Most (if not all) novels by Haruki Murakami seem to take a while to digest properly. If anything, that seems to be the author’s goal in creating these really bizarre stories. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is certainly no exception to this, but it was so masterfully crafted that you could almost believe that it was a true story.
I think he achieves this in a few ways. First is the inclusion of seemingly mundane details of the protagonist’s life. There are scenes scattered throughout the novel in which Toru Okada is simply boiling pasta in a pot of water, or making a simple sandwich, or preparing a cup of coffee. There are also a few mentions of going for a swim in the local pool, doing the ironing, and listening to the radio – unremarkable things that you or I could do, and wouldn’t think to tell anyone, let alone write down for posterity.
I have seen a few online reviews by random people that say these details are boring and why do we need to know about these tiny details of his life? But I actually think these scenes add a certain charm to the novel.
In between other books, I’ve spent the last eight or so months reading the Red Rising series. It was originally a trilogy, but then Pierce Brown added three more books, and there’s a seventh (and final?) book in the works, which is due to be released mid next year or something.
(Yes, I know the wait sounds like it will be torturous, but I’ve waited so long (still waiting!) for the final book in the Name of the Wind trilogy, it couldn’t possibly be worse. Although, to be honest, I’ve forgotten most of what happened in that, so I no longer really care if the last book is ever finished and released.)
Usually I write a blog post for every book I read, but I haven’t done that this time because I didn’t feel compelled to write about each of them. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy them (they were very captivating and interesting) but I think I just wasn’t sure how to write about them without including lots of spoilers. (But a friend I lent Red Rising to told me that she always reads the end of a book at the start, and despite the spoilers, she still really liked Red Rising. Something about knowing which characters to pay attention to, which I suppose is not a bad reason to read the ending first.)
Well, from here on in, there will be spoilers, so it’s up to you if you want to read on.
Well, well, well… if it isn’t my neglected blog. I did mean to write something sometime ago (I think) but I guess that time passed and the words got lost somewhere.
But I just finished reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, so that means it’s time to blog again. It seems unavoidable: if a book is finished, a blog post must emerge. If nothing else, this space will still have its scattering of book reviews (but not really reviews — more just a record of various thoughts on various books).
On the back cover of my copy of Midnight’s Children there are a number of excerpts from real reviews in real publications. One critic likens the magic of the novel to the wonders of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Another praises the story as being a Bombay version of The World According to Garp. Being a big fan of both of these works, it would have been hugely surprising and disappointing if I wasn’t also captivated by Midnight’s Children.
It’s the last day of Spring, announced the radio presenter, and then immediately, cheekily, she played Vivaldi’s Summer. The raging storm that was forecast last night but never arrived, arrived this morning instead in musical form.
But the sky is clear today — a large expanse of blue to carry the heat of the sun across the city.
One more month until the end of the year. It’s been a year where, every month, colleagues are heard saying, “Where did that month go?” And “How did we suddenly reach the end of this month?”
Or maybe that was last year. Or both.
Such sameness. But always a bit different.
Adventuring, exploring, discovering; but also retreating into the comforts of repetitions.
Choose your own adventure, as long as it’s within the given parameters.
The most well-thought-out plans might still fall through. You cannot clear the fog-of-war until you enter the next cavern. The hidden grick will not reveal itself until you’re within tentacle’s reach.
Grounded, back in reality, it’s time to learn. So much learning to do, such limited capacity. Over-encumbered and slowed.
Now Midnight’s Children is on the table, and I’m considering that it’s not necessarily “classics” that I’m drawn to, but to what is perhaps a sub-genre of historical fiction — novels that have some fantastical or absurd element, yet are irrefutably grounded in historical facts. Novels so poetic they must surely exist only in imagination, yet by their very magic are brought to life.
Earlier this morning, before Vivaldi, in the waking hour, the radio played Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience, played by Anna Lapwood on the organ (her own transcription). What a powerful piece to wake up to!
My younger self probably only ever associated the organ with that scene in The Simpsons in which Bart has replaced the church’s hymn music with a reinterpretation of Iron Butterfly’s In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, and the church organist (Helen Feesh is her name, apparently) does a 17-minute organ solo, and collapses at the end.
More recently, the organ invariably makes me think of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, and how he was a bit strange (he wrote The Carnival of the Animals because of certain other interests), and how Saint-Saëns probably would be ok with his Organ Symphony being used as the theme for a movie about a talking pig (Babe).
So I finished reading Ulysses. It took about an entire year, but I finished it. (To be fair, there were several times I didn’t read it at all for a week or so, so I probably could’ve finished it faster if I was less tired/busy and more dedicated. Alas, I was not.)
The great thing about Ulysses is that there is already so much written about it. There are scholars and academics who have researched extensively about the content, and written not only essays, but entire books about it. As such, I feel no great need to give my interpretation of it, or even write some kind of summary about the novel.
Instead, I thought it would be of more value to write something that helps others decide if they want to tackle this monumental piece of literature. I owned my copy of Ulysses for over ten years (probably closer to 15 years) before I had the courage to pick it up and open it. I didn’t know anyone who had read it, so there was no one to say, “Hey, you should read Ulysses. I think you’ll find it to be an interesting and valuable experience.” Instead, I was sort of half guilted into it, and half encouraged by a vague sense that maybe I was ready to read it.
You know what’s crazy? In all my years and years of reading, I’d never read Charlotte’s Web — a veritable childhood classic kept in probably every library in every school across the country. Why did I never read it? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe a story about a spider and pig just didn’t appeal to my younger self. Why read farm stories when I could read about the adventures of the creatures of Redwall?
Well, anyway, D. seemed to think this was unacceptable, so I decided to read it. I’m about a third of the way through Ulysses, so it’s probably not a bad idea to take a bit of a break, right?
pistachio conspiracy #63 