From the Bookshelf of Diversity in All Forms!…

A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki

Start date: December 1, 2017

Finish date: December 30, 2017

Discussion: Monthly Group Reads

Why we're reading this: The diversity topic that was voted on to be covered in December Religion/Spiritual beliefs/Practices.
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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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What Members Thought

Mar 18, 2015 Suzy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memory-time, listened-to, mia-book-tours, magical-realism

I have been deliberating for days on what to say about this book and how to "rate" it. This book is dense, with a capital D, with things to think about, feel and absorb. I believe this is a book of discovery for all concerned, the characters and the reader. And discovery of things that are not easy to articulate, but great to ponder and explore further.

Ruth lives with her husband Oliver (certainly based on the author and her real-life husband Oliver) on an island off of Vancouver, B.C. and one d I have been deliberating for days on what to say about this book and how to "rate" it. This book is dense, with a capital D, with things to think about, feel and absorb. I believe this is a book of discovery for all concerned, the characters and the reader. And discovery of things that are not easy to articulate, but great to ponder and explore further.

Ruth lives with her husband Oliver (certainly based on the author and her real-life husband Oliver) on an island off of Vancouver, B.C. and one day finds a bag full of mysterious items washed up on shore. The main item that is the jumping off point for the book is a diary of a teenage Japanese girl, Nao. Nao's family has just moved back to Japan after her father has been let go from a firm in Silicon Valley. Ozeki explores themes big and small - of culture, success, failure, family, ancestors living and dead, the Japanese tsunami, the 9-11 terrorist attacks, bullying in Japanese schools, suicide, conscience, living in a wild place (the island), metaphysics, spirituality, Buddhism, parallel lives, astral projection, time travel, quantum mechanics, the list could go on! Also, the ideas and definitions of time, beings, time beings and now permeated the book adding to the meaning throughout. While many of these things have been and are interests of mine, this book is still messing with my mind!

Interestingly, I never felt that Ozeki had bitten off more than she could chew and only a few times during the book did I become less than engaged. But . . . the last part of the book (1.5 hours of listening, I'm not sure now many pages) lost me completely and turned me off. Ozeki felt a need to explain (agonizingly) many of the more esoteric or metaphysical concepts with science, mainly quantum mechanics. It's as if she wasn't confident in the way she wrote the story. It took away from our own discoveries about life and ourselves. I wished that she just let us live with the ideas and concepts vs. having to hit us over the head with what she meant. I'm still giving 4 stars to the book overall, but that last part would merit just maybe two in my opinion.

I listened to this book, read by the author who did an amazing job! (I'm not usually a fan of authors reading their own work.) I am so interested in exploring the concepts in this book that I'm going to get a print copy to look at the bibliography and revisit some of the more thought-provoking passages. ...more

25 likes · Like · see review

Sep 11, 2021 Booknblues rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, magical-realism, japan, canada, literary-fiction, made-me-cry

Ruth Ozeki, an author who lives on Cortes Island of Canada on the Desolation Sound crafts a story of a Japanese school girl named Nao, pronounced now and an author named Ruth who lives with her husband, Oliver on Cortes Island.

Ruth and Nao are connected by Nao's diary which Ruth found along the shoreline, shortly after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Now, there are all kinds of twists and turns and timeshifts and quantum physics in this book. I myself got caught up in it reading it on 9/11/2 ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2014 Jeanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-around-the-world, read-women, read-2014

This is not a book for everyone, but if you can imagine liking books that successfully combine zen buddhism, quantum mechanics, uncertainty, ecoactivism, and cross-cultural dialogues, in broad ranging yet focused discussions of suicide, shame, bullying, war, integrity, living in the present, writer's block, and more, this book is for you. Its four well-drawn narrators (two of these provide more minor narrations), as well as the other characters provide fascinating and well-developed perspectives ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 25, 2013 Caryl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: shelf-sitter, exw-book-club

This is a novel about pretty much everything: Waves & water & flotsam, cats & crows & jellyfish, diaries & letters & emails, novels & languages & words (lost and found), ghosts & dreams & storms, age & youth & history, past/present/future, memory/time/place, war & peace & being, life & death & zen. I was enchanted.

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2017 Heather rated it really liked it

Shelves: authors-of-color

This was slow going for me until about halfway through. I listened to some of it, which helped with the pronunciation of the Japanese, but also left things a little discombobulated. Each footnote was inserted right afetr the word, so that was clear. I read about the last 1/3 of the book and am glad I did. I think I would like to read it again some day, as I think I would get more out of it. However, the play on words and the double meaning Ozeki used in the story was unique and the storyline was ...more

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