Impressive for its imaginative power but entirely too long and mundane in sections. Tengo and Aomame aren't interesting enough characters to warrant 1100 pages, but Murakami does paint an impressive portrait of quotidian 1980s Japan. The allusion to Orwell isn't necessarily relevant, and the fant...
Novella met typisch Murakami verhaal, over een jongetje dat in de bibliotheek wordt opgesloten door een vreemde oude man die hem drie ingewikkelde oude boeken laat lezen om vervolgens na een maand zijn hersenen te kunnen opslurpen. Hij wordt bewaakt door een schaap man en krijgt te eten van een b...
Something every Murakami fan should get around to reading. The greatest delay for me was the price, given its packaging I couldn't even look inside! However, since price shouldn't play into the rating the bottom line is that if you enjoy Murakami's prose you'll really like this. The accompanying ...
Магията на тази много кратичка история е в гладката хартия, илюстрациите, печатът, мирисът на библиотека и ужасяващия мрак на самотата. Две предупреждения: Първо, не се изкушавайте да я четете в електронен формат, и второ, нека тя да не е първата ви среща с Мураками - преди тази книга трябва мног...
The Strange Library is a beautifully presented short story, displaying Murakami's gift for invention and narrative pace. Some familiar Murakami tropes appear - the Sheep Man returns, the subterranean setting is reminiscent of the underground world of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the girl wouldn't b...
I loved this book. For me, reading Murakami isn't so much a pleasurable read as a transformative read -- after reading one of his books I always feel a little bit different. This one was every bit as difficult and engaging as other books but was more grounded. It still had that ethereal, dreamy s...
It surprises me when I read a book by Haruki Murakami and I am taken over by it. There is a disturbing amount of repetition in his novels--of characters/themes/plot elements/etc.-- and yet they generally feel new and fresh. This is the case with Colorless Tsukuru. Tsukuru was part of a close-knit...
Haruki Murakami's works are magic. I don't understand some of his books. But this particular short story is fabulous. When you go to unfamiliar place, you can't get out nor find a way to get out from that particular town. In my opinion, while we are still alive, we will see or know things even so...
A clever and fun reversal of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." The opening scenes are the most enjoyable when Samsa explores and copes with the deficiencies of his new human body. I noticed some reviewers lamenting the fact that this is a short story instead of a full novel, but I disagree. There's...
أغلب اصدقائي بدأوا الريفيو ب"ناكاتا ليس ذكيا"و"عقل ناكاتا لا يحتمل كل هذا"..حسنابعد قراءة الاحداث الغرائبية بل والسريالية احيانا, أشعر بـ انني قد تحولت الي ناكاتاإنها قصه كافكا الشاب الذي هرب من بيت أبيه هربا من لعنة سوداء ستتحققوناكاتا العجوز الذي يحب الحنكليس ويتحدث الي القطط ويبحث عن نصف ظله ا...
Sometimes I feel so - I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going."Like a little lost Sputnik?"I guess so. . . *****One of the reasons why I...
Goddammit. I really wanted to hate this book. There's so much about it that I abhor, but I can't bring myself to give it less than three stars.Sometimes, I joke with my sister that she needs to expand her character repertoire. Usually, her stories feature a nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boy who's ho...
This is not an easy book to read, review or discuss. You will either love it or hate it (more likely - never read it). I liked it. The swirling, kaleidoscopic imagery with freely overlapping of the physical and the metaphysical, the real and the imaginary, the utterly sane and the completely cuck...
So here’s the thing about Haruki Murakami that turns my brain into fairy floss: how is it that this 60ish Japanese guy writes in such a way that I feel he is exploring not only his own psychic underworld, but also mine? (I should mention here that I am not likewise a 60ish Japanese guy.) Given hi...
There are six separate stories in this slim title. There are no similar characters but all these stories mention [some in passing, and others with more importance:] the last big earthquake at Kobe, Japan.Murakami is like this. Everything happens as before, nothing extraordinary, just some normal ...
I have finally read a Murakami. I picked this up on a market stall and didn't realise it was part of a series until I listed it on GR and saw "The Rat, #4", but it works as a standalone story, albeit an intriguingly odd one. In conjures exciting unease and bafflement. It is a book of paradoxes an...
When I read my first Murakami, a compilation of short stories called "After the Quake," I was amazed by his refreshing originality. Some of his stories, indeed, had the effect of an earthquake to me. There were jolting, sudden and unexpected turns. In one, a man and a woman, after a brief introdu...
I just finished reading this book a few days ago. In fact, I've finished it three times in the past couple of weeks. Hear the Wind Sing is, alas, almost impossible to buy, unless your name is Rockefeller or Gates. My friend from Taiwan raved about it - a Chinese translation - saying it was way be...
"Pinball, 1973" is Murakami's second novel, and one that hasn't been released outside of Japan... the only available translation is for Japanese students learning English, and the version I read was based on that one.Is that perhaps why this Murakami book felt different to me? The book was less p...