New Year, Old (but Great) Challenges

Almost a year has passed since our last encounter. All I can say is that a break, be it short or long, can help you realise what is important in one's life. Reading books and talking about them - from time to time - is something I'm set not to give up. 

And, what better way to begin the new year than by tackling Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge? It's her 12th year hosting it and I am sure I've joined about six or seven of them... This year, though, the challenge only lasts for three months, from January to March, so I have decided to read three books by Japanese writers, one of which is Haruki Murakami's latest. 

If you are interested in reading Japanese literature, then now is the right time to start!

HAPPY READING! 

June is for Japanese Reading Challenge

June is here, (and almost gone) school is over and what can be better than one of my favorite challenges...? The Japanese Literature Challenge, hosted by Bellezza here.  I have lost count of the years I joined the other readers who love (or are about to love) Japanese literature, but for this summer, I have planned to read two great books.
The first one is by my favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami and his non-fiction book written in 2015 "Meseria de romancier" ("The Novelist as a profession", not yet translated into English), published in 2016 by Polirom in the collection dedicated to him. The book contains 12 essays on what it means to be a writer and I am so eager to discover his take on this job and the advice he gives in order to become a successful novelist.
The second one is a Japanese thriller, "Malice", by Keigo Higashino (called the Japanese Stieg Larsson), written in 1996 and translated into English in 2014. The book belongs to the Police Detective Kaga series, including 9 other novels. It is going to be my first book by Higashino, well -known in Japan for his mystery novels. "Malice" is supposed to be a book which exploits murderous feelings and the reasons why a murder is committed, rather than the killer who did it. This definitely sounds interesting for a summer read!

The Men without Women

The second Haruki Murakami book I managed to finish a few days ago is "The Men without Women", a collection of short stories that appeared in the spring of 2014 in Japanese edition and at the end of the year in Romanian translation. I am so proud Romanian publishers appreciate his work so much as to translate it even if the American publishers have decided not to do it yet, maybe expecting to include the stories in a bigger collection, just as they did with "The Elephant Vanishes"...

Unlike the Japanese version with 6 stories, the Romanian version contains 7 stories, "Samsa in love" being added to it. All the stories except the one that gives the title of his collection had previously been published in different international magazines.
Here are the stories, in short:
"Drive my Car" - an actor and a female driver, both with a less than happy past and with a possible future together.

"Yesterday" - the story of two college students who learn how to love and let go.

"An Independent organ" - the story of a doctor so in love with a married woman that he isolates himself from the world.

"Scheherazade" - probably my favorite story of this collection, it presents Habara, a lonely man visited by a woman who tells him strange stories.

"Kino" - after his wife leaves him, a man opens a bar and thus encounters a strange presence.

"Samsa in Love" - a cockroach wakes up to discover he has been transformed into a human, one that needs to love and to feel loved.

"The Men without Women" -one midnight you are woken up by a phone call that lets you know your previous love died ...

All these Murakami stories seem to echo one another and mix lost love, disappointment and sadness, with a pinch of wonder about what it might have been. I really enjoyed rereading some of them in Romanian and I am looking forward to (re)discovering other short stories of his.

Murakami all the way...

"If you don't know something, go to the library and look it up." 

It's the 12th of January and it is Haruki Murakami's birthday! What better way to celebrate him than read one of his works and to start the new year and the challenges mentioned in the previous post I have chosen "The Strange Library", a dark story Murakami released in Japan in 2008 and in an English version with drawings at the end of last year.

The fable presents a boy who loves reading and who finds himself entrapped in an enormous labyrinth in the basement of the local library, expected to read books about how taxes were collected in the Ottoman empire and do his best in order to learn them by heart.... or else.

"Just because I don't exist in the sheep man's world, it doesn't mean that I don't exist at all."

Reality and illusion seem to mingle to perfection in this story and recurrent themes and characters put up an impressive show for the readers. Having read "Memoirs of a Shepherd", the boy seems to meet a shepherd in the basement; bitten by a ferocious black dog, he sees one there as well. The library with its hidden basement is actually meant to represent his subconscious.

How often do we find ourselves wondering about characters in the books we read, willing to meet them and interact with them? The boy seems to go through such an experience that leaves him wondering what really happened "how it feels to be alone, sadness surrounding me". Going back to 'the real world' after having been away for three days creates a feeling of loneliness and of missing out ... maybe girls speaking with their hands...

"The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path."

Haruki Murakami Day

My Reading Challenges - January 2014

Apparently, I always start the New Year in full swing, with lots of reading time, but then, school starts and I am back to struggling to find some reading time... For this month, I am planning to read Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" for the January in Japan Challenge, and also to celebrate his birthday, on the 12th of January :); Sarah Dunant's latest book about the Borgias, "Blood and Beauty", mainly because I love her previous historical novels and I am quite interested in the story of this famous family; Yehuda Berg's book "Satan - An Autobiography" on the Opponent and fighting the good fight; Jane Hawking's (yes, Stephen Hawking's former wife) "My Life with Stephen" because I have recently seen two documentaries and one BBC adaptation of the scientist's life and I am quite intrigued about the man behind the famous mind; last but not least, "an international sensation" which seems to be the story from "The Rosie Project", about a professor of genetics who embarks upon The Wife Project, hoping that there is someone out there for everyone...

Let the page turning begin! :)

Murakami Day

Today, Haruki Murakami turns 64, and since I am a huge fan of his work, I thought a short post is required. Short due to the fact that I have to get back to finishing his "Kafka on the shore", a book about a boy who runs away from home, an old man that can talk with cats and... talkative cats, of course. More about the book in a future review, but for now, here are some beautiful quotes from his novels:

 “But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”(Norwegian Wood)

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”(Kafka on the Shore)

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
(The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

Ten People, Ten Colours... Ten Books

Juu-nin to-iro is a Japanese proverb meaning that everyone has their own tastes. For the next months, my tastes will coincide with Bellezza's and her Japanese Reading Challenge 6 which I have joined for the second year. I am so thrilled to be reading Japanese literature, mainly because it is so different from any other and I managed to gather ten books, mentioned in the collage below.

Five of them are written by Haruki Murakami, but I am not sure I will be reading all of them. My goal is to finish 1Q84 for Birgit's Tea and Books Challenge and two more, for the Murakami Challenge. I will also be reading Yamada's In Search of a Distant Voice since I loved Strangers... Any other book will add to the pleasure. So, will you be joining us? :)