I'd like to draw your attention to a book on my Christmas wish list: Gamers from Soft Skull Press out of New York.

The book, which is subtitled "Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels," includes an essay called "I am a Freak" by Roland Kelts. Kuhaku readers will recognize that name from his eloquent essay "Father Hunters," which takes a hard look at how Japan's young people feel about their parents' generation. In "Father Hunters," Kelts talks to Haruki Murakami, who has this to say about Japan's youngsters:

If those kids feel that their fathers are absent and emotionally unreliable, and if they don't like their parents, I think it's because of the defeat of my generation and its economic priorities. But this also means the defeat of Japanese values. And that's very sad.