Reddit reviews The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
We found 20 Reddit comments about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
a visionary novel by one of Japan's greatest living novelists, Haruki Murakami.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami. Didn't know anything about it. Just saw the cover, read the description and bought it. Great book.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the place to start. (generally accepted as his first "great" book, winning the Yomiuri Prize).
I would NOT recommend starting with Norwegian Wood. Murakami explicitly attempted to write a book outside of his own style. It is a fine book, but not at all representative of his work in general. NW is best read once you have a solid reference point for his work.
EDIT: Spellings.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
Had to stop myself in multiple parts for different reasons. Either “I feel odd” or “that was oddly uncomfortable” or at one specific part “I might vomit holy shit” (but in a good way).
Haruki Murakami is like the Stephen King of being surreal as fuck. If you have never read one of his books I would recommend reading another one before you read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It's easily the most surreal thing I have ever read.
I recommend starting with either
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World
or
A Wild Sheep Chase
then follow with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
They are all very surreal and weird and fun to read.
I'm reading two books at the same time, because I'm weird like that.
The first one I'm reading is Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird chronicle. I've been on a Murakami kick over the last few months, and this book is probably one of his better known ones. If you want Japanese surreal weirdness in literary form, this is your go-to guy.
Also, I'm reading Liao Yiwu's The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up. It's a fascinating series of interviews written by a Chinese dissident who, among other things, has been put in prison for his writings. These transcripts were smuggled out of the country and put into print a few years ago. As a whiteboy who doesn't know much about China, it gives a very interesting perspective on Chinese society that I wasn't aware of.
Don't know what you like to read so I'm going to go a few ways, but these are good ''stuck in bed'' books. By Author (because thats how i like to read):
Haruki Murakami:
Hunter S Thompson (and related):*
Manuel Puig (these are shorter):
Not by same authors, but would be good together:
Favorites
Feel Better!
One time I did an interview with him for an MMA site I had back in the day. After the interview he sends me a random email that I should read the book The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It was an awesome book.
Totally random story but fits Genki Sudo perfectly.
PS - I have all kinds of random stories with fighters if there is a place I can post them.
Definitley Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. Its about a dude who's wife leaves him and he has to find her. There is even a talking cat and some dream state scenes. some of it is a retelling of different histories and it has a lot of branching narratives. Kafka On The Shore is another great one by Murakami.
For Vonnegut,you're likely looking for Sirens of Titan, a retelling of Jonah and the Whale through an Alice and Wonderland lens. It's got a character who is very much representative of the Cheshire Cat. He has three different phases. His early books are the best. After (or even during) Breakfast of Champions he start writing a little more autobiographically (Slapstick is about his late sister and Hocus Pocus is about his brief tenure at Rollins college) and it's not as poignant (I don't think). And then later with stuff like Galapagos, he goes back to more philosophical lit, but it doesn't pack the same punch as his first phase.
Finally, House of Leaves is an amazing haunted house book that dramatically alters how you read a book. His other work is good too, but I haven't given any of it enough attention.
Edit: If you want to get meta, check out Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth or If On a Winter's Night a Traveler... by Italo Calvino.
I'm not sure of what my favourite book is, I've enjoyed so many! 14 is my number and if a bit of change over 5 is okay I'd love to have The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle!
If you havent tried Murakami, read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel, if you like that read A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel
Here, this should get you started.
For the lazy, he's a Japanese author who's a big fan of those weird coincidences
The "flaying" in the Wind Up Bird. That's the first time a book has made me lose sleep since I-don't-know-when.
Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ties a VERY metaphysical story to the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria. It isn't logically consistent by any means, but it is a fascinating and beautiful read.
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.
Murakami is one of my all time favorite authors. My favorite work of his is The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (amazon link).
The Wind-up Bird Chronicles
The Raw Shark Texts - BONUS: Tilda Swinton Reading an Excerpt
Those are a good place to start.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Your post made me think of this excellent book.
I just looked it up (I was in bed last night when I posted the previous message) and it seems Birthday Girl is in the Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman collection. So if you want more short fiction that's probably the best route to go.
If you're interested in jumping right into a novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of his most generally well received novels and a good place to start for some of the signature Murakami weirdness. Kafka on the Shore would be a great choice as well, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is many Murakami readers' favorite novel of his, but I haven't read either of those yet so I'm more hesitant to recommend them.
I'd suggest reading the blurb of each and picking the story that sounds like it'd appeal to you most.
For beginners?
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World-- Time, Duality, Left Brain/Right Brain Dillema
Norwegian Wood-- Memory, death (and therefore life), music
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle-- Surrealism, Defilement, Water (if you didn't like Kafka, you might not like this. It's like two steps back on the weirdness scale but twice as long).
He is easily one of my favorite authors of all time and I personally think every single one of his books is fantastic. Granted, Kafka was the last one I read, and I had read so many others before it that I wasn't phased by all the weird shit that goes down.
In my opinion, Murakami is the type of author that everyone will find at least one of his books enjoyable. It might be Norweigian Wood for some, 1Q84 for others, and maybe even A Wild Sheep Chase or Dance, Dance, Dance for a someone else.
I think there are certain works of his that are basically you either "get" them or you don't. This isn't an intellegence/educational thing, it's more like you're in a different place emotionally. That's okay, though, because his body of work is so large, complex, and thought provoking that it touches upon a lot of variable subjects.
For the body: Hiking. Yoga. Mindfulness meditation.
For the mind: Sam Harris. Haruki Murakami. Mr. Robot.
For the heart: ... Project Runway. :-)