Posted by
Brandon
18 Comments

To and 'Fro

Pelabuhan Ratu, South Java

I’m ashamed to admit that it’s taken me so long, but I’ve just recently discovered the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. I’ve just finished David Mitchell’s number9dream – and loved his style. Upon further reading, I found that many of his ideas were inspired by the work of Murakami, so ran to the bookstore this weekend to pick up a few of his works as well as another of Mitchell’s:

Kafka on the Shore – Murakami
Norwegian Wood – Murakami
Ghostwritten – Mitchell
Cloud Atlas – Mitchell (had since xmas but haven’t read)

I’m on this Japanese literature kick lately if you can’t tell – not quite sure what started it, but if you have any recommendations or authors I should check out, please email me or leave a comment.

Also – I’ve been hit pretty hard with spamming comments on this blog – around 300 per day – and therefore will approve each comment before it displays. This simply means that if you leave a comment, it will not show up immediately – only after I approve it. Please don’t let this cause hesitation, but be aware that it won’t show up instantly. 😉

17 responses to To and 'Fro

  1. Steph says:

    Hi Brandon

    I faced tons of spammers before with MT and fays after using WordPress(!!!).
    MT blacklist didn’t keep the spammers away.
    Finally, i resorted to closing the comment boxes for the previous posts. I make sure I close those comment permissions for the past month. I’m glad to say that I don’t get spammers now. = )

  2. martine says:

    Hey Brandon,

    My spam problem has almost dimished now that I have
    1. moderated comments
    2. typekey registration for comments
    3. used the fab (MT-only i think) plug in called close comments to close all comments in posts older than 14 days (you have manual override if you want some entries to stay open)
    4. MT blacklist

    Read Norwegian Wood first, it’s the best. Some say Kafka on the Shore is his worst, so be warned.

    Good luck with the dirty evil spammers, enjoy Murakami and keep photographing!

  4. dani says:

    Hi
    I have to say that I check your site from time to time to see your pictures, I really like them.

    The “link spammers” or “search engine optimizers”, as they like to be called, hit a web log that I had, just for a while and then it stopped, There are several organization like Google, Yahoo, MSN… trying to solve this problem, by adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to hyperlinks in comments, this way webmasters and weblog owners can tell search engines that these links are effectively untrusted. So when the search engine sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit to rank websites in their search results
    . But it seems like the nofollow attribute will solve the problem with the search engines being cheated but not the problem of the web blogs being flooded with links. Also your server aplication may need to be updated. Normally they use old post to put their spam so the owner doesn´t notice.

    About the books I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle from Murakami a while ago and I really enjoyed it .

  5. yasmina says:

    the only haruki murakami book i haven’t read is kafka on the shore, so tell me how you like it…

    another japanese writer i suggest is ryu murakami (no relation to haruki) with his book “in the miso soup”…

    banana yoshimoto is someone i’ve been reading for years and i’d recommend her books, “goodbye tsugumi”, “asleep” (my favorite), “kitchen” and “lizard”; the last 3 titles being a collection of short stories. she also wrote “amrita” but i thought that was weird.

  6. ci'en says:

    Have you tried the Spaminator? Go do a search for it, it’s a very powerful plug-in, my spam dropped to a minimal level after it!

  7. hendra says:

    wow…just visiting and amazed at the photos u took in my country..Nice one Brandon

  8. anasalwa says:

    Brandon,
    I haven’t read any of Haruki Murakami yet, but I these books Out by Natsuo Kirino, All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe, and both In Miso Soup and Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami have slightly shifted my perception of Japanese women.

  10. Malte says:

    Hi there,

    I read your blog occasionally and enjoy being reminded about life in indo where i did some work during the year 2000. I am myself into a Japanese literature swing and can like yasmina recommend bananas books – they also have this surreal floating feeling to them.

    take care – malte

  11. Rlynn says:

    I’m reading Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicles”. Great book. Do you like classics? “Taiko” and “Musashi” are good ones…. I also have “number9dream”, so I was like, wow! this guy’s reading the exact same books I’m reading!!! ^__^

  12. Rlynn says:

    I’m reading Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicles”. Great book. Do you like classics? “Taiko” and “Musashi” are good ones…. I also have “number9dream”, so I was like, wow! this guy’s reading the exact same books I’m reading!!! ^__^

  13. Brandon says:

    Thanks guys, for all of your recommendations regarding the spamming as well as the authors!

    I’ve written a few of you directly – so I won’t repeat myself on here – but I appreciate your help and opinions.

    It’s great to see that some people actually still drop by 😉 I think I’ll be able to continue writing / posting more frequently again.

  14. alaya says:

    haruki murakami is one of my fav author.
    from all of his books i have read, i love ‘norwegian wood’ the most 😉

  15. btezra says:

    ~I used to get pounded, both on the photo section and my blog section, by link spammers/trackback ping spammers…but that was until the woman who designed/maintains my site ended comments/trackbacks after 7 days, changed a file extension that spambots search for…I have not got one in 2 weeks, and I hope they never find me again…BTW, xlnt contrast in that last shot, the image of the subject walking across the bridge~

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