Reddit reviews 1Q84 (Vintage International)

Read this.

These are all books on my list to read from various suggestions. Maybe one will spark your interest:

Every Day "Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere."

1Q84"The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.”

The Mists of Avalon "Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come...."

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao "Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love."

The Fault in Our Stars "Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Agustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten."

Some people have had a difficult time with it, but I loved devouring all 1000+ pages of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Mysterious but not a mystery. Fantastic but not Fantasy. Otherworldly without being Sci-Fi. It's just a very compelling read.

My current Everest is IQ84 by Haruki Murakami.

First and foremost, don't be ashamed of what you love. Tale of Two Cities is considered one of the greatest books ever because it is. It's a masterwork. And you shouldn't be ashamed of recognizing that.

Other people have suggested some great classics. You can't go wrong with those. But it sounds (to me) like you might be looking for something a bit more modern, and perhaps a bit more niche. So I'll make some suggestions along those lines:

The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

Let me admit this up front. I've been immediately buying everything this guy writes. I'm a fan. But dangit, he's been nominated for two Man Booker prizes. He can write.

The Thousand Autumns is set in 1800 in a small town in Japan, where Westerners are permitted to stay, but are forbidden to enter the rest of Japan. Jacob is a trader with the Dutch East India Company who comes to make his fortune so that he can marry his Dutch fiancee. When he arrives, he meets a Japanese midwife named Orito with a scar on her face. Jacob falls in love. But this book is not just a love story. Every character is richly drawn, and each has their own arc. Politics and culture feature prominently. It really is a beautiful book. And it shares some of the epic reach of Tale of Two Cities.

Having said that, I would heartily recommend anything by David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas is probably his best known book, and it's a wonderful group of inter-connected stories from different genres tied together by a central theme and with a unique structure. I've recommended that one to friends, and they all praised it.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami

This one is a bit different, and definitely a bit more niche. Murakami is a Japanese writer who became sort of hip here in the U.S. a few years back. He writes with a style that I've heard described as "magical realism." It's is utterly realistic in its presentation, but then it will have a talking cat or an alternate dimension. His stories sort of feel like modern fables. And there's a sense of loneliness and fatalism in his books.

I'm not sure that any plot description is going to do a Murakami book justice, but I'll give a short one anyway. Toru loses his job, and wife his orders him to find their cat before disappearing herself. Wind Up Bird is mostly about the cast of characters and events in the subsequent journey.

I almost suggested 1Q84 instead of Wind Up Bird because it felt (to me) more similar to Tale of Two Cities. But 1Q84 is a very long book, and a very slow burn. When I was about 500 pages in, a friend asked me whether I was enjoying it, and I ended up talking about Murakami's style, and not this story. Because the story hadn't grabbed me yet. While I ended up enjoying 1Q84 more than Wind Up Bird, I'm not sure I can recommend that you slog through 1,000+ pages without being pretty sure you're going to enjoy his style. Wind Up Bird is a better -- and shorter -- introduction to Murakami, and it's considered his classic anyway.

Not the same book.

https://www.amazon.com/1Q84-Vintage-International-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0307476464

Congrats on graduating! It's hard to choose just one book so here are two of my favorite recent reads. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and 1Q84. Oski

I read 1Q84 last and enjoyed it so much, I bought some other Murakami books so I could stay a little longer in the world he had created.
1Q84 is about a woman in Tokio who finds herself in a universe where some subtle things are slightly different from the one she knows. Also it is an epic love story. It is so well written (Or at least so well translated from japanese) that it really drew me in and kept me in, as mentioned before.

Some historical fiction: [Saturday Night and Sunday Morning] (http://www.amazon.com/Saturday-Night-Sunday-Morning-Sillitoe/dp/0007205023)

[Armageddon] (http://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Novel-Berlin-Leon-Uris/dp/1453258396)

[Mila 18] (http://www.amazon.com/Mila-18-Leon-Uris/dp/0553241605)

[Russian Hide and Seek] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0091420504/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

[The Man in the High Castle] (http://www.amazon.com/The-High-Castle-Philip-Dick/dp/0547572484) There's also a TV show based on this book. Haven't gotten around to watching it all, but watched the first episode and really enjoyed it.

[In the Garden of Beasts] (http://www.amazon.com/In-Garden-Beasts-American-Hitlers/dp/030740885X)


Other books: [Something Wicked This Way Comes] (http://www.amazon.com/Something-Wicked-This-Way-Comes/dp/0380729407)

[The Girl With All the Gifts] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Girl-With-All-Gifts/dp/0316278157)

[1Q84] (http://www.amazon.com/1Q84-Vintage-International-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0307476464)

Edit: I like to read!

Edit2: Added more books and included amazon links to all of them. Would add more, but don't want to overload you with recommendations :p

I'm currently reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (which comes close to fulfilling the "more than 500 pages" challenge twice over), but I'm not far enough in to really recommend it yet.

However, I've previously read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami and do highly recommend this one.

Fair enough. I had to go check as I wasn't sure if that comment was me reading into their comparison to Orwell's 1984, or something that had been implicitly stated. It turns out the publisher describes it as a dystopian novel and if memory serves Powell's in Portland, OR (where I purchased it) also had a description up saying something similar. Here is part of what amazon says and what I assume was provided to them by Murakami's North American publishing house:

"A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers."