Killing Commendatore

Killing Commendatore
by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious when you look back on them. Filled with unbelievably bizarre coincidences and unpredictable, zigzagging developments. While they are unfolding,its hard to see anything weird about them, no matter how closely you pay attention to your surroundings." --p. 58)

Reading a Haruki Murakami novel makes you think about things in a new way, it teaches you stuff (in this case about Japanese painting, opera, Vienna during WWII, and a bit about Jaguars), and it is weirdly wonderful. This novel is a perfect example of all these things. I also love that the chapter titles are lines from the text of that chapter, but they often seem to mean something else when they stand alone as titles than they do when you find them in context.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?” 
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

When this novel came out in the U.S. it was reviewed in the NY Times which described the story this way:

 "... a hallucinatory vortex revolving around several loosely connected searches carried out in suburban Tokyo by the protagonist-narrator, Toru Okada, a lost man-boy in his early 30's who has no job, no ambition and a failing marriage. When his cat disappears, he consults a whimsical pair of psychics, sisters named Malta and Creta Kano, who visit him in his dreams as often as in reality. Then his wife leaves him, suddenly and with no explanation, and he spends his days hanging out with an adolescent girl named May Kasahara, a high-school dropout obsessed with death, who works for a wig factory. At one point, seeking solitude, Toru descends to the bottom of a dry well in the neighborhood, and while he's down there, he has a bizarre experience, which might or might not be another dream: he passes through the subterranean stone wall into a dark hotel room, where a woman seduces him. This experience leaves a blue-black mark on his cheek that gives him miraculous healing powers. Eventually, he's rescued by Creta Kano, who reveals to him that she has been defiled in some hideous, unnatural way by Toru's brother-in-law, a politician whose rising career appears to be propelled by demonic powers."

Mixed into Toru's story are the stories of different soldiers relating their experiences. The juxtapositions and shifting realities make this a challenging read, but it is worth the effort because Murakami's observations about how people think, and act, and present themselves to themselves, are insightful and unique and are definitely not to be missed.
This book is on my Classics Club list.

Review: Wind/Pinball

Wind/Pinball: Two Novels by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If it is important to you that stuff happens in books you read then Murakami may not be for you. In each of these novels a lot of beer is drunk, people talk to each other about how the world is (which is generally unsatisfactory in a vague way), and they make small choices about things which end of directing their lives (or not). There is something true about these novels though that makes them wonderful. And the image of the place where the pinball machine is in the second one is amazingly rendered. Unlike many introductions, this one does not spoil the stories and is mostly about Murakami's life and how he came to be a novelist.

Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have really liked most of the Murakami I have read, but I was disappointed by 1Q84 (900+ pages and LOTS of unresolved plot lines) so I was a bit nervous about this new book. It turned out to be one of his most approachable, however, and all the threads of the story are reasonably concluded. There is one section which is a bit surreal (it is a story a character tells), so if you like that aspect of Murakami's work there is a little of it, but mostly the action of the story is pretty straightforward.
Like many Murakami novels it is the story of a young man looking back on his earlier life and trying to make sense of where he is now. I liked the character of Tsukuru Tazaki and I thought his interest in (obsession with?) railroad stations was cool and provided a lot of opportunities where the character could watch the world as it moved along and consider his place in it.
For example, the section about the Shinjuku Station:

"During rush hour, that maze transforms into a sea of humanity, a sea that foams up, rages, and roars as it surges toward the entrances and exits. Streams of people changing trains become entangled, giving rise to dangerous, swirling whirlpools. No prophet, no matter how righteous, could part that fierce turbulent sea. It's hard to believe that every morning and evening, five days a week, this overwhelming crush of human beings is dealt with efficiently, without any major problems, by a staff of station employees that no one would ever accuse of being adequate, in terms of numbers, to the task." (p. 360-1)

The hardcover edition of the book (which I got from my public library) was designed by Chip Kidd and is really beautiful.
If you want more Murakami madness there was a recent episode of Books on the Nightstand about the release of this book and Brona's Books had a post that includes a link to the piece of music in the novel.

Best Books of the Year So Far

This week The Broke and the Bookish asked for the top 10 books read so far this year.

Looking back through my list I decided these were my favorites so far:

1. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (a 5 star re-read)
2. Alena by Rachel Pastan
3. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
4. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
5. Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 
6. Transatlantic by Colum McCann
7. Dodger by Terry Pratchett
8. Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois
9. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
10. Truth in Advertising by John Kenney

Review: Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"All of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world, We don't live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors." (p. 355)

This novel was different from other Murakami I have read in that it was more grounded in reality. It was philosophical and beautifully written which is typical of Murakami. The story follows the life of a young man at University, Watanabe, as he figures out who he is and what his responsibility to others is. He is a rather odd, but I thought very appealing, young man and his conflicts and observations were thoughtful and made me think about larger questions along with him. I found it a bit strange that the music he listens to (the story takes place in Japan, mostly Tokyo, in the late 1960s) was all English-language music (John Coltrane, the Beatles, Bach, etc.). The song Norwegian Wood is a recurring theme.

If you haven't read Haruki Murakami this would be an easy book to start with as it is a more straightforward narrative than some of his books. Don't stop with this one though, as it isn't representative of the amazing work Murakami has produced.

Challenge Update: Tea and Books 2012

I have completed The Book Garden's Tea and Books Challenge 2012 (with 4 days to spare!) Reading 6 books (the Earl Grey Aficionado level for which I signed up) with more than 700 pages each in a single year was a lot harder than I expected it to be. In celebration I am having a cup of Manhattan Earl Grey as I write this.


Of the books that I was originally considering for this challenge, I ended up reading all but one of them. Here is my final list:

• Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, which I read but didn't review (925 pages)
• Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell by Susanna Clark (846 pages)
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens (965 pages)
• The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies (775 pages)
• Drood by Dan Simmons (775 pages)
• Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan (864 pages, but really 789 because the last section is bibliographic references and the index)

Tea & Books Reading Challenge

I decided to join the Tea & Books Reading Challenge because (1) I love the name and (2) it fits perfectly with a 2012 reading challenge from my husband.

I typically read a lot of books, my husband reads fewer. His books can often double as doorstops however, as they are huge. When I was considering what I might want to do as a 12 in 12 challenge he suggested that I should read 12 long books in 2012. He defined long as more than 600 pages.

The Tea & Books Challenge requires that the "chunksters" you read for it be at least 700 pages long. I have compiled a list of long books that had been in my "to read" list and which I might take on this year. Many of them have more than 700 pages so I decided to join T&B at the Earl Grey Aficionado (6 books) level. (Earl Grey is, in fact, my favorite tea, so this seemed the best option.)

So far this year I have read one book toward this challenge: Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 which is 925 pages and about which there was an interesting article in The Guardian.

I haven't totally decided on the other 5 titles, but am considering a novel by Charles Dickens; the first book in Geroge R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series; Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke; and Drood by Dan Simmons. I plan to check out the postings from other Tea & Books participants for other book ideas.

Please add a comment and let me know what book of 700+ pages you enjoyed.