South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
At this point, I'm ready to call this one a 'standard' Murakami work. A young male protagonist goes from spectator to participant in his own life through a series of events that stretch just to the edge of reality. The somewhat formless narrative arc is entertaining, sprinkled with profound insights, and always finds its way to a jazz club. I repeat my advice- if you like this author, read all his books.
One memorable passage describes the condition 'Hysteria Siberiana'. This occurs when a Siberian farmer- accustomed to waking when the sun rose in the east, breaking for lunch when the sun was directly overhead, and returning home when the sun set in the west- would suddenly leave his life behind and walk westward. Wherever it was that the sun went each day, it surely was better than staying put.
I came up with many potential analogies for this condition. For today, I settled on reading. Each time I open a new book is admitting that, surely, wherever the author went with the pen is a better place than staying put in my own head.
I've found these westbound journeys in pursuit of Murakami's light enriching. His novels remind me to look around and wonder what lies just beyond. At the same time, they also encourage me to stop, sometimes just to rest, but also to consider which fields I must till next.
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi
This short book describes common errors in reasoning. In order to best serve the visual learners out there among us debaters, helpful illustrations of each error are included.
I do not think there is much value in highlighting any specific error here- the book will take interested readers less than an hour to fully absorb- but I did spot three general themes into which I'll group a couple of these specific errors.
The first was a tendency to attack the person instead of the argument. Citing an opponent's background or associating them with repulsive characters who hold similar views is unrelated to the validity of the argument. Pointing out examples of past behavior that are inconsistent with the current position is also trivial.
A second theme was to get lost in meanings or definitions of words. An argument loses focus when a conclusion that applies for one meaning of a word is incorrectly applied to other meanings or if one party in a discussion changes the parameters of a word's use after the debate has started.
The final theme invokes basic statistical thinking. General claims tend to be hard to disprove but the temptation should be avoided- being general, the claims often fail to provide the robust support needed in stressing a key point. And the debater should always remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
My final Murakami novel was perhaps the one I enjoyed least. There is a pattern to his work into which this novel fit and After Dark was no exception in terms of its insights into the human psyche or its brave exploration of life's most profound spiritual questions. But for whatever reason, this one did not grab me in the same way that some of his other works did.
