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Book 52 for 2025: “The City And Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami

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This is my fourth Murakami book in the past couple of months and his latest work. In the Afterword he notes that the core of this long novel is a novella published in 1980 in a literary magazine. He was never satisfied with it and never allowed it to be republished in book form. Yet he knew “this contained something vital for me.” Like his other works I have read, the settings include young people, libraries, and strange events many of which are akin to what is called magical realism. The boundaries between reality and the imagination are blurred and questions who we are and what is real.

It begins with a young couple, 17 and 16, in love. The girl tells the boy about this strange walled town and tells him her real self resides there. She describes it in detail and tells him he could go there and become the Dream Reader in the library in this town which has no books, just old dreams that need to be read and where the main animal form is unicorns who often die in mass during the harsh winters there. One day with no warning, she disappears. In one form or another he spends the rest of his life searching for her. Somehow he ends up in this bizarre town where he has to give up his shadow to remain. He has substantial issues with this as he watches his shadow become ill and nearly die.

Later, after a successful career as a book dealer for a large corporation, he suddenly retires and decides to apply for a head library position in a small town in the remote mountains. He meets the previous head librarian whose life is full of mystery and where the reality of this real place and the bizarre town seem blurred. He meets a strange teenager who practically lives in the library reading books with great rapidity day after day. His relationship with the boy develops and he sees what he has been seeking his entire life.

This book takes a look at what is reality, the subconscious, and life’s meaning. It is also an ode to libraries and books and love.

Book 51 for 2025: “The Shadow Land”, Elizabeth Kostova

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A young woman, Alexandra, travels to Sofia, Bulgaria, for a job as an English teacher in part to help her recover from the strange disappearance (and probably death) of her brother. She has barely arrived when she helps an elderly couple and the man with them. By accident she ends up with an urn of ashes in a bag when her luggage and theirs gets a bit mixed up. The ashes are inside an ornately and unusually carved box with the name Stoyan Lazarov engraved on it. She sets out to find them with the help of a young cab driver.

As they set out on this journey, they discover they are being followed but have no idea why. The cab driver whom she calls Bobby has keen observation skills which mystify her at first. They find part of the family and then unfortunate things occur to many they meet who are relatives or are connected to the man whose name is on the box. Without initially realizing it, they become involved in Bulgarian politics and political corruption as they try to unravel the story of the box and the man whose ashes it contains.

As I read this novel, which is both a lesson on the horrible Soviet occupation of Bulgaria and human determination and resilience, I became entranced with the history and culture of Bulgaria. If you want a glimpse into another culture and its history and the beauty of the Bulgarian landscape, I highly recommend this book. It is also a mystery story that keeps the reader going.

The author also wrote an earlier book called “The Historian” which is a novel about the history of Vlad the Impaler who is the real person behind the Dracula stories. I plan to read that novel as well.

Book 50 for 2025: “The Well of Loneliness”, Radclyffe Hall

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Published in the US in 1928, banned in England, this is the first, well known lesbian novel and without doubt one of the saddest books I have ever read. Hall was already an award winning and popular novelist when she decided to write this novel. The main character, Stephen Gordon, was born to upper class English parents. Her parents had hoped for a boy and chosen the name Stephen. When she was born a girl, they decided to call her Stephen anyway. From an early age, she was different and preferred to ride horses and do outside activities with her father who adored her rather than wear frilly dresses and do the activities common for English girls at the time. Her mother found all this off putting and never showed any love or nurturing toward her. Later in life, after an unpleasant incident with a young woman who uses Stephen as a distraction from her boring life, Stephen’s mother throws her out of the family home and she moves to London where she writes a highly successful novel.

During WWI, they are desperate for ambulance drivers and Stephen is assigned to an all female ambulance regiment in France. There she meets another young woman who becomes her lover.

An English friend, a successful playwright, convinces Stephen to move to Paris where there are no laws against homosexuality and where there is a large community of similar people, many of whom are highly successful in their careers. She and her lover live there for many years, and Stephen successfully continues her career as a writer. Then an old friend from her childhood shows up and everything changes.

Books 47-49 for 2025: See below

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Three books but since one was tiny, “The Strange Library” by Haruki Murakami, and two might not count since I did not read all of them?? At first I thought the Murakami book might be a children’s book until I arrived at the end; it definitely is not a children’s book. This young boy goes to the library to check out books like he usually does and finds a different woman at the circulation desk. She gives him some odd instructions about where to find new books after he returns the books he has already borrowed. He has to walk through a sort of maze, meets some very strange people, and various unpleasant events occur. And the end is terribly sad. The book is short, with a fold up cover and illustrations of all sorts on every other page. The back cover is sort of like a mandala.

Then I tried to read “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang but only managed to get half way and quit. This is highly unusual behavior for me because if I start a novel, I finish it no matter what. In this case, reading about a woman who steals a dead friend’s unpublished novel and makes it her own which becomes a best seller and then whines when she is attacked because she is white and the friend is Chinese and some question whether is she committing cultural appropriation and is this ok. There is also a lot about the intricacies and unfairness in the publishing industry with so much detail that I gave up. Do I feel guilty? A little.

The third book is “Cheating Death: The New Science of Living Longer and Better” by Dr. Rand McClain. I read most of this nonfiction book, picking and choosing the parts that seem most relevant to my own life and health. I highly recommend this book because it gives useful advice about supplements that can help with sleep, arthritis, diabetes, etc. instead of using some of the usual NSAIDs and some prescription drugs. However, he is not anti-many popular medicines like metformin, for example, so this is not an anti-prescription medicine book. There is a very informative chapter, “Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy”, that details the pros and cons and suggests certain foods to eat, e.g. cruciferous vegetables, to counter some of the negative side effects. This book is useful in many ways. He also discusses some cutting edge therapies that are not available to most people but might be of interest to those searching for what is new and innovative regarding aging.

Book 46 for 2025: “Norwegian Wood”, Haruki Murakami

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This is the novel that shocked him by selling over a million copies and made him famous. It is the story of Toru, a young college student, whose two best friends from childhood change his life. One, his best male friend, commits suicide unexpectedly. Afterwards, the other friend, Naoko, a beautiful and mentally fragile young woman, and Toru spend their weekends just walking together all over Tokyo. As her mental health deteriorates, he increasingly falls in love with her and tries to help. Meanwhile, as Naoko becomes mentally more unstable, he meets another young woman, Midori, who is adventuresome, outgoing, and mentally stable. He does not want to give up on Naoko but is also drawn to Midori with whom he attends college.

The novel is written from the viewpoint of Toru. He tells not just about these women but also his very eccentric roommate at a dormitory and his friend, Nagasawa, who is very smart and disciplined but also quite immoral by Toru’s standards. Although the novel takes place in a Japan of several decades ago, Toru’s narrative and life seem quite modern and realistic.

One thing a reader from the US might notice is that all the characters go everywhere using public transportation. No cars are ever mentioned. Since several of the characters commit suicide, I decided to research the suicide rate in Japan. For decades the suicide rate of young people in Japan has been quite high and continues to be a concern there.

Although I am many decades older than all the main characters, I could not stop reading. This is a meaningful, very well written novel which I highly recommend. It is my second Murakami novel recently and I will read more.

Note: The version I read has the author’s notes from 2023 which are very informative and interesting. He apparently has to leave his home in Japan and go elsewhere, e.g. Greece, to write.

Santa Barbara Botanical Garden

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gurgling water

redwoods sighing

peace

Note: All the plants in this 78 acre garden are native to the area including the coastal redwoods.

Carrot Cake Bars

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These are easy to make and about as nutritious as a cake like treat can be. I used regular flour but might try almond flour next time.

3 cups lightly packed shredded carrots

1 heaping cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1 Tb. grated ginger or more to taste

2/3 cup light brown sugar

1 tsp BP

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

2/3 cup avocado oil

1 cup unbleached flour

Grease an 8 inch square pan ( I used glass). Put the oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and spices in mixing bowl and combine. Add ginger, BP, and baking soda. Add carrots and walnuts. Stir to combine. Finally, add the flour and stir. Pour into the baking pan. Use spatula to level because mixture will be thick. Bake at 335 for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool before cutting into bars.

Vegetarian Pasta with Swiss Chard and Ginger

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1/4 cup finely chopped onion

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

I heaping tablespoon grated ginger

Chili flakes (optional)

7 large Swiss Chard leaves

8 oz. Italian pasta — I used fusilli

Cook pasta according to directions on the package. Remove the middle vein from the Swiss chard leaves and chop. Cut leaves into bite sized pieces. Sauté onion, garlic, ginger, and chard veins in olive oil. When translucent, add the leaves, and cook just long even for them to wilt. Add the drained pasta, stir, and serve in warm bowls or plates. This is nice with a green salad. However, if you want to make it a one dish meal, double or triple the amount of Swiss chard used. You can also use spinach or other greens.

Serves two. This recipe could be doubled, etc. to serve more people.

Vegetarian Plov with Greens

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Plov is a common dish throughout Central Asia and is the national dish of Uzbekistan. All plov contains rice and usually meat like lamb or beef. Here is a vegetarian version. I found a vegetarian recipe and modified it using the ingredients I already had. The original recipe used chickpeas but I had already cooked Peruano beans so used them.

1/2 large purple onion, coarsely chopped

1/2 fennel bulb, coarsely chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 cup kalamata olives, chopped

1 drop coriander essential oil

1 drop cumin essential oil

1 drop cilantro essential oil

Chili flakes (optional and amount to taste)

1 cup cooked Peruano beans

2 cups greens (I used spinach and arugula), coarsely chopped

1 heaping half cup of basmati rice, rinsed

butter or olive oil for sautéing

Heat the oil or butter in a heavy casserole dish. Add onions, garlic, and fennel. Saute until tender. Stir in the spices. Scatter the beans and olives on top of the onion mixture. Do not stir! Add about 1/4 to 1/3 cup water. Layer the greens on top of the beans and olives. Flatten the greens with a spoon. Do not stir! Let greens wilt then layer the drained rice on top. Pour in enough boiling water to just cover the rice. Cook on high heat until the liquid has boiled off. Poke holes in the rice to allow steam to escape. Cover pan with lid and turn off heat but leave pan on the burner. Let the rice steam for 20-30 minutes.

To serve, stir the contents and serve in large bowls. You can add extra fresh herbs and lemon if desired. I just served as is and found it delicious. You do not have to use essential oil but can use ground herbs or fresh. If using essential oil, use a safe brand for cooking. I used Edens Garden but have used others, e.g. Doterra.

Book 34 for 2025: “Samarkand”, Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford

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I enjoyed the previous book by Caroline Eden so much I searched for this one. I doubt I will ever make it to Samarkand or Tashkent, places sort of on my bucket list, so what I do is read everything I find about these fabled cities on the Silk Road. The sub-title of this one is “Recipes and Stories From Central Asia and The Caucasus”. It starts with Samarkand and the story of Tamerlane, the legendary hero who conquered a lot of this area and a large portion of surrounding areas in 1370. He was a military genius who loved chess and made up his own chess game with twice the number of pieces.

What foods show up in both the stories and recipes? Beets, fruit–dried and fresh for which the area is famous, tomatoes, cucumber, pomegranates, cabbage, lentils, rice, lamb and mutton, and all sorts of kebabs and flatbreads. I learned there is a huge beach on Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the world’s largest alpine lakes and in summer people from Russia and all over Central Asia flock to its shores. People who own guest houses there make all their money for the entire year in the brief summer between mid-July and mid-August.

In the remote mountains of Azerbaijan lies the small town of Gyrmyzy Gasaba above the Qudiyaleay River, a town where all the people are Jewish. Even though Azerbaijan is a predominantly Shia Muslim country, the people in this town have peacefully lived here for hundreds of years. This town is considered the last surviving pre-Holocaust Jewish town untouched by WWII.

If you are a lover of apples, then consider this country, Kazakhstan, the place where apples originated. All apples in the world today come from the original apples here. The name of the largest city, Almaty, whose older name was Alma-Ata means fatherland of apples. In Ile-Altalan National Park on the northern slopes of the Tien Shan mountain chain thousands of acres of wild apples flourish.

Even though this book was published less than ten years ago in 2016, a lot of people must have been interested in reading the stories and recipes because the copy the library found for me is not in the best condition. Before I return it, I will copy some of the recipes to try.