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

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Release Date: 1985 (Japan)/September 1991 English
Publisher: Kodansha International
Pages: 416
Buy the Book: Amazon
Book Rating: 5/5













For those of you who are Murakami fans, I suppose this review won't sway you to read his books, as you already have them. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with the author of the modern surrealist novel, I would recommend checking his ouvre out and, for a more accessible text, I would suggest Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Book Review: Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Release Date: September 1954
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Pages: 248
Buy the Book: Amazon
Book Rating: 2/5










In the end section of the edition I picked up at a thrift store Golding states that: "The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." Now, I went into this under the base assumption that the book was essentially about the collapse of civilized behavior into barbarism; that the confines of society were traded for the savage human nature barely concealed by ethics and morals. However, I don't feel that the novel is doing as much as Golding is saying its doing and I felt that it was a long story to make a short point: when society changes, so does our idea of civilization.

Perhaps to clarify my grievances, I will try and go into more detail.........

Book Review: The Scarlet Plague

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
Release Date: 1912
Publisher: London Magazine / Macmillian
Audience: Everyone
Pages: 68
Buy the Book: Amazon
Download the Book: Project Gutenberg
Book Rating: 3.5/5








While technically a short story, The Scarlet Plague is still, nevertheless, a good read. A fairly straightforward story by Jack London, James Smith, one of the few survivors of a global epidemic half a century prior, sits down with his grandchildren and narrates the story as it happened to him. As he does this, he attempts to impart the wisdom of a bygone world to them.


While Smith narrates the story much like a news story, or radio broadcast (Think Welle's broadcast of War of the Worlds ) it is still a compelling story as you watch the collapse of modern civilization over the course of a few days. Written in 1912, it reads like much of the science fiction of the late 19th early 20th century in that it is, to modern readers, both futuristic and archaic in its description of civilization. It feels like the space age 1950s that brought us the Jetsons. Smith recalls the outbreak and 99.99% fatality rate of The Scarlet Plague and narrates his party's flight from the city towards the mountains. It also includes the renewal of tribal life as mankind is reduced, insofar as Smith knows, to around 200 people.

The story does recall The Last Man by Mary Shelley, but the author is less introspective, and the language is less flowery and dense. (It would kind of have to be given its page count ;) ). The thing I appreciate in this story, beyond the tale of survival, is the interaction between Smith and his grandchildren and how someone, who was a renowned scientist, deals with a world reduced to tribal rules and organization and is slowly becoming more superstitious and disbelieving of scientific discovery we take for granted today (germs being one of them for example).

A good read, and a shorter read, it is recommended. Unless your a sucker for the hard copy of books, I recommend downloading this from Gutenberg, or another service. I found mine on Kobo for my e-reader for free. I imagine it is available electronically for the Kindle, etc..