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These are some powerful stories. They have such beautiful weight to them, and are both so very Japanese and so very Christian. I have only two left!

Another Japanese classic, and I'm not getting this one either. Apparently it's an allegory of existentialism, and it seems a work of budding post-moderniem, but the themes seem to me to be a bit limited and somewhat uninteresting. The plot is interesting enough, but the philosophizing doesn't leave me with much.

Some quotes so far from this wonderful book:

"We do not renounce things, then, except for love "

"Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves."

So far pretty good. A few archaisms (it was written in 1968), but overall some good, basic work. I look forward to more :D

This is such a wonderful book. I really enjoy reading about the lives of these folks, people from Yakuza to geisha to fishermen, all of them living in the first half of the 1900s. What a magnificent collection of stories that would otherwise have been lost had Dr. Saga not written them down.

Wow, Joseph, Isabella, and Kevin (and anyone else following me who is Christian), you've got to read this book!

Very, very good. I love how Piper can examine something like faith philosophically while also admitting its mystical and divine quality. What a gift of a book. I look forward to reading more!

The plot is coming to a climax, but it is slow going. I think the book could have been much shorter and more effective - or my fortitude is a little weak. Whatever the case, I feel like I'm in the home stretch, even with two hundred pages left.

I am in his late works now, which have so far been rather uninteresting. His move from the fantastic seems to have left him with little to say. But we shall see what else he has in these final stories!

I'm reading the section on "Modern Tragicomedies". What is this genre? Are there medieval Tragicomedies? Ancient ones?

These are wonderful stories that avoid two problems I find in most short stories: (being about one, ah-ha moment or being too close-ended). They are expensive and interesting. Beyond their qualities as stories (which is most of what matters), they are also interesting a documents of a time when Japanese authors were playing with modernism but not going head first into it. Western modes are just one too he uses.

The book finally hit the "weird" part (a very good thing) and continues to be delightfully existential and artistic. The pace is slow, but the book is rising to the top tier of Murakami books for me

It always fascinates me how little agency Murakami's characters have.

"So you're doing your own painting now, right?"
"Seems that way."

So passive. A little earlier, the character had a one-night stand for no other reason than that he dropped someone off at a hotel room (who he didn't know). "Might as well sleep together" the woman told him. And so they did.

Unlike in Western lit, character is nothing. Refreshing

So far, this novel is different and yet very similar to Murakami's other novels. The images are the same (eg a man in a stone hole), but the main character has more agency - at times. He's more curious than other Murakami main characters. The comments on art and descriptions of the artistic process are magnificent. I'm really enjoying it!