Cannonball Read 14

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I Have Seen the Nipple on Your Soul

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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You know those workdays where you get a lot done in the morning, and you think to yourself, “I’ve done enough, I think I can take it easy this afternoon”? Well, consider that my attitude for the rest of 2022, as my greatest achievement of the year is behind me: I finished this damn book. I’ve wanted to read Haruki Murakami for a long time, and I was so intrigued by the premise of this book: A woman, Aomame, begins to discover subtle differences between […]

Thanksgiving Week Glut

The Odyssey by Homer; Emily Wilson

A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Nine Princes of Amber by Roger Zelazny

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Free Lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed

Dragons of Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Revolutionary Characters by Gordon Wood

Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

South of the Border West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Books of Blood by Clive Barker

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

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The Odyssey – 5/5 Stars So my review is specific to the newer Emily Wilson translation, which I find particularly good and readable. She writes a long introduction that serves as a solid guide to the epic, to the writing, the historical context, and other important keys. This is long, but worthwhile, especially if you’re new to the story or it’s been a long time or you’re a little rough in your epic-reading. From there, there’s a very good translator’s note of some length explaining […]

Men Without Women – Haruki Murakami (2014)

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

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Most of all in his short fiction, I can never quite tell how seriously to take Haruki Murakami’s writing, but at the same time I am compelled by it. The lack of seriousness I feel (and I don’t mean in the writing itself, because I do think he takes himself seriously, and in an appropriate way) is that so many of the stories are almost exactly alike the other stories. If you took the names off and took the plots away a little, would you […]

Mixed Bag Catch-Up (Books I listened to while painting the house)

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

All you Zombies by Robert A Heinlein

The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith

Scary Stories Collection by Alvin Schwarz

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

Somebody's Darling by Larry McMurty

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Terminal Boredom – 4/5 Stars A small collection of stories from the science fiction writer Izumi Suzuki. It’s important to note that these stories are selected from a decades long career. This seems to be a first foray into a larger translation project of more of Suzuki’s writing, especially her novels. The stories are mostly subtle, intimate explorations of stories that are running through various science fiction tropes and ideas. These are ideas that are usually fully established in the story before we begin, and […]

Mixed Bag Catch Up

Samarkand by Amin Maalouf

Shiloh by Shelby Foote

Blind Willow Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl

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Samarkand – 4/5 Stars This book immediately wonder how many novels have Omar Khayyam as a major or main characters. So in this way, being shown in careful detail and with loving care how and why Omar Khayyam is such an important person, cultural touchstone, and inspiration to such a huge part of the world is itself a gift that this novel offers. In addition to this, the sense of adventure in this novel that is created in the opening sections, and then carried over […]

Such a Murakami novel

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

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I seem to always say this, but I don’t really know how to review Haruki Murakami’s books. They’re so inexplicable and enjoyable and uneventful. A Wild Sheep Chase, according to the man himself (in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running), was his “real starting point” as a writer – and that makes sense. Hear the Wind Sing, his first novel, has all the hallmarks of a Murakami novel, but doesn’t quite work as well. He hasn’t really found himself yet, and it […]



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