They are in some sense books of self-discovery and/or discovery of new worlds. They made me want to travel and explore other cultures. And they also inspired me to write. They helped shape me as a person. I'm now a journalist and author of several books on Japan. I've lived in many different places around the world and find Tokyo Japan to be the best capital to live in. My work describes life in Tokyo and the Japanese culture in general, focusing on sports, crime, and politics. I've written best-sellers in both the US and Japan and been nominated for several prizes. Most recently I was selected winner of a 2023 Henry Chadwick Award.
I wrote...
Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys . . . and Baseball
A memoir of 60 years in the world’s greatest city. It parallels the coming of age of two main characters: the author a small-town American who arrived in Tokyo in 1962 as a 19-year-old soldier and the megacity of Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world. As the author evolves from student to successful journalist, the readers see Japan from the Olympics of 1964 to the pandemic of 2020-21, through his eyes: earthquakes, baseball heroes, gangsters, politicians, media stars, and many nights in bars and back alleys.
I read this book when I was 21 years old and still trying to figure out the meaning of life, as was the main character of this novel, a brilliant young man named Raskolnikov, who murders an old woman, an evil pawnbroker, in the belief he is doing something to benefit society certain he is smart enough and emotionally strong enough to deal with the ramifications of his deed, only to find he is overwhelmed with guilt and must pay the price for his actions.
A kindly detective Porfiry, helps Raskolnikov come to the conclusion that he had to confess and pay for his crimes in order to salvage his life as a human being. This book drove home the fact that we all have a conscience and that doing good for our fellow man is the goal we should aspire to. I still think about this book.
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as “the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth.
With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel.
When Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is…
I read this book when I was in my twenties as well. An epic, sprawling novel of 1500 pages, of life in Russia during the early 19th century, in the Napoleonic Era, set against the backdrop of the French invasion of Russia.
It tells the stories of a wide array of characters from different social classes and presents an engrossing panorama of Russian society at the time. It explores themes of love, fate, power, destiny, and the concept of free will, among other things. Seems to cover everything in the human experience.
The battle scenes, the descriptions of high Moscow society, and depiction of the characters Andrew, Natasha, and Pierre, along with Prince Kutuzov and Napoleon himself, stick with me even to this day. Coming on the heels of Crime and Punishment, it made me a huge fan of Russian Literature. Exquisite. There is even a section on the Masons.
From the award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov comes this magnificent new translation of Tolstoy's masterwork.
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
War and Peacebroadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both…
Shōgun is a historical novel set in 17th-century feudal Japan that is based on the life of an English sailor named Will Adams who is shipwrecked there.
He became a samurai and a confidant of a warlord based on Ieyasu Tokugawa. It is a meticulously researched and richly detailed novel that combines historical events with fictional characters and storylines, dealing with themes of honor and loyalty in a world of samurai and daimyos.
It also explores relationships between Japanese and European traders, highlighting the clash of Western and Eastern values. At over 560,000 words long, it is a spellbinding narrative that offers an encyclopedic exploration of Japanese history, culture, customs, and traditions of Japan. It started a Japan craze in the United States when it was first published.
'Clavell never puts a foot wrong . . . Get it, read it, you'll enjoy it mightily' Daily Mirror
This is James Clavell's tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, SHOGUN is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world.
Starting with his shipwreck on this most alien of shores, the novel charts Blackthorne's rise from the status of reviled foreigner up to the hights of trusted advisor and eventually, Samurai. All as civil war looms over the fragile country.
The Magus is a novel about a young Englishman Nicolas who takes a teaching position on a Greek island and is drawn into the web of a reclusive millionaire who plays bizarre psychological tricks on him which blur the line between illusion and reality.
Through this process, Nicholas loses his grip on reality and his life begins to fall apart, thus beginning a journey of self-discovery. I read this book as a young man in one sitting. It took me all night and into the next day. I simply couldn’t put it down.
It dawned on me that this was a father-son story. But it’s in a class of its own. Expanded my consciousness.
The Magus is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas must fight for his sanity and his very survival.
Tale of Burns Bannion, private detective and karate expert in Tokyo Japan 1958, as he navigates the Tokyo Underworld in pursuit of a girl named Mitsuko on behalf of a recently dead client.
Filled with color and colorful characters. Inspired a whole series of Burns Bannion books, including, Kill Me In Shinjuku and Kill Me in Roppongi. Pulp fiction. A cross between Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler, it is rough around the edges. Nice depiction of the era.
Earl Norman was the pen name for Norman Thomson, a radio, stage, and film actor who worked for the Department of Defense in the Far East and lived in Tokyo from 1948 to 1978. I read these novels in the 1960s when I first arrived in Tokyo and they made me want to stay in the city.
I have been a writer for more than twenty years and have favored pursuing “truth in fiction” rather than “money in formula.” I also spent over thirty years in the corporate world and was exposed to many situations reminiscent of those described in my fiction and in these recommended books. While I support enterprise, “enlightened capitalism” is preferable to the bare-knuckle type we have today, and which seems to resurface whenever regulation weakens. I also find writing novels closer to my lived experience connects me intimately with readers who are looking for socio-political, realist literature.
Avery Mann, a retired pharmaceuticals executive, is in crisis.
His wife dies of cancer, his son’s marriage is on the rocks, his grandson is having a meltdown, and his good friend is a victim of the robocalls scandal that invades the Canadian federal election. Throw in a reckless fling with a former colleague, a fire that destroys his retirement property, and a rumour emerging that the drug he helped bring to market years ago may have been responsible for the death of his wife, and Avery’s life goes into freefall.
Does an octogenarian beekeeper living on Vancouver Island hold the key to Avery’s recovery, a man holding secrets that put lives in jeopardy? Avery races across the country to find out, with crooked bosses, politicians, and assassins on his tail. Joseph spins a cautionary tale of corporate and political greed that is endemic to our times.
Avery Mann, a retired pharmaceuticals executive, is in crisis. His wife dies of cancer, his son’s marriage is on the rocks, his grandson is having a meltdown, and his good friend is a victim of the robocalls scandal that invades the Canadian federal election.
Throw in a reckless fling with a former colleague, a fire that destroys his retirement property, and a rumour emerging that the drug he helped bring to market years ago may have been responsible for the death of his wife, and Avery’s life goes into freefall.
Does an octogenarian bee keeper living on Vancouver Island hold…
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