BOOKS WORTH KILLING TREES FOR #1

This week: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami.

Five second summary: Bloke approaching mid life crisis opens existential gateway that provides answers to why everyone he knows is dying, the meaning of life, and why he loves a 15-year-old psychic schoolgirl.

The bit from the book:
"Everything before is nothing compared to the exacting detail and sheer power and invulnerability of today's web of capitalism. And it's megacomputers that make it all possible, with their inhuman capacity to pull every last factor and condition on the face of the earth into their net calculations.

Advanced capitalism has transcended itself. Not to overstate things, financial dealings have practically become a religious activity. The new mysticism. People worship capital, adore its aura, genuflect before Porches and land values. Woshiping everything their shiny Porches symbolize. It's the only stuff of myth that's left in the world.

Latter day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right or wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip there's cool, there's trendy there's snobbish. Mix n match. You can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world - philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.

Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas?

C'mon that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you."

All of E.R.'s best books are recommended by Beryl, who has read all the best books, even the ones they've burnt. E.R. breaks copyright law in the name of promotion and education. Dance Dance Dance is published by Vintage books, and available from good book shops, and many famous online retailers.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and owns the copyright to everything above. He's like, wise? And Japanese? Yeah?