Skip to main content

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Speaking of Haruki Murakami, The Times has a review of his latest short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, on their website:
These stories span 25 years of Murakami’s writing life. He claims: “My short stories are like soft shadows I’ve set out in the world, faint footprints I’ve left behind . . . like guideposts to my heart.” It is indeed an intimate pleasure to read them.
I think I've mentioned before that I loved Murakami's previous short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. Looks like this book won't disappoint either. Can't wait to get my filthy mitts on it!
Labels:

Comments

  1. Edmund Yeo24/6/06 12:06 pm

    Oh, speaking of Elephant Vanishes, here's a (not-too-positive) review of the book by us, if you're interested.

    Wouldn't mind hearing your opinions, actually.

    (besides Elephant Vanishes, there's also a review of Wind-up Bird Chronicles, which I didn't like that much either, although I was okay with Norwegian Woods, which I recently finished)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun25/6/06 1:59 am

    Thanks for the link! That was wonderful reading. I, of course, disagree with you and Justin. I don't think The Elephant Vanishes is perfect however, and I agree that "The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women" shouldn't have been included in the collection.

    But the rest of the tales are intriguing to me, and they all have that weird, surreal sense of irreverence that I like in Murakami's work. I know that isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's what I like anyway.

    I loved Norwegian Wood! It was the first book by Murakami that I have read. I bought The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles two months ago but haven't had the chance to read it yet. I recently finished Kafka on the Shore, which I loved. I think it's in the same vein as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles because it too can get pointless at times, so I have a feeling you wouldn't warm up to it either.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Edmund Yeo12/7/06 12:26 pm

    Eek, didn't know that you've replied to me. (next time, drop me a note on my blog)

    Well, I do like Norwegian Wood much more than Wind-up Bird Chronicles. Perhaps I'll do a review of it soon.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted Mahsun12/7/06 1:32 pm

    I look forward to reading the review!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dedicated by Burgess.

I've been wanting to blog this for ages, but I've never managed to make the scanner work properly... that is till now. Some years back, my dad was browsing the shelves of NovelHut, Ipoh's best second-hand bookstore, and found a copy of Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger . Price? RM2. (That would be approximately USD$0.60 or GBP£0.30). Did I mention it was a hardcover first edition? Here's the dedication page, with the famous dedication written in Jawi. Jawi is the Malay language written in Arab script, a norm early last century. Nowadays, Malay is written in Romanised form. The dedication says: " Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu " which translates into "To my friends in Malaya." On the opposite page, proof this is the first edition. A first edition is probably valuable by itself. But this copy has something extra that makes it even more special--a personal dedication by Burgess himself to a friend: If you can't make the writing out...
15 comments
Read more

REVIEW: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

UPDATE: My Wind/Pinball review can be found here . ISBN: n/a Publisher: n/a Paperback: 160 pages In Murakami fan circles, simply owning a copy of Pinball, 1973 is a mark of hardcore-ness. Like Hear the Wind Sing before it, Haruki Murakami does not allow English translations of Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan. Back in the 80s, Alfred Birnbaum translated it into English and Kodansha published it as a novel for Japanese students who wanted to improve their English. While the English edition of Hear the Wind Sing continues to be reprinted and sold in Japan (and available for a moderate sum via eBay, see my review ), Kodansha stopped its reprint runs of the English edition of Pinball, 1973 and has now become a collector's item, fetching vast amounts of money on auction sites and reseller stores. Last time I checked, the cheapest copy went for USD$2500. Of course, Murakami addicts or the curious can always download a less than legal PDF of the book, painst...
18 comments
Read more