Haruhi Maruhami

>>9602838
What made you drop Norwegian Wood? Clarify why you are reading him, and maybe someone could give a proper answer to whether you should continue. Or if you just want the meme answer: this man in my country etc.

>>9602941
I dropped it for a time, not completely. But now I'm questioning myself if I should come back to it because of the clusterfuck The Wind-Up Chronicle has turned into. Why he keeps introducing new characters when there are only 100 pages left? Why these flashbacks from the past? Why those May Kasahara's stupid letters? It feels very inconsistent.

Norwegian Wood is his only good book imo, but it's actually pretty decent.

it was serialized, so he literally just made it up as he went along

the overall work has no meaning, no overall impact either except maybe to think "woah all of that happened lmao"

there are cool things in it, but you're not going to get any kind of explanation or satisfaction at the end or anything

If you didn't know, the English translation has about 61 pages of content removed, as well as some chapters rearranged.

>>9603026
Why so?
I have JLPT level 2 knowledge of 日本語 but couldn't make it farther than the first page. I doubt it would have been any better experience to read it in Japanese.

>>9603037
The publisher thought the book was too long.

>>9602838
i just started with 1Q84 because I randomly found the third book on a flea market and had his name pinned down for future reads in my head.

have 20/24 chapters of book 1 finished and I am extremely happy with him. at first I found his comparisons/metaphors a little flat but his prose is very accessible yet colorful, his characterizations are superb and the mix of realism and fantastic elements makes the thrilling plot even more interesting. I'm already anticipating his other works

>>9603043
Thank God. He might have also thought that the book was shit.

IN MY COUNTRY

>>9602961
Norwegian Wood is a much more normal novel.

It's still shit, but for different reasons entirely.

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>>9602965
>>9602838
Drop NW as quick as you can, it's a bag of shit. The MC is the same bland character as every Murakami character, the plot resolves around this cliche pixie manic dream girl and the ending is cheap. Murakami just keeps on trying to be edgy by exclusively writing about sex and making his MC this pseudo-intellectual "I'm into bourbon and 60s music" flat snowflake character.

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>>9602838

Wind-up Bird Chronicle is going to disappoint you. All the weird shit happening doesn't go anywhere. You probably suspected as much. It's just surreal imagery and loosely related story threads and themes.

Reading about the Mongolian/Manchurian/Russian stuff is kind of cool. That's about it. The letters from May are annoying. He doesn't get his wife back. He doesn't do anything with the Kano sister. There is no meaningful confrontation with the brother in law. It's just shit. I don't know if there are subtleties of language that you'd only get in Japanese. Or if the novelty of a Japanese author who thinks in terms of western pop-culture references has worn off now that we all know they're all westaboos. But Murakami is overrated af. I remember liking After Dark back in the day. But I think it was just more pointless weird shit that I could better appreciate for the shorter length.

>>9602838
don't waste your time
it took me 4 harukami muruki books to realize i was wasting mine