Kirjahaku

Kazenoko Takebayashi is slowly coming undone. She has just left her husband, uprooted her two young children, and hauled everyone across town to a new apartment, a new school, a new life. She can't count on any support from her ex, even as she knows the presence of their daughters will keep him annoyingly in her life. She'll have to discover her own way for the ends to meet and everything to click together. Yet she's convinced that this was the right choice, and that it is - or will anyway prove to be - for the best. Will it? "Moonshadows" is Kazenoko's story told in her own words, a diary of her thoughts, feelings, perspectives, and efforts as she struggles in an unfair world and reflects on the fate laid bare at her feet. Could she have taken another path than the one she did? Would it have helped? As the pressures mount and her daily worries close in Kazenoko sinks into an emotional breakdown, becoming both sacrifice and sacrificer on life's altar. Depression, madness, suicide, murder, all pass through her in the constant striving to find some meaning and make some sense, to attain some peace with having been born. She never asked for any of it, and there's so little she can control; can she at least preserve herself?

A Phenomenological Reading of Hosea 12.4-5 and 11.1-2: Commune with Us explores two passages from the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic book containing puzzling plurals in the original language, pieces so enigmatic they are usually changed entirely in translation. Andrew Oberg, however, considers them delightfully confusing, and through in-depth examinations builds a “patchwork” version for each. These reconstructions are then brought to bear on four separate interpretative interactions per pairing, based on alternative pre-comprehensions that the author investigates using phenomenological methods to trace, describe, and wonder on the resulting responses. Finally, Oberg widens the focus of study and presents an approach to engaging with scripture, of whatever faith and lineage, that applies the lessons taken into a technique that could be used by any reader towards a deeper “interrogation” of their literary heritage. Oberg finds that the treasures we have received from tradition still – yet, always – have volumes and volumes to speak.

Frank Tollman has just woken up in the middle of a rice paddy. Under a blazing sun. Being poked by someone he does not know and who is speaking to him in a language he has never heard. The last thing he can remember is stopping for drinks and then stumbling to catch the Tokyo Metro home after another day of grinding numbers for a multinational. Life abroad was supposed to be so much more exciting. And then suddenly, in a most unwelcome way, it was. In the tradition of Camus, Hesse, and Huxley, Freedom's Mask is a breathtakingly fresh philosophical novel that follows its hero-anti-hero on a quest for knowledge and for self. As Frank struggles to make sense of the world he finds himself in, he is forced to face the difficulties of meaning, the purpose of choice, consent, and the vast puzzle of being. He must not only relearn how to live, but come to terms with what it is, or what it could be, to live well. With its unflinching look at identity, self-making, and the ceaseless struggle of life alone among so many others, Freedom's Mask is the kind of book that haunts you long after you've put it down. Frank's story is our story, and his questions might be our answers. Don't miss your chance to ask them too. Buy this book and start your own journey today.