Extra Books – March 14 to 20

Oh, it’s so hard to give Murakami’s works a rating! I really love them all, but it’s hard to compare these novels to the masterpiece that is Kafka on the Shore.
I love the themes and the common elements and the prose. I feel like I could just sit around for the rest of my life reading novels by Murakami.
This felt a bit like a John Green novel for adults. The boy narrator pining after the girl main character who is an enigma unto herself. I hope that maybe when I ”grow up’ this book will help me to recall what Looking for Alaska did for me as a teenager. (my brain, gah, cannot function right now).
I really loved Sumire. I feel like she’s the Murakami character I can identify with best, mostly for her writing habits. I enjoyed reading ‘document 1’ and ‘document 2’ and spending some time inside this character’s mind.

While I really liked this book, I didn’t feel it was quite as good as Sputnik Sweetheart or Kafka on the Shore. I do like how Murakami can leave things so open-ended and yet weave a satisfyingly complete story, but for some reason I just didn’t get that out of this one. I didn’t understand Eri’s story at all. That could be because I was always anticipating more information about her situation that never came and so I wasn’t paying enough attention to the chapters about her.
Interesting naration manner. This seems to be a thing I’m noticing more and more with books lately, or perhaps it’s just because the books I’m reading lately all have a different narration style that I had never encountered before this name. The ‘we look around the scene, we do not think that she would, we zoom out high above the ceiling,’ etc. sort of thing. errr. my brain is mushy right now. i can’t focus. -.-