Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Last summer, I set myself the slightly insane task of reading two novels a week purely for pleasure, in other words, not related to my degree course. Originally, this ‘project’ was only meant to last...
View ArticleUnderground by Haruki Murakami
‘Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche’ is a non fiction work by Haruki Murakami about the terrorist attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995 by members of the Aum cult. I am a big fan...
View Article1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Wow. What can I say? I loved it. All 925 pages of it. Haruki Murakami’s magnum opus is a crime thriller and a love story set in 1984 and a parallel world of 1Q84 (Q for question mark) with elements...
View ArticleNew Books Coming Soon in 2014
One of of my reading resolutions this year has been to get through more of the books I already have on my shelves and Kindle. I have been making some slow and steady progress recently but, as always,...
View ArticleBlind Willow, Sleeping Woman and The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami is one of my favourite authors but after reading all three volumes of ‘1Q84‘ when I finished my degree, I decided to take a break from his writing for a while. Somehow, two years seems...
View ArticleStrange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
‘Strange Weather in Tokyo’ by Hiromi Kawakami (also known as ‘The Briefcase’ in the United States and Canada) tells the story of Tsukiko, an office worker in her late thirties who meets one of her old...
View ArticleTop Ten Quotes About Reading
From the works of Cicero (“A room without books is like a body without a soul”) to George W. Bush’s pearls of wisdom (“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic...
View ArticleColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
After selling more than one million copies in its first week of publication in Japan in April 2013, ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’ by Haruki Murakami has been one of the most...
View ArticleNew Books Coming Soon in 2015
2014 was a fantastic year for new books by some of my favourite authors including ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage‘ by Haruki Murakami, ‘The Paying Guests‘ by Sarah...
View ArticleFour Novellas I’ve Read Recently
Long novels like ‘The Goldfinch‘ by Donna Tartt and ‘The Luminaries‘ by Eleanor Catton received lots of attention last year. But let’s not forget that conciseness in fiction is just as...
View ArticleThe Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist 2015
It’s been an interesting week for book award longlists. First, there was the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist announced on Tuesday followed by the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist...
View ArticleThe Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist 2015
The official shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced this week: The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky In the Beginning Was the Sea...
View ArticleWind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami
Shortly after ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage‘ was published in 2014, it was announced that Haruki Murakami’s first two novellas ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ and ‘Pinball, 1973’ would be...
View ArticleMen Without Women by Haruki Murakami
‘Men Without Women’ by Haruki Murakami is the renowned Japanese author’s first new collection of short stories to be translated into English in over a decade. Echoing Ernest Hemingway’s collection of...
View ArticleBooks I Read in December
For Richer For Poorer by Victoria Coren is the Only Connect presenter’s 2009 memoir about how she became a professional poker player and the first female winner of the European Poker Tour in 2006 in...
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