I am having such a good time with this book!  It’s one wild ride and I don’t want to get off! Can I have a note to stay home from school tomorrow and keep reading, please?

Tyson Seburnt recommended this book to me on March 12, 2011 (the kind of info you have when you are a blogger!) but the library didn’t have it. They do now!

This book is an early Murakami book, from 1985. I find that info significant on two counts. One is the attitude towards computers.  It’s a fascinating  futuristic vision from the point of view of people just beginning to enter the age of computers. B.t.w,  I didn’t own a computer till about five years later! The book reminds me at times of “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “The Big Lebowski”, and quite a few others. I didn’t read the blurb till today (as I’ve written many a times, I am wary of blurbs) and there it says the book reminds one of Kafka. Which would make sense for the author who later chose to write “Kafka on the Shore” ( which I enjoyed) but somehow, for me, Douglas Adams comes to mind first.

The other reason I find the year of publication significant is that the book IS different from his later books. I’m not sure I can define it, but there are repeated themes in his later books that I haven’t yet found here. And I like that. I read in the New Yorker a story taken from his last book (by the author!) 1Q84 and it felt awfully familiar. I don’t feel particularly interested in reading it. But this one? I have no idea what wil happen next!

Thanks for the recommendation, Tyson!