Books, finally back to books

Baby Evie is sleeping in her own room now and going to bed at a reasonable hour. Which means, oh joy, reading books in bed. I drive to work, I'm busy - bed is the place I read.

The backlog is considerable and has been driving me mad, just sitting there taunting me - the bedside table is just the smallest tip if the iceberg.

Anyway, just finished Norwegian Wood. Perversely, I've read and loved tons of Murukami but never got around to the book that took from him from cult to huge. I've always loved his surreal approach and despite this book being much more straightforward at first, there's as much going on with this book as any other, in fact, possibly more. It's a real skill to pull the extraordinary out of the mundane and he does it in spades here.

And there's a quote I'll take with me forever, "only arseholes feel sorry for themselves". Quite so.

Comments

[Andrea]

I went through a phase of reading a lot of Murakami - a certain gloom overtakes you. Or maybe not gloom, melancholia of some sort and you have to put it down for a while and then read other things for some time.

I do spot some Franzen and The Finkler Question - you've got the same books as I do almost. Finkler Question was not quite what I expected but anyway.

[northern]

Great minds etc.
Someone else mentioned the melancholia thing with Murukami, but that's not quite what happens to me, it feels like a certain kind of quietness, same kind as feeling as Mad Men where a story breathes, and so do you

I'm still not sure what to make of the Finkler Question, the writing is fantastic, but it sometimes feels a little too self absorbed and relevant to only a certain kind of 'london'. That can be great of course, but unlike Franzen (or Murukami for that matter), whose books seem to speak to all, whatever the protagonist or subject matter, it didn't go beyond it's narrow subject matter

[Andrea]

Would be fantastic to meet up and eventually swap a few books. Got into reading some Evelyn Waugh, Barnes and JG Ballard lately thought not sure how attractive that sounds to you!

I've left JWT anyway so got lots of time these days