VoidPhil

Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel by Haruki Murakami. It's my second Murakami novel after A Wild Sheep Chase. Sputnik Sweetheart is par for the Murakami course, striking a balance between generic semi-romantic novel and magical realist adventure. It was shorter and easier to ingest than several of Murakami's novels, especially his more recent ones, but it lacked some of the wonder that A Wild Sheep Chase engendered and that was special about Murakami.

Arthur Koestler's The Lotus and the Robot is an exploration of the religious and cultural identities of India and Japan based on two years of travels he conducted there during the late 1950s. Koestler's look at the two civilizations is very interesting with respect to both his time period and in comparison with modern views. Koestler occupies an interesting location on the artistic continuum between journalism and academia. His works are journalistic in the report style he adopts, yet many of his descriptions are based on historical, psychological, philosophical and theological insights.