My Book Win: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, Australian edition

Look what came in the mail today, all the way from Australia ! My lovely book win from book blogger Mandy at The Narrative Causality!! Thank you, Mandy.

I will treasure this edition, which is about two inches thick and printed on lovely paper. There was slight crumpling to a corner of the book cover, from being in transit, but not a problem! The brand new book is in excellent condition!

I gave this a 5 in my original review. If you want to find out more about the book, here are my Thoughts on 1Q84.

Do you like the cover of the Australian/British edition? I like the images of the double moons that are so significant in the novel.

Again, thank you Mandy, from Ohio to Australia!

Title: 1Q84: Books 1, 2, and 3 by Haruki Murakami
Published 2011 by Harvill Secker, Random House, London

Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2012

I've joined the Murakami Reading Challenge 2012 hosted by tanabata,  the second year in a row. I have Murakami books on Kindle and on my shelves and hope to polish them off in 2012. That's my Murakami New Year's Resolution.

For the challenge, there are different reading levels, which you can see by clicking on the link to tanabata. You can read only one or graduate to more books and can even submit your past reviews.

Here's what I've reviewed in 2011 and 2007 and added to the list:

1. Thoughts on 1Q84
2. After Dark

more to come....

Book Review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Title 1Q84: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
October 25, 2011; personal Kindle edition
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 5/5

My take on the novel in a nutshell: A crime thriller plus a love story in an alternate reality full of magic and fantasy. 1Q84 starts out being a thriller, one of my favorite genres, and I was quite surprised by this. It then also became a love story between two people, Tengo and Aomame.

Fantastical and magical things and people appear  in the novel - the Smurf-like Little People, for one, and the Air Chrysalis - devices that almost seem like children's fantasies. But this is no book for children. There is explicit sex and calculated murder, but also sympathetic looks into the hearts and minds of some of the main characters. Tengo in particular, is a very likable mathematician turned writer, whose relationship with his dying father adds a touch of pathos to the novel. His search for his grammar school classmate, Aomame, and her search for him, is the love story that fuels the novel.

In the plot, Tengo and Aomame both enter an alternate reality, 1Q84, when Tengo rewrites a book, Air Chrysalis, written by the enigmatic teenager Fuka-Eri, and when Aomame climbs down a long metal staircase from one level of the expressway to the next and from one reality to another. In this alternate world that declares itself by the two moons hanging in the sky, the two try to find each other, though they met since the third grade about 20 years before.

Religion is an important link between Tengo and Aomame, and 1Q84 takes aim at religious cults - those controlling Big Brother-like organizations in which children are sexually and mentally abused and  all their members restrained psychologically. The book also seems to focus on women avenging the crimes of severely abusive men, making sure they are dispatched to "another world" in order to prevent them from continuing.

In such a long and complex book, there is bound to be a lot more to discuss. For instance, Murakami follows the idea that time does not flow in a straight line. In 1Q84, time twists around, reality shifts, and the past can sneak up unannounced behind you. These are just a very few of the interesting themes I found.

Besides the thriller and love stories, I liked how well the main characters were developed in the book, the careful and realistic descriptions of physical features, personality, and motives. Murakami's comments on writing are also interesting, as are the ways he weaves a world of magic and fantasy into the novel.

I'd love to hear from others who have read 1Q84.. What do you think about the book?

For other reviews on this book, visit Fantasy Book Critic, Dolce Bellezza, Magnificent Octopus, Man of La Mancha, and Sam Still Reading.

© Harvee Lau 2011
Submitted for the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge and the Japanese Literature Challenge V

Sunday Salon: On Reading 1Q84 - an Update

Welcome to the Sunday Salon. Click on the logo to join in.

I've reached Book 3 of Murakami's mammoth 1Q84. I've enjoyed it so far and am looking forward to seeing what happens to the main characters in this final book.

There is a subtle difference in Book 3, which has a different translator. I find I'm not hanging on every single word as I did in Books 1 and 2. Did I really skip over the detailed descriptions of Aomame's three dreams? The translation of this book is good, clear, and I'm following it, but the narration is not in the same vein as Books 1 and 2, I think.

Nevertheless, this is an awesome novel, though some might find it quirky - a seamless mixture of a children's fantasy, sci fi, a crime thriller, a love story, a plot that points out some of the serious problems in society, and a wild mixture of other things. You never know where the book will take you. Read it if you can!

See my full review, here.

Sunday Salon: 1Q84

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Thanks to Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon, I reviewed more books in the past seven days than I normally do. It was a good feeling to get six books down, about three more than I usually do.

I posted comments on three books: Success Secrets of Sherlock Holmes by David Accord; Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows, and The Guilded Shroud  by Elizabeth Bailey. I also reviewed:
The Last Blind Date by Linda Yellin, a memoir
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, a novel
The Economics of Ego Surplus by Paul McDonnold, a crime thriller

I  hope to get through a brand new book - Haruki Murakami's long awaited new novel, 1Q84, which I 'm reading on Kindle since the hardcover book is so thick and heavy! It's almost 1,000 pages long, but worth the read, I've heard. Here's a very concise book description from an article by the Associated Press entitled Murakami's '1Q84' offers clues to literature's future: Two story lines converge gracefully, one of them in an alternate reality. Fantasy lovers and literature lovers alike might enjoy this.

Everything's on hold while I read 1Q84, except for a Nov. 14 book tour for The Personal History of Rachel Dupree, a novel about African American homesteaders in the early 1900s.

Update: I've just signed up for a Murakami challenge to read at least one of his books in 2011, and 1Q84 is it! For more information, visit Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge

What have you been reading and what are you planning to read this week?