Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami used to live in Santa Ana, CA about 15 years ago when he was a relative unknown in America.

I wish the song from Kafka on the Shore was real.

I've only read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (read this 1st, many people have told me it's a good place to start), Hard-Boiled Wonderland... (favorite so far...love that he bought a 6 of Miller High Life for his last moment of consciousness), and Kafka on the Shore (seemed most scattershot of the 3 but also the most emotionally involved). My sister is reading Sputnik Sweetheart right now so I guess that one's next.

No one has really noted this on this thread...scenes of violence in his books are among the most graphic and disturbing in anything I've ever read.

I met Haruki Murakami once and he was an absolute gentleman imho.

i met him not long after and talked about hard-bop and the tampa bay devil rays. very nice guy.

im reading his memoir about running, i love it -- helps that im really getting into distance running at the moment

When I read it, am I gonna want to run?

Please say no because seriously I hate running so hard.

Dude in Japan liveblogs reading new novel 1Q84
http://howtojaponese.com/2009/05/29/1q84-liveblog/

viral marketing?

reading UNDERGROUND made me hella paranoid on the train for weeks afterward.

^ Me too and I was already plenty paranoid on the train to begin with.

http://twitter.com/haruki_murakami

Good night, Mr. Pain.

I´m still alive, i feel the wind.

Some words, something, some thing.
11:40 PM Aug 24th from web

Is Haruki Murakami secretly an 8th grade dork?

Um...

secretly?

so i finally read windup bird chronicle. i dont know why i had been avoiding it--my gf read it back in high school and has been pressing me to read it for years but i resisted b/c hes been popular and i am a snob.

but.. i really dug. i didnt know it would be so romantic! or so melancholy! the segment w/ cinnamon and nutmeg was kind of irritating since i was impatient to find out what had happened to kumiko. i love that he catalogs every beer toru drinks.

I'd take a bullet for that book.

he really gets the heart of a certain kind of relationship, doesnt he? scary how much i was able to identify w/ toru.

love WBC. I'm quite wary of magic realist stuff but that book feels very true to its own logic and closer in spirit to Breton than Marquez. Romantic big and small r is spot on.

Man, Murakami's work is one of those things I want to talk about a lot, but I love it so unequivocally, I can't think of much to say other than "Oh my god yes it's fucking awesome"

ha yeah i feel that way about most of the things I love - like I'm not gonna debate anybody about it.

my gf read it back in high school and has been pressing me to read it for years but i resisted b/c hes been popular and i am a snob

friends love him and have read everything but i resist because they sound like some culty motherfuckers when they talk about him. v similar to reaction of somebody in the movie poll thread (to Pixar movies, i think)

must try to find hatchet job on him which a fan told me was hilarious no matter how unfair

I met this guy once. Very polite.

ha yeah i feel that way about most of the things I love - like I'm not gonna debate anybody about it.

― Oi'll show you da loife of da moind (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 6 February 2010 20:02 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Should be a thread? Is a thread?

I've found reading his books has been really helpful during difficult emotional stages of my life. His delicate narrative structure and gentle, relaxed writing style seem to help me calm down and organise my thoughts.

― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 9:26 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

There might be something to this. I always feel there's criticism to be made for somewhat dry prose but I can never completely bring myself to fault him for it. Maybe "dry" is the wrong word. Maybe it's just thoughtful, and untangled? And if I think it's so dry, why do I plow through his books in just a few days? I can never unpack it all, I just love it.

Just picked up the "running" book. Looking forward to it.

so i have a colleague i need to buy a present for. hes into "fantasy" books and once told me he was a big fan of murakami and lent me 'hard-boiled wonderland'. can anyone recommend another author a murakami fan might enjoy?

Have any runners read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running? I want to give this as a present for a colleague.

tpp, philip k. dick - ubik would be nice.

xyzzzz, I've read that but I'm not a runner. can't really remember what he says in it - just remember that it was a pleasant, quick read.

thanks dyao this sounds spot on!

Thanks, dyao, my colleague is a runner and I was just wondering whether its way too obvious, but I guess if it reads well..

Have any runners read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running?

Yeah, I have. If your colleague is a runner, just get it for them. Runners love to read anything about running, and it's good anyway.

just finished kafka on the shore a few days ago (right after reading kafka's 'metamorphosis'). it was a pretty good read, but after reading windup bird chronicles (the only two i've read), it just didn't hold up. i definitely feel that murakami is trying to reference kafka in his writings. people running around doing weird things, not knowing exactly why they're doing them.

someone compared Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco to murakami. i'm gonna check it out. also interested in filipino history/culture
http://www.amazon.com/Ilustrado-Novel-Miguel-Syjuco/dp/0374174784

Also might suggest a novel by Karen Yamashita called Through the Arc of the Rainforest. There's a similarity in the way that fantastic events are narrated very calmly. Looking it up on Wikipedia will make it sound stupid, though.

the way that fantastic events are narrated very calmly

was just talking to a friend about kobo abe and this very tactic. it is a good thing to do, imo.

Have any runners read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running?
yeah, toward the end it just sounds like he's making shit up
so i have a colleague i need to buy a present for. hes into "fantasy" books and once told me he was a big fan of murakami and lent me 'hard-boiled wonderland'. can anyone recommend another author a murakami fan might enjoy?
felix gilman - thunderer
kj bishop - the etched city

Yeah, as I said yesterday in the running thread I would only recommend WITAWITAR to someone who's both a runner and a Murakami fan - it's not exceptional as a running book or a Murakami book, but it's kind of unique in its literary running niche, and it's a pleasant read.

Yasutaka Tsutsui - Salmonella Men on Planet Porno
really odd short story collection, fantastical modern folk tales with a strange sense of humour.
Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar
read somewhere that this was a big influence on Murakami, has some definite similarities with Hard-Boiled Wonderland. might be too hippy dippy though.

Getting a shot at a signed 1Ed of 1Q84 tonight at a raffle...

<3 this guy, although, I have to admit that even though I enjoyed his recent New Yorker thing, it was borderline "let's make up our own Murakami short!".

Got it, at a price of $33.80 (unsigned $30.50 list, ~$20ish on Amazon), but mine came with 2 cans of Sapporo and 1 Lengua Taco.

Apparently 200 copies of signed 1Q84 1st Eds made it to the USA and were raffled off tonight. SF got 40.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/the-fierce-imagination-of-haruki-murakami.html?_r=2&smid=fb-share&pagewanted=all

i'm both excited for and apprehensive about this book. got a feeling it's either gonna be the ULTIMATE MURAKAMI NOVEL or a run-on mess.

i think wind-up bird was the ULTIMATE and now i dont feel the need to read anything else by him tbh

Telegraph seemed to think the uncoupling of Murakami's universe from even nominal realism was a mistake.

I'll obviously read this, kinda annoyed it's only available in two volumes rather than one gigantic tome.

i love it when they do that! obviously it should have been three but oh well

that's kind of interesting actually -- did japan ever do the terrible self-defeating slide to STUPID GIANT FORMAT hardbacks?