BOOK REVIEW - Fahrenheit 451

I actually secretly have what I consider a monstrous TBR pile; of the physical books I own, I haven't read about 20 of them.  Many of them are classics that I've never gotten around to reading, or monstrous tomes that are over 500 pages (some fall into both categories).  So here we are reading Fahrenheit 451, a classic I was never assigned in school and, therefore, passed over; and just because it's a classic, doesn't mean that you have to like it.  So, long story short, I found it a little lacking.

Guy Montag is a fireman that lives in a dystopian, futuristic, American society where everyone is constantly obsessed with massive, wall-sized televisions and earbud style headphones when they aren't watching television.  The TV obsession is so bad that it is commonplace to refer to television actors as, "family members."  The country is always having brief 1-2 day wars with other countries, but no one seems concerned as they believe they are living in a utopia.  As many books challenge the readers to question their personal philosophy and the meaning of life, and the inhabitants of this society prefer to feel happy watching feel-good television than confront their emotions head-on, the society has declared books to be dangerous and its up to firemen to burn them.  Guy Montag starts the book being a good fireman and burning books as he should, but ends up keeping them and wishing to read them.  Ultimately, he has to worry about being branded a fugitive for keeping his books.

I felt that the frame of the story was very adequate, but the way that Bradbury described Montag, the other characters, and a description of the society was rambling, under-detailed, and hard-to-follow at best.  I also found the events of the final chapter to be very quick, sudden, and implausible.  It was difficult to determine what was even happening.  I found it also difficult to follow Montag's thought process.  I don't even feel that we have a clear motive or a true change in the character that allows him to change from wanting to burn books to wanting to save and read them.  All-in-all I found the actual plot and characters to be a mess.

However, I feel that reading between the lines to get a gist of Bradbury's overall world building can be beneficial to the reader to communicate a cautionary tale of a world so plugged into technology in all of its facets that it loses the desire and attention span for meaningful interaction with other people and even for thinking analytically about life.

The greatest loss of the people in Fahrenheit 451's society was their loss of empathy toward their fellow man; and a lack of any desire to recover that empathy.  I believe this is a warning that even people in the 21st century can appreciate as the phenomenon of people who are too addicted to their phone or other mobile technological device to interact with the people physically around them grows more prevalent.  I also have noticed anecdotally with my own friends that as their access to technology grows their attention span decreases.  They begin to lose patience with sitting and reading an entire book and just want to read a series of tweets, or a two-page article, or a 30 minute podcast containing the same information.  You can call it the TL;DR effect.

Fahrenheit 451 has bland characters, sloppy pacing, and an implausible resolution.  As a novel, I can't recommend it with confidence.  On the other hand, the novel's overarching moral serves as a good reminder that we only have so much time on our hands, so we should probably put away the phone/tablet/computer and stop reading boring clickbait articles and actually get around to reading Shakespeare.  Your relations and our society will thank you for it.    


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VIDEO GAME REVIEW - Tales of Xillia

I have been a fan of the Tales of series of video games since Tales of Symphonia game out on the Gamecube in 2004.  It a more anime-themed, character driven story than other JRPGs such as the Final Fantasy series, but that is precisely why I'm such a huge fan of it.  My husband is also a big fan of JRPGs, and had yet to play a Tales of game, so I thought what better introduction to the series than the then-most-current entry in the series on PS3:  Tales of Xillia?  Another plus that the Tales of franchise has over other JRPG series is that almost all home console versions of the games can easily plug in up to 4 controllers and have all battles become a multiplayer experience while the person who is the first player explores the map.  It's an ideal series to play with a family member or significant other.

Tales of Xillia follows the story of either Jude, a young medical student who practices martial arts, or Milla, a female avatar of the ruler of the spirit realm.  We personally followed Jude's path, but both paths are largely the same barring a brief divergence about 3/4s of the way through the game.  Their journeys begin when a lab near Jude's medical school is broken into by Jude, Milla, and Jude's professor one evening which culminates in the discovery of the conduction of cruel experiments on humans and spirits.  Jude and Milla fight to stop the experiments as Jude's professor perishes.  They fail, flee, and start a journey to gain strength and try again to halt the inhumane experiments and the people behind them.

Jude and Milla are later joined by the cute mage-prodigy Elize; clumsy staff-wielder Leia; mysterious, older mercenary Alvin, and out-of-military-retirement, old man Rowen.  There weren't too many characters that I felt we very greatly disliked.  I most just developed a strong liking for my few favourite characters, and very rather neutral about the rest.  The team dynamics were very cute; an example would be close to the final fight, a 3rd-party observer remarks to Jude that the members of the party all have similar goals, yet they all word them differently, and Jude just sighs and remarks that that's the sort of team they are.  I found the team dynamics to be cute, yet not too heavy-handed, and all-in-all very realistic.

My only quip in the story and character department was that the last fourth of the game was remarkably, quickly paced and I wish the final resolution was a bit more complete, but since a sequel release, Tales of Xillia 2, has been announced, this quip may soon be rectified once I purchase the sequel.  Standing on its own, completing Tales of Xillia just made me want more.

The Tales of series is known for having a lot of New Game+ content, and Xillia is no exception.  Many options opened up upon our completion of the game; however we have yet to explore them.  Also unlockable full-body costumes are few, but this is made-up for in the number of costume altering accessory such as large noses, funny glasses, angel wings, and bushy eyebrows which were a joy to both collect and use.  The battle system was also fun, and played out as a very smooth version of a real-time action system with a large range of movement, and a new spider web leveling system as well as a new linking system to broaden the number of skills utilized in battle.  It's the most fun Tales of battle system I've played so far.

If you are a fan of Japanese video games, don't mind needing about fifty hours to complete a game, are interested in a largely character driven story, are looking for a long-term multiplayer experience, enjoy an anime-style art aesthetic, and happen to own a PS3, then Tales of Xillia is a great game for you that I'd highly recommend.  I am also personally looking forward to its sequel Tales of Xillia 2, also for the PS3.

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APP REVIEW - Kingdom Hearts Unchained X

Hello everyone!  I've been lagging in the reading department lately, because ever since the English version came out in April, I've been in love with Kingdom Hearts Unchained X!  Just to clarify, I am playing the Android OS version of this game, although there is a (Japanese-only) browser version and an (international) iOS version.

I don't really take app games very seriously.  I usually leave serious, high quality portable gaming to my Nintendo 3DS and think of app games as a sort of pleasant, brief diversion, but I have been surprised by the quality of the app.

KH Unchained X stars you as a random keyblade wielder set back in a time before the events of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep as you and your peers are fighting a force of darkness encroaching on the world of light.  The battle systems involves collecting and leveling up medals with different stats and one of three types of weapon classes (blue for magic, red for strength, and green for speed) that are each based off of an existing Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or Disney character.  The medals are used to attack Heartless during the main missions (called "quests"), and the battle system ends up operating like a simplified version of KH Chain of Memories.  Medals, or medal exchange currency, are rewarded for logging in or completing quests, but, naturally, there's an option to purchases medal packs with actual money, but I have yet to find this a necessity in the 2 1/2 months I've been playing the game.

The story is very, very light.  Most of the stories are just brief rehashes of Disney movies and the main story progression cutscenes are about 100 quests apart.  The slow to non-existent story progression reminds me a lot of KH Re:Coded.  However, I have personally gone through about 300 quests and still like the style of the game.  I think the pacing of obtaining and upgrading medals, obtaining and upgrading keyblades, and acquiring in-game currency to perform those actions to be nicely paired with the rising cost of each action coinciding very well with the growth of the AP bar.   There are also certain events that cause the cost of actions to temporarily be less than normal.  At the higher level quests (I'm at quest 300), I find I can complete about 5 quests before I need to leave my AP to recharge, which takes about an hour.

It is simply a surprisingly well made, high-quality, nicely balanced mobile game with very cute animations and graphics.  If you're a Kingdom Hearts fan, than it will soon become you new favourite idle mobile diversion.  Just make sure that you don't enter into it expecting an epic adventure on the scale of Birth by Sleep.  For those that aren't Kingdom Hearts fans, thankfully, no storyline knowledge is required to enjoy this cute, little game. 

BOOK REVIEW - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

After a few weeks, I finally finished Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  I am no stranger to Murakami; I've read about 12 of his novels and short-stories by now, and this is only the second time I've attempted one of his longer novels, and I was worried that I would lose sight of the plot within the elongated length or that the pace would drag out too much over 600 pages, but I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case.

I felt a sort of low-key curiosity, as if I were channeling a house cat, throughout the entire length of the novel.  The characters I found to be easy to keep track of and compelling.  In traditional Murakami style, the motives were, naturally, deeply mysterious and impossible to ascertain; but I felt that this just added to the supernatural, magical realist feel of the story.  I deeply enjoyed the different connections between the characters, to the point that it's easy to imagine the same character being represented by two different people.  As impossible it is, logically, for the same person to exist in two different places at the same time, Murakami makes you question such basic laws of physics and makes you think anything is possible, as long as you're hanging out at the bottom of a time-altering well.

I also felt very positively about the characterization of the female characters.  Usually people reading Murakami find themselves feeling conflicted about the portrayal of female characters and whether or not the main male characters in his novels are advocating sexism.  I personally found the majority of this book's characters to refreshingly advocate the decisions women make, even sexual ones regarding their bodies, even despite the inevitable inexplicable natures of these decisions and the inevitable confusion caused by our protagonist.  I also really liked the fact that one of the climaxes and central goals of the novel was bringing justice to a (supernatural) rapist.  The most confusing character to me was high schooler Mei Kasahara, but I feel that her character development and awakening was more of her developing an attuning to the supernatural rather than a sexual attraction to the main character.

All in all, I felt an interest in the actions and goals of all of the main characters; I liked the historical Manchukuo referenced; I loved the connections between each character; the main character was a familiar, very chill "everyman;" I loved the more surreal aspects of the novel; and I loved the resolution of the main plot, which felt personally satisfying despite the plentiful loose ends.  Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is now one of my favourite Murakami novels.  If you are looking for a Murakami starting point, or if you loved Wind-Up Bird and would like to read something similar, I recommend the shorter, but just as surreal Wild Sheep Chase.  For those who love surreal, character-driven plots and don't mind a hefty page-count, I'd highly recommend Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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BOOK REVIEW: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I sort of cheated with this one; I listened to this as an audiobook, and thank goodness I did that, for while it was short, it was deeply repetitive.  

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a well-known, popular book about declutter by Japanese author Marie Kondo.  Marie Kondo is a former Shinto shrine maiden who is now a decluttering consultant and has developed a way of decluttering that dumps everything in a certain category (i.e. clothes, books, etc.) from every room in the house into one big pile and sorting it by deciding what you want to keep.

Kondo's small book is persuasive in inspiring one to declutter in a sincere, conversational tone. I enjoyed her focus on thinking on what you want to keep, rather than what you want to throw away. Her idea is that everything that you like (or in her words, that "sparks joy.") should be kept, and that you will feel less stressed and much happier for it, and that everything else is free to discard or donate. I also liked her idea of getting all categorized items in the entire house in the same pile, rather than proceeding room by room. She has a good point about things such as forgetting about coats in a closet down the hall, and allowing one to notice better any potential duplicates.

Kondo might seem difficult to relate to, as she asks for a lot of time and initial familial peace about decluttering one's possession. She also speaks often on the spirit and emotions of objects, which may seem off-putting to some; I personally found it charming. However, I did question her confidence of having no customers with any relapses; it does show her commitment to helping others declutter.

Unfortunately, listening to this book did not necessarily help me clean or declutter. I have already begun my decluttering journey for a few years now (slowly, one small chunk at a time, something Marie Kondo would not approve of). So part of the book seemed like it was preaching to the choir. That aside, the book was still very repetitive, with certain maxims from Kondo seeming to pop up every chapter. Also due to my personal living situation (I have many things in storage, a currently very small living space, and little familial support), I was unable to actually enact her method. Maybe I can properly test it out when I move.

My personal situation aside, I enjoyed some of her humorous anecdotes about her clients, but I found the overall tone too serious for The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to be called my favourite decluttering book. That crown belongs to Clutter's Last Stand by Don Aslett, which does not have such a rigid, spelled-out method, but makes up for it with more humour sprinkled throughout and less repetition.

In any case, if you are starting to get claustrophobic and antsy in you own home and are looking for inspiration to declutter, I would recommend either The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or Clutter's Last Stand. Whichever book suits your tastes and personally you to declutter is the most important thing, whether you prefer sincere structure or cheerful goading. Both books should be available digitally or from your local library if you're afraid of adding to your clutter pile.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

Yukio Mishima is a famous Japanese author almost as famous for his highly public suicide as he is for his literature. For years, I had heard his name quietly mentioned in bookstores' "Recommended Authors" displays and have seen his books under lists of notable novels. Particularly, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea always caught my eye with its plethora of masterfully designed covers. For years I felt unsure if the plot would interest me or would be too serious, but it nagged at the back of my mind; until, finally, I bought a very cheap paperback version of it off eBay.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea stars a young 12 year old boy named Noburu who, pardon my French, is a little shit. He acts all contrite to his mother, but then finds a peephole in the wall to watch his single mother change clothes at night. He then hangs out in reclusive spots by the docks in his port town and brags about his newfound, sexual knowledge of the female body, and all of his friends nod sagely and feel that this contributes to their wholly, "authentic," amoral philosophy and allows them to rebel from their boring, middle-class, childish existence. One might find them slightly sympathetic characters, like Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield, if they didn't turn out to be blatant psychopaths. Their wanton violence against pitiful creatures completely turned me off of this book.

The book's plot doesn't really move until the Noburu's mother starts dating a sailor named Ryuji. Noburu has a deep interest in boats, and initially idolizes Ryuji; yet this quickly fades when Ryuji considers quitting his lonely sailor's life to marry Noburu's mother. Initially, I considered this to be a metaphorical representation of Ryuji as Japan with his sailor profession representing pre-WWII Japanese masculine culture, Ryuji's giving up of his profession as a representation of post-WWII Japanese culture. This would explain Noburu's youthful perspective having such intense, instantaneous disdain for Ryuji after his abandonment of the profession and marriage to his mother; yet this seems flawed as Noburu does not seem to represent a reliable perspective, having seemingly no capacity for empathy.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed this book more if we had a larger point-of-view from that of Ryuji; however, I found Noburu to be largely unlikable and unnecessarily violent. Noburu's perspective was largely emotionless, barring his intense joy at the sight of boat mechanics and his intense anger at Ryuji. This left the supposedly-emotional breakthrough of Ryuji, and the ending of the book seem rather hollow. Also I feel that Mishima was trying to deliver a metaphor of some sort, but it got lost in the murkiness of preadolescent, psychopathic behavior.

However, Yukio Mishima is still a well-known author of Japanese literature and has many more novels that he has written, so perhaps I will give him another go. Perhaps other with a stronger stomach for violent children will find something to enjoy in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, although it wasn't to my particular taste. It is, at least, a thankfully short adventure.

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BOOK REVIEW Rashomon and Other Stories

It is a sad reality that a surprising number of famous Japanese authors have been both rumoured and confirmed to have died from suicide: Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and also Ryuunosuke Akutagawa.

Ryuunosuke Akutagawa is a well known Japanese author of numerous short stories, of which the collection Rashomon and Other Stories is the only collection to be translated and printed into English. Akutagawa's most well-known stories are "In a Grove," and "Rashomon." There is a famous 1950 movie directed by Akira Kurosawa that takes the plot from "In a Grove," and the plot from "Rashomon," which is usually the primary reason Western readers are inspired to seek out his work.
Like any good short story collection, Rashomon and Other Stories needs to have a majority of well-written, well-liked, memorable stories. Such stories can be found immediately with "In a Grove," about conflicting testimonies regarding a rape and murder in a bamboo grove and "Rashomon," about a poor man who considers theft. Those were my two favourite stories from this collection. The characters and moral dilemmas presented stay with the reader long after the stories are finished.

These two are quickly followed by other favourites such as "Hell Screen" about a court painter putting his entire being into painting the eight scenes of Buddhist hell for his lord, and "" about a Japanese woman in feudal times ostracized by her village for joining the Christian religion. There is a sense of awe and horror left with the reader regarding humanity's devotion to theological deities and the depravity of human behaviour resulting from intolerance for others' religious devotions.

Some less poignant but still likable stories include "The Nose," humourously about a priest obsessed with having an overly long nose. Unfortunately, the collection falls apart near the end with the stories published very close to Akutagawa's death. The final story, "Spinning Gears," in his collection is one that is a kind of fragmented, stream of consciousness narrative that does little more than confuse the reader. They also serve as a sad reminder of the author's failing mental health at the end of his life.

Despite the lackluster of the final couple of stories, I would strongly recommend Rashomon and Other Stories for those who are interested in Japanese culture or history, or those who enjoy short stories with meaningful moral dilemmas.

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