested in also reading something by a female author, and a friend suggested Banana Yoshimoto–unfortunately, I cannot recommend her. I tried her novella “N.P.” and it was terrible–flat writing in a bad translation.
And to supplement things with a foreigner’s perspective on some aspects of Japanese culture, I enjoyed “Fear and Trembling” by Amélie Nothomb, a young Belgian woman’s memoir/novella of working at a big Japanese corporation.
And another friend suggested reading the Pillow Book in conjunction with the “Hagakure” or samurai tales, to get an idea of what life was like for aristocratic men and women in feudal Japan.
Marissa, before you dismiss the Banana altogether pls try KITCHEN. NP I agree is fairly weak. It’s been years at this point, but I remember KITCHEN, particularly the last novella, as being fairly transcendent. I feel a lot of affection for that book.