Twenty RevolutionsThe birthday I feared most was my 20th.For people older than me, the most significant birthday was their 21st.But when the age of legal adulthood was reduced to 18, turning 21 no longer had the same significance it once had.Before then, you could be conscripted into the armed forces at 18, but you could not drink alcohol until you turned 21. So, if you were old enough to die for your country, surely you were old enough to have a drink?Either way, turning 20 for me meant that I

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” Norwegian Wood ~~ Haruki MurakamiWOW ~~ what a terrific read Murakami's Norwegian Wood is! I loved this book. Even without the presence of talking cats, hollow earth monsters, and dimensional shifting characters, Norwegian Wood is a magical read. Best of all, we still get those Murakami flourishes of The Beatles (obviously), references to THE GREAT GATSBY, a character or two with unique...

Before I begin may it be known that this was not my first Murakami. I read Kafka on the Shore and loved it. I read Wind-up Bird Chronicle and loved that too. So I got to thinking that maybe I should read the book that made him famous, the book that everyone in Japan is said to have read, that compelled Murakami to flee the country to escape the media attention. How disappointed I was when I finished. Also, I wrote this on iPad so the punctuation and capitalisation is off. I tried to fix all the

How this book became one of Murakami's most famous and popular baffles me. In fact, when asked about it in an interview, Murakami himself said that he was puzzled by its popularity and that it really isn't what he wants to be known for. What can I say? There's too little of the characters that do spark my interest and much too much of the depressive girlfriend and her kooky friend at the mental institution. Also, the scenes which were supposed to be funny about his college roommate didn't intere...

This is a relatively early novel by this author, 1987. The book jacket tells us that this book booted him up from being a famous author to ‘superstar status.’ On GR it is one of his most highly-rated books. It’s also the only -- I’ll call it ‘straightforward’ -- novel of the five or so of his I have read. There is no science fiction or magical realism. No women in bars who may be ghosts, no hanging out in deep wells, no psychic cats, just a single moon. We do have, as usual in Murakami, a cat, m...

Murakami divides his novel into two. There is the past and death. Then there is future and life. What road do you take?Seems like an easy question to answer. But what happens when you are in love with the past? And what happens when you so desperately want to save that past from such a death? Life becomes complicated and the prospect of the future feels like a brutal betrayal of one who is desperately clinging to you. You are her anchor; her only connection with reality. And you love her. How ca...

"Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death."Welcome to Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami; a tale of a bunch of suicidal perverts in Japanese universities.No, honestly. This book is essentially about two things: sex and death. There are hidden meanings everywhere, but when you cut away that and go to the core, that’s what’s left. And my, does the book have a lot of sex. Weird forms of sex. And a lot of death. And not in a good wa...

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” CAUTION: This isn't a love storyThis was my first introduction into the world of Murakami. This isn't a sappy love story as some Murakami fans would like to tell you. Haruki Murakami himself was baffled by the popularity that this story achieved due to the novel's departure from the usual surrealist themes that are associated with his novels. The fame achieved through Norwegian Wood

oh my god. Norwegian wood  just flew by. I didn’t feel anything reading this. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t care overall. YIKES!

Great ending. This sure was the saddest book I've ever read. Seems very dark and depressing, but the light comes out at the very end and you can see the sunshine through the clouds. I've never read a book like this and to be honest, I'm not sure I ever want to read another one. It just takes a piece of you and leaves you feeling a little empty. I don't even know how to explain it. It's like traveling up a mountainside on a dark gray day. Yes, the beauty is still there, but you have to look for i...

ノルウェイの森 = Noruwei No Mori = Norwegian wood (1987), Haruki MurakamiNorwegian Wood is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. A 37-year-old Toru Watanabe has just arrived in Hamburg, Germany. When he hears an orchestral cover of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood", he is suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of loss and nostalgia. He thinks back to the 1960's, when so much happened that touched his life. Watanabe, his classmate Kizuki, and Kizuki's girlfriend Naoko are the best of friends. Kizu...

Turns out I can't find a SINGLE fuck to give. It takes forever to start, the characters are bland and absolutely unrealistic, they don't sound real, the sex is so unhealthy and weird and awkward, the narrator is pretentious as fuck, the dialogues are painful, and the plot -- huh, wait, there's no plot.So yeah. Big, fat DNF.

I can't explain it! I want to inhale the pages of this book, grind them up, and snort them right up my nose! I want in placed directly in my brain, my very BLOODSTREAM! Murakami's words make me feel just like Nicole Kidman in that scene in Moulin Rouge where she is rolling around on that fur rug in her negligee, moaning and writhing in pleasure and saying 'Yes! Yes! Dirty words! More! More! Naughty words!' Although Murakami's words aren't so much naughty and dirty as they are prismatic and myste...

Question: How much Norwegian Wood would a Norwegian woodchuck chuck if a Norwegian woodchuck could chuck Norwegian Wood? Answer: The same amount as a Swedish woodchuck. So I read 160 pages of this novel. Then I hit a four-day Reader’s Block (also precipitated by problems in my personal life, but I’ll save those for Oprah) and read nothing. I called a librarian and explained the problem. She suggested I undergo an intense course of Murakami Avoidance Therapy (MAT), whereby I put down all Murakami...

So. Damn. Good. Toru Watanabe is reminded of the love, and of the pain, of his youth every time he hears Beatles' songs such as 'Hey Jude' and... 'Norwegian Wood'. The reader is then cast back to Toru's late teenage and early 20s youth in the late '60s and early '70s centred around Tokyo. A simple premise - an old(er) person recalling their youth? Not with Murakami is it isn't! So. Damn. Good.Murakami surprised many at the time, by writing a 'normal' novel as opposed to his magical realist mains...

I don't have many meaningful things to say about Norwegian Wood. First, a disclaimer. This is, by no means, a romance book - no offence meant. I cannot suffer to attach such a tacky word on this book. Oh, what do I know, it IS a romance book. But it is laterally more than that.Like Dickens, Murakami fuels his potboiler with death of the innocent. Each one is offing herself. That's right. What really matters is the subtext. In all superficial opinion, Watanabe is having a normal college life. But...

This one is as dark as your fears.Murakami's writing brings me a kind of comfort. No, not the nature-painting-classical music kind of comfort. It's the comfort I get from seeing the transparency of all the ugliness of the dark side of us in our beingness. However dark and deadly his writing seems to be, all I can feel is the subtle pink and peach hues of tenderness while reading his books. This is the first book of Murakami that I have ever read. There's a lot of dark themes that are represented...

I revisited Norwegian Wood remembering nothing about my college year experience with it, nothing except that I loved it. And I can see why: the plot is propulsive, with Murakami’s kinetic prose once again keeping me up late; the lead character is a well-realized loner archetype; the world, 1960s Japan during the student protests, glimmers in the background. There are excellent long-sequences (hospital visit, fire, sanatorium) It is salacious and often funny, well-observed:“The second feature was...