Coming Attractions
27 August 2006

Akihiko Matsutani, a professor at the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies, will sketch the likely consequences of Japan’s declining population. To attend, please buy a copy of his book Shrinking-Population Economics. Seating is limited.

Past Events
30 July 2006

Philip Harper, the first non-Japanese to become a sake brew master, and author of The Book of Sake gave an intoxicating talk.  His talk was lubricated with sake from his Osaka brewery, Daimon Brewery.

Philip is shown below talking to an appreciative audience. 

BOOKCLUBS

India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond by Shashi Tharoor will be discussed on 20 August. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta was discussed on 30 July. Burned Alive: A Survivor of an “Honor Killing’ Speaks Out by Souad will be discussed by the non-native speakers’ group on 6 August.

Conan the Librarian: 
“Good prose is like a windowpane,” declared my fellow secondhand book dealer, George Orwell.  Please pardon my cracks.

"Do you have omelet?" I was asked the other day. As a person who thrives on absurdity, I didn't blink an eye.  "Well, we have a book called Amulet, perhaps you mean that?" (I was thinking of The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud.) "No, no, it's by Shakespeare." "Omelet? Amulet? Hamlet? It's one of those."

My fellow secondhand book dealer Herman Hesse declared: “Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”  These weighty words can perhaps be reinterpreted: Booklovers, unlike book burners, never sleep alone.