Comments on: Norwegian Wood – AKA yes I do read novels

By: ranmafan

ranmafan — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:14:39 +0000

Its really interesting, I took a lot of Japanese literature courses at UT and Sophia University, mostly consisting of works written after the war, and yet I can’t for the life of me remember ever hearing his name mentioned in any of the classes. Real shame too as I wish I had read this back then, and even in 06 when it was recommended to me. The prose is magnificent. There was one paragraph just describing Yotsuya, my old home, that even though it was describing it from 1969, made me feel at home. Not to mention the descriptions of loneliness and love really were close to my own feelings.

I kinda want to try and reread it sometime in Japanese, and get the feeling of the novel in its original form. I also want to get his other works.”Sputnik Sweetheart” sounded pretty interesting in its description, and the title rules.

By: Yulzopolis

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:33:11 +0000

Norwegian Wood is excellent. I’ve only read that and one other short story. I’d like to read more, but for such a famous author, his stuff is woefully represented at the library and most book stores. I guess I should buy some more on the internets.

By: naftali

naftali — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:07:09 +0000

Murakami is pretty much one of the most important authors in the world. He’s on the short-list for the Nobel Prize.

Everything he’s written is great. Although the novels “Norwegian Wood” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” are considered his best, I’m a huge fan of his short stories, particuarly in the collection “The Elephant Vanishes”. Supposedly there’s a movie of “Norwegian Wood” in production.

He’s also known as one of the best travel writers in Japan. He lived in Greece, Italy, and the US for like twenty years and wrote lots of great essays about it, but almost none of them have been translated yet. Saori almost started crying when she got her copy of them mailed from Japan.

By: Sneaky

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:32:34 +0000

hmmm…Japanese fonts in the comments are really small. But time for bed…no more tweaking the website tonight!

By: ranmafan

ranmafan — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:23:23 +0000

I’ve been meaning to read some more books in Japanese myself as well. I bought　凉宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), and ロードズ島戦記 (Record of Lodoss War), but I haven’t had the time to concentrate on them.

By: Sneaky

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:12:47 +0000

I read that too. I thought it was good.

Right now trying to read more in Japanese, so I bought a couple used books for 100 yen. One that I got is called あなたのなかのＤＮＡ (The DNA inside you). It was written in 1994 so maybe it isn’t up to date with the latest and greatest. But it is fairly easy to read because it is apparently written for people that slept through science class…It answers questions like “Where is DNA?” and “Is DNA alive?” (No…it’s just a material!) So the word of the day is 細胞