For the past 2 weeks I had been reading a Book called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. To say this book is a hulking beast is an understatement. The hardcover is 900+ pages, and the eBook clocks in at 1024.
It's hard to say what originally interested me about this book. The hardcover is a nice, thick, imposing tome - and the print is pretty damn tiny, so it's much more dense, than say the longest Harry Potter, which was, what, 800something pages. (Was that Order of the Phoenix or Goblet of Fire? I don't remember. I think it was OOtP...because looking back after reading it, I was astonished that I knocked that sucker out in 2 days.) Whereas JK Rowling can keep an action story flowing, this book didn't have much "action" per se, and I actually found it kind of hard to get going with it. Once I hit the 2nd book (Yes, this is really 3 books in one - they were released separately in Japan, but all together here) things started picking up a bit, and the last 250 pages I plowed through - however it still took me two solid weeks to read this thing. The cover, which you can see above, is an interesting image, and I am one of those idiots who can get sucked into a book based on a really cool looking cover. I've read some real steaming piles of crap with that method.
I normally don't go for dystopian or sci-fi things. I like light and funny, of which this book was neither. As I read it, I got the feeling that had it been in print when I was in high school, my AP English teacher, who I had in junior and senior year, would have made us read this. (This is a man who assigned us about 10 books to read over the summer between 11th and 12th grade - because he's effing nuts. Still one of the best teachers I've had, but yeah...) The language used was very overdescriptive, and he was a fan of assigning those types of books.
Without giving a whole lot away, the book follows the lives of two people, Tengo and Aomame, who have been deeply connected to each other since the fifth grade, but haven't seen each other since. Tengo is recruited to ghostwrite a book called Air Chrysalis for his shady editor. The book was written by a 17 year old girl named Fuka Eri, and Tengo's shady editor wants to enter it into a contest, but thinks it needs to be strengthened in order to win. Aomame is a personal trainer who is sort of a hitwoman of sorts for a rich old woman. Both Tengo and Aomame end up being transported into the world discussed in Air Chrysalis for the express purpose of finding one another, and the book follows their winding path of fate to run into each other again.
Being that the book is not normally what I would read, I'm pretty surprised that I liked it as much as I did. Like I said above, I'm not a fan of books that get overdescriptive, and this is one thing that annoyed me. I really don't give two shits about the intricacies of the meals the characters are eating. I also didn't like how the chapters switched points of view, although they were marked as to whose point of view it was in, so that did decrease confusion a bit. It was just annoying to read something in one chapter, and then in the next chapter have it be rehashed from the perspective of the other character.
Bottom line: It was an enjoyable epic, and I'm glad I read it. Do I think I'll be spectacularly affected like some people on Goodreads who reviewed? No. However, I would not be opposed to reading more of this guy's work. Apparently he's quite the big deal in Japan.
You can get it for Nook here, Kindle here, and Google here if you are so inclined.
