“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” Norwegian Wood ~~~ Haruki MurakamiWOW ~~ what a terrific read Murakami's Norwegian Wood is! I loved this book. Even without the presence of talking cats, hollow earth monsters, and dimensional shifting characters, Norwegian Wood is a magical read. Best of all, we still get those Murakami flourishes of The Beatles (obviously), references to THE GREAT GATSBY, a character or two with uniqu...

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me... She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere, So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair. I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed" She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh. I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bathAnd when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown So I l...

Twenty RevolutionsThe birthday I feared most was my 20th.For people older than me, the most significant birthday was their 21st.But when the age of legal adulthood was reduced to 18, turning 21 no longer had the same significance it once had.Before then, you could be conscripted into the armed forces at 18, but you could not drink alcohol until you turned 21. So, if you were old enough to die for your country, surely you were old enough to have a drink?Either way, turning 20 for me meant that I ...

Before I begin may it be known that this was not my first Murakami. I read Kafka on the Shore and loved it. I read Wind-up Bird Chronicle and loved that too. So I got to thinking that maybe I should read the book that made him famous, the book that everyone in Japan is said to have read, that compelled Murakami to flee the country to escape the media attention. How disappointed I was when I finished. Also, I wrote this on iPad so the punctuation and capitalisation is off. I tried to fix all the ...

reading murakami is like a game of russian roulette, except instead of a blank it's a wonderful one of a kind work of brain-expanding magical realism and instead of a bullet it's misogyny

Oh boy...Where to I even begin.Pros: The writing and storytelling are good.Cons: Every time I started to enjoy this book, the author made sure I didn’t.1. The way the female characters would be compare to babies or kids during sexual scenes was a dealbreaker for me.She had the breast of a little girl.(p.290) Yeah that’ll do it.2. I, once again, have to point that this is another book where the author seems obsessed with the wrinkles of a ~40yo woman. It’s now a personal pet peeve of mine. We lit...

Turns out I can't find a SINGLE fuck to give. It takes forever to start, the characters are bland and absolutely unrealistic, they don't sound real, the sex is so unhealthy and weird and awkward, the narrator is pretentious as fuck, the dialogues are painful, and the plot -- huh, wait, there's no plot.

So yeah. Big, fat DNF.

Great ending. This sure was the saddest book I've ever read. Seems very dark and depressing, but the light comes out at the very end and you can see the sunshine through the clouds. I've never read a book like this and to be honest, I'm not sure I ever want to read another one. It just takes a piece of you and leaves you feeling a little empty. I don't even know how to explain it. It's like traveling up a mountainside on a dark gray day. Yes, the beauty is still there, but you have to look for i...

UGH!!!This book bugged the hell out of me for a few reasons:#1. There is a somewhat extended passage devoted to a lesbian encounter that wouldn't be so terrible in and of itself, as sex in general is a major topic BUT the novel as a whole leaned towards describing the physiological experience the woman were having and would brush over the mens again and again. There would be like 5 paragraphs on the woman and then 1 sentence were it would say something along the lines of, "she took me in her han...

How this book became one of Murakami's most famous and popular baffles me. In fact, when asked about it in an interview, Murakami himself said that he was puzzled by its popularity and that it really isn't what he wants to be known for. What can I say? There's too little of the characters that do spark my interest and much too much of the depressive girlfriend and her kooky friend at the mental institution. Also, the scenes which were supposed to be funny about his college roommate didn't intere...