I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. The storytelling is great, and even if I had issues with some of the characters (okay, all of the female characters), they all managed to be consistently compelling. But I just couldn't get into this one. The story, while interesting, sort of meandered around and by the end, it seems to have forgotten where it was trying to go in the first place. Murakami starts plot points, presents us with new mysteries and characters, and then he gets distr...

A part of me wishes that I hadn't read it yet so I could still read it for the first time and be mesmerized.It is quiet difficult for me to describe what this book was like. It is surreal and psychedelic. It is mysterious, something out of this world. You just need to stop questioning things and let yourself get carried away. It begins with a seemingly ordinary day in the life of a very ordinary man. But things only gets strange and stranger from there - dreams spill into reality, lines between

This book has received praise from many circles, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Wind-Up Bird was also considered a New York Times Notable Book the year it was published, and it earned Murakami, the author, a serious literary award presented by the Japanese Nobel Prize winning author Kenzaburo Oe. To top it off, most of the reviews on Goodreads are filled to bursting with lavish praise for both Murakami and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. But, less than

Good Lord, it's been over a month since I've finished s book. What have I been doing with my life?And why haven't I read this book until now? First off, let me put my four-star rating of this book into context. It's only four stars because I feel like I need to read it again, and maybe again and again, to truly appreciate all that is contained within these 600 beautiful pages. I get the story. There's a plot and all that, but there is also so much more going on, there are so many layers, such co...

Toru Okada recently quit his job at the law office and has been spending his time alone in the house all day while his wife, Kumiko, goes to work. One day while cooking he receives a strange phone call from a women claiming to know him. He can't recognize her voice though and becomes confused by this turn of events. Kumiko is worried because recently their cat disappeared. Usually their cat comes home after a while even though he wanders off and so Toru goes off in search of the cat. On his sear...

WATER IS GOOD! You, the politician with the psychopath eyes on the T.V.! I hate you! Russian scheming Where the fuck is my cat?!!! And why did I name him after you Mr. Psychopath EYES! WarBloodDeath Zoo animals? My dreams are wack, yo – but WAIT! Are they really dreams?! No way man, I totally did it with her for real. Skinning people alive Wacky woman with the Huge red hat, tell me! Are you a psychic OR ARE YOU NOT?!What a cool walkway between the HOUSES!telephonetelephoneRing, Ring, Ring: H...

English (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) / ItalianoA great experience.More than reading a novel, I feel like I've lived the life of another, like when you wake up from a dream in which you played the part of a fearless hero, doing actions you never could have done.Toru Okada is thirty years old and leads an ordinary life with his wife Kumiko. However, a strange phone call marks the beginning of a series of unusual events that entirely change the existence of the young protagonist. Everyday life and

Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru = The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki MurakamiThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key unemployed lawyer's assistant, who is tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests looking in the alley, a closed-off strip of land existing behind their house. After Toru has hung out there for a while with no luck, May...

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?...Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source th...

I adore this book and wish I could carry my enthusiasm for it to Murakami's other works. But in contrast to Wind-Up Bird Chroncle, those I've read disappoint. (Kafka On the Shore devolved into some wretchedly bad writing after the first half. Or was it wretchedly bad translation? I wish I knew.) Anyway, I have read Wind-Up Bird twice and will read it again. My favorite part is the sequence set during World War II near the Khalkha River in Outer Mongolia. This is Lieutenant Mamiya's tale of a dar...

This was my first adventure into the magical universe of Haruki Murakami. I am one of the many people that feel that his Nobel Prize for Literature is long overdue - and a lot of that rests on his core work in the 90s including this masterpiece. This is a beautiful multi-level story in typical Murakami fashion with plenty of imagery and fascinating characters. I loved the story, the writing style, and just about everything that was in these 600+ pages. I won't reveal any plot spoilers - I'll jus...

Original Review: February 22, 2011Songs of FascinationMurakami sings to me of fascination. I still haven't worked out why.I could analyse the sensation until it died on the operating table.Or I could focus on just keeping the sensation alive.Or, somewhere in between, I could speculate that it's because Murakami sits over the top of modern culture like a thin gossamer web, intersecting with and touching everything ever so lightly, subtly expropriating what he needs, bringing it back to his writer...

If I were to use only one word to describe this book, I would type the word 'brilliant' a million times with each letter in CAPITALS and fill up the entire word length of this particular space. In all its sensitivity, emotional depth and keen understanding of the complications of the human mind The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a stellar work of literature and a tour de force. I cannot go ahead and say it is Murakami's magnum opus (it is not his longest novel), since I haven't finished with all his

Jobless, Toru Okada spends most of his days searching for his missing cat. Until his wife goes missing as well. Why did she leave? Did she ever love him? And can Toru navigate an ocean of strangeness to get her back?Back when I first joined Goodreads, one of the first things I noticed was how a novel I'd never heard of, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, got so much praise from Goodreaders. Was it hype? Or worse, was it just hipster bullshit? You know what I'm talking about. "I only read novels that ha...