Haruki Murakami

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

cool contad I love those things as well Im glad we have something in common

this might have already been mentioned in some other thread, or even this one, but for those with spotify, some folks have already made playlists with the songs mentioned in various murakami books:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/spotify-playlists-for-writers-haruki-murakami_b34843

taking a break from 1Q84 at about halfway through to read other stuff for a while, not sure if i'll come back to it or not.

q looks more like a 9 than Q

this book is actually v bad

it's almost as bad as I imagine dan brown or something

One thing that does annoy me is the constant restating of what is currently occuring

yeah that get's annoying. like a weekly serial or something, endless recaps. but no way is it in dan brown territory. i'd put it more with stephen king but w/ aspergers/blank jazz loving protagonists rather than king's hairshirt everymen.
having read all the others but one, i think the translation & editing in this one is pretty flippin shoddy, tho. yesmen proofreaders. still enjoying it 500 pages in.

get's? gets

I finished the first book and a half or so. Really enjoying it - but then, it's the first of his that I have read.

finished the first book last night. it's compelling despite its crepeness, i guess. did he always describe female characters in terms of their breasts? have i only just noticed this?

anyway i started wondering whether he'd read steig larsson; this book and his three seem to have something in common. (and the phrase 'men who hate women' showed up just as i was wondering this, so now i'm convinced of it.) like they're both about resistance to systemic male-on-female violence, but both very much immediately compromised in their form.

(though they weren't available in english until he'd have been well on the way to finishing this. and it seems unlikely he read them in swedish.)

"she scowled immensely" NO NO NO.
intensely maybe. who let this through?
yeh i'm guessing it all hinges on something to do with boobs in the third book.

v well may be the translator's fault but it's pretty relentlessly infuriatingly distracting

5.2%

There seems to be a large Lynch influence on this novel (finished the first 2 books), especially Twin Peaks. *Spoilers?* there's a hint that birds, crows in this case (owls in TP), are agents of someone else. There are doubles, sexual abuse as portals/spiritually charged events, morally ambiguous 'little people' and the idea that the 'forest'/'woods' holds something more primitive and powerful. Okay, actually, looking at that list it isn't that strong, but towards the end of the second book I got a very strong Lynchian vibe.

wow, thanks steve - i've been looking for those lists for ages!

finished the first two books & not really in a major hurry to start the third.
don't think it's a lynch influence ( although i believe hurakami is a fan ) so much as an overlap. there's deeper wellsprings than lynch i don't think he thought of evil or forests or mystery before anyone else. common themes.

this is either getting better or I'm getting used to it still occasionally annoying if not bad like I imagine dan brown then slow and repetitive like a kids' book have been kind of reluctant to pick it up but gonna give it a good go now

8.65%

conrad do you like Japan

Why do hate japan so much?

don't know japan

any good?

Finished! By the way this is fun to read while blasting Janacek in your headphones.

conrad, dunno if you know this but japan is a country

where i am in book two i feel like i enjoy this a lot more. i don't think it's as 'deep' as his best stuff but whatever

idea that came to mind earlier: 'thriller as fugue'

probably not a v good idea

yep knew about the country thing

are you reading this book dayo?

11.36%

conrad, what things do you like about japan

I think that it's a country

conrad, are these kindle percentages or are they like numeric ratings of how you feel about this novel at the moment of posting

conrad, have you ever been to nuneaton?