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What book are you currently reading?


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Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (sadly not the Birnbaum translation). I recently gave A Prayer for Owen Meany (the novel that the film Simon Birch was based on) the old college try but it was so boring it made me want to develop psychic powers for the sole purpose of telekinetically falcon punching John Irving in the reproductive organs so hard that it would cause a shockwave that would travel back in time and kill him and all his ancestors in the womb generation by generation all the way back to Noah so that everyone would wind up dying in the flood.

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ahh I love Norwegian Wood, Murakami is amazing. What's wrong with Jay Rubin's translation ?

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (sadly not the Birnbaum translation). I recently gave A Prayer for Owen Meany (the novel that the film Simon Birch was based on) the old college try but it was so boring it made me want to develop psychic powers for the sole purpose of telekinetically falcon punching John Irving in the reproductive organs so hard that it would cause a shockwave that would travel back in time and kill him and all his ancestors in the womb generation by generation all the way back to Noah so that everyone would wind up dying in the flood.

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ahh I love Norwegian Wood, Murakami is amazing. What's wrong with Jay Rubin's translation ?

I have heard that the Birnbaum translation is closer to the original japanese (Birnbaum's japanese is apparently better than Rubin's). That being said, I haven't actually read the Birnbaum translation and Rubin's is the only official english translation fully endorsed by the author (or so the inside of the book tells me). If it's good enough for Murakami, it's good enough for me.

 

Also, have you read any of his other work? I've heard mixed reviews of most of it other than The Wind Up Bird Chronicles which is widely regarded as awesome.

 

As a side note, does anyone here ever write book reviews on Amazon or Goodreads?

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Yeah him and Rubin are pals, the rest of the world's translations use the English versions as their source, so it has to be done efficiently.

I have read quite a few of his other works (and loved them generally), Norwegian Wood is really the only one that is completely realistic, the rest of his books have a bizarre surrealism where you wonder if the character is delusional or strange things really are happening. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is indeed a good read, but there are a lot of chapters which don't seem to have any significance or are just unexplained. I would say the standouts so far for me were Sputnik Sweetheart and Hard Boiled Wonderland, so if you haven't tried those I strongly recommend, especially if you're enjoying Norwegian Wood.

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Gotta love having loads of free time! Finished the "Crooked House" by A.Christie. Absolutely loved it!

 

Now i'm starting:

Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin :)

 

It's huuuge

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