Isn’t It Good?
September 28th, 2004Finishing Norwegian Wood last night to the tattoo of pounding rain left me with an empty, aching feeling. The book is under 300 pages, which is pretty much what I go through in 48 hours, but I wish I slowed down. Not that I didn’t want to compulsively turn every page. The book is full of contradictions like that: It’s readable and abstract (some attribute this to Murakami’s still developing style), alluring and repulsive, erotic and anticlimactic, life affirming and sad. At its core are two women, both sensual, but one ethereal and the other earthy.
Daniel Handler had an excellent insight in an old Village Voice review:
In Norwegian Wood, Murakami warns us that falling into the arms of a longtime friend is not something you can clearly define as the awakening of a long-dormant passion or the vicarious revisit of lost innocence. An older woman is not necessarily a mother figure, any more than a man dying in the hospital is a fading God, or a new romance a cosmic refutation of a previous one.
I read this book as a prelude to David Mitchell’s Number9Dream, but Mitchell is going to have to wait until I get through The Elephant Vanishes and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
September 28th, 2004 at 5:22 pm
I’m envious of your book reading. How many books do you read a year?
September 28th, 2004 at 5:24 pm
The magic number is 100. If I’m not close to it, then I count comic book trades towards that.
September 29th, 2004 at 9:52 am
I used to keep a list of what I was reading, but then I stopped, because the list is so woefully short! I got to do a lot more when I had to commute by rail 3 hours a day.
September 29th, 2004 at 9:54 am
I used to get a lot of reading done on the subway in NY. I miss that, but now at least I get to sing along with music in my car when I’m commuting. That wouldn’t go over so well on the subway.
September 29th, 2004 at 10:15 am
100! Now I’m even more envious. I’d already been planning a post of my reading goals - I should get to it in the next few days.
September 29th, 2004 at 10:20 am
I thought about tracking my reading progress on the blog, but I’m afraid to get caught slacking. I’m not going to make 100 books this year. I can pretend that’s because I’ve read some real long ones and not as many comics as I usually read, but really I have no excuse. I have already read over 50, though, and I think 52 books in 52 weeks is a pretty good goal, like what Largehearted Boy is doing.