Murakami's Norwegian Wood

Where does Kafka on the Shore come in?

It was recommended to me by an interesting stoner and I've been told it was like looking through the lens of your average young, carefree dude in the 1960s. I looked at reviews and it was remarked as beautiful and astounding. So I gave it a shot.

Everyone claimed to be special or troubled in some beautiful way, but they just ended up being thoroughly bland. The protagonist reminded me of Mersault, but replace about half of his charming aloofness with more meaningless, bonobo-like sex. I don't have a problem with sex in literature, but it seemed like every goddamn 20 pages somebody had to suck somebody off and it had no relevance to anything else happening. There's this central theme of people being broken, I guess? But it never delves deeper than that. It's just there, standing in the corner.

After the protagonist directly recalled the exact seventh Beatles song in a row, sometime in the middle, I stopped reading. So I guess that was what the Sixties were like. Maybe I got a bad translation, or maybe it just flew over my uncivilized cro-magnon brain, but even so, I found nothing interesting in reading about a bunch of loser chinks fucking each other gently.

lmao^

>Rating Murakami books like little Mr. Authority Figure
>hasn't even read Wind Up Bird

Wew lad.

I see his books as falling broadly into three categories: the trilogy of the rat + dance dance dance; his fantasy works (hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world, the wind-up bird chronicle, kafka on the shore, after dark, iq84); and his non-fantasy works (norwegian wood; south of the border, west of the sun; sputnik sweetheart; colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage), the latter of which I ranked in my order of preference.

the wind-up bird chronicle is easily his best book imo

Tsukuru is pretty fantastical. Color auras and shit?

It's definitely been my least favorite of his stuff, but I didn't dislike it.

I laughed, I cried, I fapped. Probably the most affecting book I've read user

Never read any Murakami, thinking of starting with Wind Up Bird.
Which book has the most/best waifu(s)?

I liked the setting of ennui in 60s Tokyo, the boredom of every day life and the futility of love. Also there were some interesting characters with interesting stories, like that one ex-piano teacher who got screwed over by some 12 year old girl who tried to fuck her.

Overall, good book. 7/10

It's mostly a book that tries to give an atmosphere of nostalgia and sadness.

>The protagonist reminded me of Mersault
This shows you're a retard.

That one. It has the best Murakami girls by far.

It's also his most elaborate novel, and probably the most influential on (shit like Haibane Renmei and Catherine drew inspiration from it.)

It's bad.

I thought it was his worst one.

Murakami distanced himself from Norwegian Wood. Everybody else says it's shit. The only Murakami book which was actually popular in Japan (young women mostly). OP could have googled that all. Why the fuck did OP even try ?

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki comes in as a close second though. I always tell people to start with the sheep books.

On the other hand, his more "surreal" stuff is more popular with young Japanese men, apparently.

>Which book has the most/best waifu(s)?
Dance Dance Dance by far.

it's his worst book and also furthest from his 'style'

Because the Anime Haibane Renmei was influenced by his dream-world in Hard-boiled Wonderland.

Why do we hate Murakami and suck GGM's dick, again?

Murakami is too mainstream for 20-something contrarian asspies.

read South of the Border, West of the Sun after that.

Sputnik Sweetheart

I'm reading it right now. I don't like it. It is readable, but it feels superficial.

It's mostly a book that tries to give an atmosphere of nostalgia and sadness.
I don't think it success. It shows the atmosphere, I can see what he is trying to do, but I don't feel it.

It's not good, it's like murakami without the only thing he's somewhat okay at, the Alice in wonderland Borges-lite bullshit, while keeping the awful sex scenes and musical name dropping

Sure is Reddit in here

Does Murakami have any books that aren't twee and/or stupid?

I didn't mind Norwegian Wood but Kafka on the Shore and Hard-Boiled Wonderland were proper shit.

see

All you people should read his Underground if you haven't already.