This book was fucking horrible.

Such a good review. This book scares me. I think I saw the film. It’s horrible. Reading j g Ballard high rise which is scary and want to read world war z

Why did Haida want to kill himself?

new here

Really enjoyed this generous & sharp review - thank you.

I have some thoughts about this book. I read Norwegian Wood before and this is my second Murakami reading and i really enjoy how he writes, and his descriptions and the characters are quite interesting too. I agree with you that they are kinda bland but nonetheless really interesting. 1Q84 was easy for me to read, even though it was quite long. I think i enjoyed the second book the most. And I have some opinions about it. Firstly, Aomame and Tengo had a similar childhood where their parents weren't present and they were lonely kids and they somehow connected with each other because they understood what the other was feeling and i think that in that moment they felt accompanied for once in their life. So it makes sense that they held on so badly to that moment because they were lonely people. Buuuut, realistically, they were 10 year olds, like it was a bit weird reading about how they couldn't get over their childhood crush 20 years afterwards and that they thought about them while having sex and so on. I feel like the book has a lot of pedophile characteristics (also with Tengo and 17 year old Fuka Eri having sex) that made it really uncomfortable to read... and also sexualizing Fuka Eri as a 17 year old and her breasts and body was kinda unnecessary, and the leader having sex with 13 year old girls and ripping their insides (????). Nonetheless, the reality within reality that they created and shared was really interesting, and how they both slowly became aware of it, with 1Q84 for Aomame and the Cat Town for Tengo. I also think that the little people and its opposing force were plotting everything and their destinies and mostly every character was almost blindly following orders. I like the fact that they had to leave that reality together, and that they somehow rebeled and had free will and escaped that reality (at least Aomame, cause Tengo was again following orders, without any kind of free will or even questioning how tf is this woman, that I haven't seen in 20 years, carrying my baby?). But still, i still have a lot of questions regarding Sakigake and Fuka Eri. I think that the Fuka Eri that wrote the book was the real one (the mazha, following the opposition of the Little People) and then (I'm not quite sure when) the dohta replaced her, and possibly the Fuka Eri that Tengo met was always the Dohta. But also the fact that Aomame killed the Leader, it was all meant to be that way and it was somehow planned (by the Leader or the Little People) so that she could get pregnant with the new leader. Also the Sinfonietta was an important part and I'd like to know exactly what it meant, but it was a recurring song that Tengo and Aomame shared in different moments (initially when Tengo played it in a recital and Aomame saw it without knowing it was Tengo). The two moons were also a recurring aspect representing the alternate reality that there where both living in, and i don't understand how everyone else didn't explicitly talk about or noticed them. As if they somehow were NPCs in that world, or were too afraid to acknowledge or question it. Maybe the fact that Ushikawa saw the two moons was what ended up killing him, as indirect punishment. The gun was also important, and the fact that it said that if it's there it must be used, it felt like it was foreshadowing a death or something, so I additionally think it accomplished that death by killing Ushikawa. And another theory that I have is that maybe Aomame's baby only existed in 1Q84, and when they went back to 1984, the baby stopped existing, thus representing the gun that Aomame kept by her side and that inevitable death. Andddd I could keep going but I've typed too much and idk if anyone's gonna read my rant hahaha, but I disliked the ending, I wanted more of them together, i kept waiting for that moment for so long. Also I feel like Aomame was much more in "love" with Tengo than Tengo with her, and maybe it was just a platonic love because they honestly don't even know each other, but still, kinda unrealistic on that part. Anyways, I did like the book and thanks for reading :)

Ah yes, I'm on a big Murakami flow right now - very enjoyable.

This booktube looks a lark. Think I might give it ago. Thanks for the inspiration (& loved your take on magic realism/weird; this is a genre I also love).

Agree: not what I consider “dystopian”. Your questions are my questions! But I do like the “love story” ending. I would have been way too sad if it ended otherwise. I had a bad print run of this book and got to page 275 and realized that the next 50 pages or so were missing but replaced with duplicates of another 50 pages. Took me a few minutes to determine whether this was part of the plot! Had to wait a week before I got a copy of a correct printing.

Just read the book. I love it. Flawed humans looking to make sense of life. Everything has a sacrifice. Thanks for review and articulating what I needed to hear. Just too short!

So cool I love your collection of manga ❤❤

On the only two videos of yours I have watched (just now discovered you), the words. In your transcript don’t follow your content - they don’t even make sense!😊

Are you going to read This City and Its Uncertain Walls?

I really didn’t like it! *Too long *Boring storyline *Weird cringey creepy repetitive talk about Mariye’s chest 🤢

What translation of The Idiot you have?

Orange is actually a Shonen not a Shojo

Sputnik Sweetheart is so nice, you have to read it twice! Reading it after On The Road by Jack Kerouac really helped make sense of the relationships in the book. Now after reading some of the comments in this video, I need to read it again. I hope you do as well.

i know this is 4 years old but finally. i want to academically annotate because im not a reader but a writer who reads. i want to understand books as literature, not as stories but there are no resources for that.

I think that all Tsukuru’s friends didn’t really like being a group anymore and wanted to do their own thing and the freedom to date each other. So when the chance came to break up over the rape incident, everyone had no problem doing it, especially if Tsukuru as the scapegoat because Ao said he held the group together. Although they didn’t date each other but they at least went their separate ways

1Q84 is the only murakami I've read so far. it was one of my favorite books I've ever read and I cannot wait to dive into the rest of his bibliography

I’ve read maybe a dozen books by Murakami. not necessarily in chronological order. some I liked but not this one... two thirds are about clothes and food and there's too much "waffle" mixed in incongruously, side things that have no relevance to the story, unnecessary macabre details, etc. Too long, too boring. a disappointment...

RIP Ushikawa

Murakami is extremely mid

So cool to see an english native reading a portuguese book 💙

Just her opinion, guys. It is ok

Yeah. You can imagine it takes place anywhere, kinda an universal thing

Crazy how people have different experinces with the same book. On the 5th page I was already used to the format without dashs separating the character's speech

Subscribed. Regards from GB.

The man on the cover of Hard Times looks like the one on the cover of The Warden by Anthony Trollop ! Seems the same happened with the Oxford World Classics cover of Poor Miss Finch, it was used in another novel but I cannot remember which one !

I feel exactly the same

One of my favorite book from Haruki Murakami.

I only read three of them, I'd say 1q84 is a another level. My number two is Kafka on the shore, and the wind up bird chronicles is my number three. They're all very very good

Its an old review but I just read Kafka on the shore, and I am reading this one. Thank you for your words.

I would call it a cross between The Great Gatsby and The Picture of Dorian Gray but in Japan. It suffers from being in a single volume in English since the original Japanese was two separate books. It lags in the middle as a result. Agree it's his most well crafted work.

The absence of punctuation especially during the dialogues made me feel blind. I liked it and had to go through certain aspects multiple times but it was pretty cool. Nice review though.

Loved your review!

but where to start and in what order to read his books? 😭

This was the first and only book i read from 1st to last page

May you please tell me if Villette has any kisses or 18+ scenes ?!

I never would've read three souls if you had not recommended it. I absolutely LOVED it so thank you!❤

I’m almost done with this one and am curious: how much of the writing do you credit the translator with? You’re right that words are chosen so carefully, but it’s hard for me to quantify how much of that would be in the original text. I was shocked to learn about 25k words were cut for the English translation!

Oh I came across your account again!!! It's been a while. I really love your content. Made my day

'Spatnik', 'Sumir'... girl, learn how to not butcher foreign words

The wind up bird chronicle spans over like 2 years

I agree with your #1 & #2.

NW is my least favorite too. This book really made me hate the main character. The last chapter was amazing. So honest! To me not so many loose ends but i always want them longer.

Hello Kate, and if possible that can I ask you something about in chapter 3 in the colorless by haruki murakami and his years of pilgrimage because I need it for a book report

You could have made this video way shorter than this with better communication skills

1000+ pages of nothing is a great way to describe this book

Great review; thanks! I just finished this book myself and am working on making my own review of it! Was pretty surprised to find how Taoist this book was. There are references to the Tao all over the story, from George being described as an uncarved block to the mountain symbolism and the 'middle path' references. My cover even has an illustration that seems to allude to achieving nirvana. If you haven't already, I'd really recommend reading The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, then re-reading Lathe of Heaven. If I hadn't read that book before Lathe just by coincidence, I wouldn't have understood what LeGuin was getting at nearly as well! You might find yourself enjoying this book even more after looking into its Taoist underpinnings :)