dreamergirly: Hello and good day to you =) I need advice, if you may. Wanted to ask how do you think, should I read Haruki Murakami? I tried “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” and remember giving up on it ‘cause it seemed like such a mess of stuff about nothing. I still have it and my mom recently bought “1Q84”… I just have such a long list of books to read that I can’t decide which one to read first. So I decided to ask you, since you’re my favorite blog about books. Thanks in advance :D

Haruki Murakami

vintageanchor:

Literature Meets Fashion: John Gall’s Murakami covers X The Sartorialist…

“If there’s anything we love (nearly) as much as beautiful book covers, it’s pretty ladies in colorful ensembles. Enter ex-pat fashion blogger Sera Hur, who has paired John Gall’s wonderful cover designs for Haruki Murakami’s entire catalog with lovely street style images from the Sartorialist, carefully choosing companion images that match each other in color and tone. We don’t know what it is about these mash-ups that’s so compelling — but whether it’s finding a true thread connecting chronically separate universes, or just the delight of seeing a beloved book represented in the skirt of a girl on the street, we’re hooked. Click through for more images, and get inspired to dress a little better — or at least to read more, in your normal clothes.”
—by Emily Temple, Flavorwire.

For a moment there I thought the outfits were inspired by the cover arts! This is amazing! :) I noticed Hur didn’t choose a companion photo for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and I kind of see why. :p

Review
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My Rating: ██████

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▲ This review is blocked in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Email Congress now to stop Internet censorship.

2011 Book-related Art: The Book Thief, Thirteen Reasons Why, Paper Towns, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Sputnik Sweetheart. More here.

Looking forward to another year of books and doodles! :)

Review
Title: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Author: Haruki Murakami
Genre: Romance, Drama, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★

I am a discriminating reader. Even if I love an author unreservedly, I don’t go around loving everything that he writes. After all, in a writer’s compendium of works, not everything will be explosively brilliant; some of them will turn out as duds. 

To many Murakami-experienced readers, South of the Border, West of the Sundefinitely reads like the spiritual successor to his acclaimed novel Norwegian Wood. Both don’t have a trace of magical realism (or surrealism?) in them that is commonplace in the majority of Murakami’s oeuvre; they deal with the quotidian lives of average people, with subtle twists that can instantly establish a connection with the readers. 

Norwegian Wood is an amazing read, and for some time it made me believe that Murakami is indeed a versatile writer—he’s dangerously good when it comes to surreal stuff, but he can surely soar with a story that is not necessarily situated between dreams and reality. However, his sophomore work that falls into the latter category just proves to me that his forte is still with the ‘weird’ (not that I’m sayingNorwegian Wood is a fluke, though). 

The gist of South of the Border, West of the Sun is this: two childhood friends are separated by quite run- of-the-mill circumstances, until later in their lives—when the guy is already a successful jazz club proprietor and a family man—their paths converge again, sending everything haywire. 

Now, the reason why ordinary love stories are not my cup of tea is that I’ve always been smitten with fantasy/science fiction. Fascinated by magic and out of this world material at an early age, I developed a penchant for fantastical juke-in-the-boxes embedded in the stories, things that can surprise you in a way ordinary stuff can’t, and events that can make your imagination go wild and bring you to different places like Narnia or Oz or Wonderland. It doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t go for the normal stuff. It’s just I don’t dig those with tales reminiscent of neighbor gossip stories. :p Norwegian Wood doesn’t sound like one, and add to that Murakami’s flair for the quirky, poetic words, and you can get a thumb up from me. 

Anyway, I have to admit that SOTBWOTS is not one of Murakami’s better works. I’ve read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running so I’ve caught glimpses of his personal life: he opens a jazz bar, loves music, loves literature. When I read that Hajime, the main protagonist, also opens a jazz bar, loves music, and loves literature, I found myself a little disappointed. It’s true that an author sometimes puts bits of himself into his characters, but Hajime is a literary Xerox copy of Murakami. Gary Stu? Perhaps. 

There is nothing much to say about the plot, too, as you may have guessed from the gist I provided above. But what I liked about it is of course Murakami’s ever-tasteful choice of words, and the bittersweetness that lies underneath every thought that he puts on page. Almost every idea he shares will make you question what you believed in the past, and it will also make you look back at the things you’ve taken for granted. His humor, which I’ve always loved ever since reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, is also peppered in some of the passages. 

All in all it’s still a decent read. There are a few haunting moments that I liked, but nothing that can leave indelible marks in my memories.

Review
Title: Norwegian Wood
Author: Haruki Murakami
Genre: Romance, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary
Rating:  ★★★★★

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(Note: this is not a new review)

Being a music junkie and a bookworm made me jump excitedly when I saw this book, Norwegian Wood, for the first time about four years ago. The Beatles and Haruki Murakami occupy two different “I-love-this” ladders in my system, but both of them are settled on the highest rung. For some reason I find the combination rather interesting, so I picked it up, getting myself ready for the usual Murakami treat thrown with a spice of good ol’ music.

But no, this book doesn’t have the typical elements you’ll see in a Murakami book. No surrealism of any kind, no Oedipal prophecies or soul-searching in wells or talking cats or prostitutes of the mind. This is perhaps the only “normal” book that Murakami has ever written, a coming-of-age love story that is readily accessible to most young adults of our day.

The novel kicks off with the old Toru Watanabe reminiscing the most important days of his youth while listening to Norwegian Wood (The Bird Has Flown), the favorite song of his high school friend Naoko. The readers are then taken to 1960s Japan, where student activism is at its full swing. Toru and his friends are rather apolitical, and the narrator often comments on the hypocrisy of the students. The novel didn’t focus much on it anyway—that only provided the milieu of the complicatedly romantic bildungsroman. Toru is friends with lovers Kizuki and Naoko—that is, until the former committed suicide at the age of 17. The two are left grieving, but they find themselves being romantically attracted to each other. However fate seems to have another plan for them, and Naoko needs to go away for some time. Then enters another girl character, the outspoken, energetic, cheerful, and confident Midori. Toru still likes Naoko, but he thinks he likes Midori too. And as if it’s not complex enough, Reiko, Naoko’s friend, adds another side to make it all a confusing love polygon.

With that premise at its core, the story is still populated with intriguing themes: suicide, sex, identity crisis, and a little bit of politics. And of course, how could I forget? It’s all about growing up.

I know why a lot of young readers love this book. For one, what kind of teenager doesn’t become interested in love stories at least once in their life? Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I’m not an avid fan of ordinary love stories; I just can’t find the thrill in the infamously clichéd boy-meets-girl-loses-girl blah-blahs. But what makes Norwegian Wood exceptional for me is its depth. That’s why I love Murakami; nothing he ever writes is what it seems, be it surreal or otherwise. Every word has a profundity in them, the dialogues are powerfully executed, and how he hands the reader the strings to tie it at the end is spot-on. 

Objectively speaking, this book is not perfect (is there any perfect book?). There are dry and slow points at the wrong places in the novel, making me roll me eyes sometimes for the lost momentum. But Murakami will always be able to come up with something that can redeem the whole book, be it a twist or a deeper kind of surrealism or just a melancholic ending that leaves the story’s door ajar for the benefit of the readers.

This may not be my favorite book, but it has a special place in my heart.

My signed copies of IQ84 (vols. I-III) by Haruki Murakami

Murakami’s Oeuvre. I haven’t even finished this stack yet, and already here’s another one. They’re all Murakami’s books! I won them in a design/illustration-making contest at Nowness. Before joining the contest, I already have my own copies of the eight books on the top. I think I’ll give them to my friends who haven’t tried reading any of Murakami’s work yet. :) So yeah, my Tumblr weather in the coming days will be soused with Jap lit (mostly reviews cross-posted from my GoodReads—I’ve read most of my Murakami when I still didn’t have a Tumblr).

Sputnik Sweetheart. If you’re following me, chances are you’ve seen this piece when it’s still a WIP. I submitted this drawing to a Haruki Murakami drawing/design-making contest at Nowness. :)

It is inspired by Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart. I illustrated the character Miu with half-black and half-white hair to symbolize the enigmatic, doppelganger-esque ‘changes’ she underwent in the book. In the drawing you can see several body parts—the limbs to be exact—scattered behind her. The symbolism of this can be construed into two ways: (1) the objects of lust that had wrapped Sumire’s very being when she met Miu, and (2) Miu’s inability to will her body to respond to any kind of love or lust after her other self had gone to the other side, as if her body is not her own anymore. Lastly, you can see a naked miniature Sumire on Miu’s palm to show that she has toyed with Sumire’s life without ever meaning to. I made the whole illustration as surreal as possible, because  that’s just what Murakami’s style is. His writings make you feel as if you’re tottering between reality and dreams.

“This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. 

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. 

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” 

-Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s only a natural feeling.”
-Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

Review: Sputnik Sweetheart
Author: Haruki Murakami
Genre: LGBTQ, Romance, Mystery
My Rating: ★★★★

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Boy loves girl…but girl loves another girl.

Sounds like the typical set-up for another tawdry lesbian love story? Perhaps, but if you let Haruki Murakami expand that little formula in his own surreal way, you might be surprised of the product presented here in Sputnik Sweetheart.

I’m no stranger to Murakami’s worlds, especially those that totter on the border of reality and fantasy. I’ve seen his talking cats, teens attempting to run away from oedipal prophecies, girls in bizarre pseudo-Sleeping Beauty states, prostitutes that only service you through the mind, and hungry couples holding up a McDonald’s just for the heck of it. His only “normal” book is Norwegian Wood, commonly considered as some kind of The Catcher in the Rye in Japan. If I were to place a category for Sputnik Sweetheart, I’d say it was right in the middle of Norwegian Wood and his other surreal works, particularly The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

It takes time for many people to like the regular Murakami treat. Norwegian Wood became a hit because almost everyone—everyone who has experienced falling in love, that is—can relate to it. It’s almost the same with this book.

Sputnik Sweetheart is full of unrequited loves, of “almosts,” and of roads not taken. Our narrator, the ever-pensive and oddly humorous K, is a 25-year-old teacher who is smitten with a college classmate, Sumire. Being utterly determined in becoming a successful writer, Sumire shuns any other personal commitments until she crossed paths with Miu, a Korean businesswoman seventeen years her senior. Murakami juggles these three points adroitly during the first three quarters of the book, and ever-so-slowly he morphs the romance into a hardboiled detective story. Sumire vanishes from an island off the coast of Greece and K is solicited to join the search party. In the foreign soil, K finds himself faced with lots of epiphanies that may change his life forever.

Romance may be the hub of this book, but the spokes are equally strong and thought-provoking. Loneliness and longing are laced in every page, and what’s amazing here is that Murakami can still make you laugh even at the darkest moments. I can’t help but to love K, what with his concealed feelings and his self-deprecatory personality. He is both the source of serious philosophical lessons and the comic relief in the book! And he is likeable, to boot. He doesn’t sulk so much, but no matter how he tries to strain his emotions, the readers can easily see through him, like you can see through the silent denials of an old friend.

The issues of socializing, sexual desire, and loss are the other recurring themes. My favorite would be the topic of human longing, and how there’s always a line that divides us no matter how hard we try to get closer to someone. The title refers to the Russian man-made satellite Sputnik I, but Murakami also emphasizes the etymology of the word “sputnik”: a travel companion. Sometimes, the length of journey two people made together doesn’t matter if in the end they will realize they are just lumps of empty metal circling a common planet.

As usual, Murakami wows me with his prose. From the raw human emotions to the little details of a nondescript scenario, he never fails to get to the senses of the readers. I think I will never get tired of him as a writer.

Over all, it’s a great read; it can make you think and make you laugh, and perhaps also make you cry. Like most of Murakami’s books, Sputnik Sweetheart is open-ended, with the last lines hinting of a more hopeful future.

So yes, four stars.