Haruki Murakami

I would really prefer the 16 bucks thanks Harvill Secker.

Fuck it, I've just ordered the one-volume version from the US, if it's huge I'll just read it over the Christmas holidays.

It's like £10 for the book and £8 for the shipping, that's got to be cheaper than buying both volumes in hardback. Excellent work fucking this up, British publishing industry.

that's got to be cheaper than buying both volumes in hardback.

Yep, it's £18.29 for both from Amazon.co.uk with free shipping, so you've saved yourself 29p. Congrats!

1Q84 is my favorite book title since 2666

Another member of the choir that says he peaked with Wind-Up Bird but also enjoyed Dance Dance Dance and HBW. New one seems too long to tackle without some kind of running start. I think I read almost everything up until Kafka on the Shore where I ran out of gas. Should I try that one again? Read something short like After Dark?

If you are an endurance athlete, his previous book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" is rewarding and inspiring.

...yet still written in "that voice" not uncommon among his narrators.

...in his fictional works.

Even if you're an endurance athlete it's worth a look. I found it v. enjoyable for instance.

that's got to be cheaper than buying both volumes in hardback.

Yep, it's £18.29 for both from Amazon.co.uk with free shipping, so you've saved yourself 29p. Congrats!

Yes, but you've got better looking book imo and in handy brick form. Will customs hit u with tax tho, is my serious question? I think books are exempt from such shenanigans?

Damn, I meant even if you're NOT an endurance athlete obv.

was a limit of £18 for non 'gift' marked imports, being reduced to £15 on Nov 1st. just in time for xmas.

How will they know how much you paid for the book? These things have bugged me since I was caught out for some ridiculous amount for a Seinfeld boxset back in the day.

sender has to mark the value on the customs declaration. i bought something from someone on ebay for £10 and they marked the value as $40, completely fucking me over. grrr still mad about it.

that is awful... i'd leave them negative feedback for that alone.

jealous of that dude that got to hang out and run with murakami

When choosing from among his best books, do not neglect the short story collections, which are awesome. He is a fantastic short story writer.

The last few days I've been reading the short story collections, going through the stories in the order of composition (anyway, the order they're listed on his Wikipedia page). It's been kind of fascinating to follow the development of his themes and methods, which seem to have stayed much the same from the beginning. Everything is in first person, more or less in the same voice -- in some instances, the same character appears to be the narrator of otherwise unrelated stories.

I love this guy.

i first read murakami in high school and ray carver in college but when i found out the former loved the latter it was like oh yeah duh.

1Q84 is my favorite book title since 2666

― ∞th-wave ska (diamonddave85), Wednesday, October 26, 2011 10:59 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

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OK, I guess I'll give Blind Willow, Sleeping Womam a try and after that the running book, even though I am am not an endurance athlete.

do not neglect the short story collections, which are awesome

Recently finished After the Quake, and it's great. Previously I'd read W-UBC and NW, and the stories of ATQ are kind of a mix of both these styles. Engaging and a quick read.

Came across ATQ at the bookshop the day after the quake this year and thus couldn't resist the purchase.

Got my US copy yesterday and stayed up too late reading it, spurred on by the fact that I was listening to Janáček's Sinfonietta literally a couple of hours before I opened the book - you can't ignore synchronistic shit like that.

did not like him before this one but this one is really, really good

read Norwegian Wood entirely off seeing this thread the other week. i dug the story lots, but at times i feel that utterly clean style is so 'in' as of now its become generic to me

does he change it up much?

does he still write in that angsty teenager first person style

I did the amazon.com thing too like the day it was released here and got a while you were out card on monday so I assume that's what it is

The Mysterious Bookshop has both UK and US versions of 1Q84.

about a quarter of the way through. it's compelling but kind of gross in regard to the female characters.

I heard that this was... really bad? Can somebody who's read lots of other Murakami weigh in on this one?

it's compelling but kind of gross in regard to the female characters.

This sums up a lot of his stuff that I've read so far.

it's been so long since i've read his other stuff that i can't really compare 1Q84 relatively but the AV club gave it a D: http://www.avclub.com/articles/haruki-murakami-1q84,64876/

the first 50 or so pages have been p good imo

I heard that this was... really bad? Can somebody who's read lots of other Murakami weigh in on this one?

― free banana man! free banana man! (remy bean), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 8:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Seems just fine to me, with some bits of brilliance. I've been reading a few so-so reviews, and wonder if that is to do with the 'oh, i was into him years ago and now everyone likes him, he's rubbish'? Having said that, if you haven't read any before because it didn't appeal, this won't change your mind. And if you did read him and didn't like him, this will probably back up that opinion.

it's compelling but kind of gross in regard to the female characters.

This sums up a lot of his stuff that I've read so far.

tbh, his male characters have their..er..issues also.

about 300 pages in. certainly very boob-centric to the extent of it being a worry. clunky expository passages & backstory, kinda wishing it was a birnbaum translation rather than rubin but that's maybe cos i've been teaching english for a couple of years since i read anything by him & come over all hypersensitive wrt grammatical/usage issues, despite that lazily recounted nugget that huki muki just translates back & forth on purpose to get that stilted feel. such a page turner, tho' - patterson style! makes me think of "lost" on the tv, pulpy, silly, in some places this is downright corny, but it's hooky as hell. i can't wait to find out what happens next even if it is the usual humu malarky. overall pleasantly surprised thus far.
oh get this prize clunk tho' (no spoiler): "some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might've been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world".
OW! bradbury class clunker. i'm looking forward to more !

lol @ the quotes in that av club review

the uk edition is translated by rubin in pts one and two, birnbaum in pt three

i have been wondering to what extent murakami is aware of the crepe-ness of it. when i am reading a new sword and sorcery novel and a new literary novel and the literary novel is the creepier, actually never mind that doesn't work i mean fuckin' jonathan franzen right

hahaha

the uk edition is translated by rubin in pts one and two, birnbaum in pt three

― thomp, Thursday, November 10, 2011 8:43 AM (8 minutes ago)

Philip Gabriel in pt 3 you mean. Birnbaum hasn't worked with Murakami since Underground, unfortunately.

oop, my bad. here is an interview with him about the process, though

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/how-haruki-murakamis-1q84-was-translated-into-english/247093/#.TqYkHccXFY8.facebook

3.2% of the way into this and it's a bit bad so far I've read nothing by him before

conrad do you like books

so murakami is a big john irving fan, and is the guy who translates all of his novels into japanese. which makes a lot of sense, because, much like murakami, irvings first umpteen novels were all sort of variations on a theme, always with wrestlers, zoos, dysfunctional marriages, and vienna in them, yet are similarly addictive (to me anyway) even though they're all a little bit samey. just as 99% of all murakami novels have the everyman protaganist searching for the missing girlfriend and slowly slipping into some sort of surreal otherworld, yet i will continue to buy each variation of the same book and avidly reading them until murakami stops writing them.

just thought i'd throw that out there.

ps. hard boiled wonderland is his best book. norwegian wood is great if you are tired of everyman protaganists searching for the missing girlfriend and slowly slipping into some sort of surreal otherworld, yet still want to read a murakami novel. underground too, except more so. his short stories are awesome.

pps. somewhere, apparently, written in japanese, is a list of every song/album mentioned in all of his written works. has anyone ever seen that in translated into english? a murakami mixtape would probably be awesome, but going through each novel looking for the music he mentions by name and writing it down is way too much work (i tried)

love em

cool conrad what else do you love

pps. somewhere, apparently, written in japanese, is a list of every song/album mentioned in all of his written works. has anyone ever seen that in translated into english? a murakami mixtape would probably be awesome, but going through each novel looking for the music he mentions by name and writing it down is way too much work (i tried)

― messiahwannabe, Monday, November 14, 2011 7:01 AM (3 minutes ago)

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/classical.xml
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/jazz.xml
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/pop.xml

i finally got a(n unsigned) copy of 1q84 so I can finally start reading this.

humanity the internet dunno