The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
2 journalers for this copy...
This is one of my favourite books... so the one I have sitting on my (real, non-virtual, non-registered) shelf will not leave my house, but I got another copy, donated by a German internet bookstore, Buchladen an der Kyll, (thanks a lot!!!) for bookcrossing. The book had had a little accident, broken spine, poor book, so after applying some First Aid I declare it capable of doing a bookray and ready for departure...
This ray won't be long and is by invitation only.
A page-turner of 600 pages.
"Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight." amazon
This ray won't be long and is by invitation only.
A page-turner of 600 pages.
"Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight." amazon
Ray (closed):1. jneni, Singapore
This seems to be stalled.
I fortunately got hold of another copy now which continues the ray.
Journal Entry 3 by 
ApoloniaX
at Bookring/Bookray, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- Canada on Monday, July 20, 2009
ApoloniaX at Bookring/Bookray, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- Canada on Monday, July 20, 2009
Released 14 yrs ago (7/20/2009 UTC) at Bookring/Bookray, -- By post or by hand/ in person -- Canada
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
Wind-up Bird travelling to Singapore,
enjoy it, jneni!
Sorry for not journal-ing the book when it got here a few days ago. I was sick in bed :-) I will get to this as soon as I finish the few I have in my hands now! Thank you so much for including me, I feel honored.
