Time for a change
Having indulged myself for the past 5 or 6 years in vast, heady space operas. I decided over the festive period to take a break and get back to some 'real' literature (I parenthesise that with great irony). And I took a chance on someone I'd personally never heard of before.
Always a risky thing to do with books, it wasn't the cover this time that drew me in. Jeez it had a cat on it, which is one of the first things to send me in the opposite direction of a book. I guess it was because it was a Japanese author, and it seemed intriguing. And maybe, pretentiously, it was because it had Kafka in the title, who knows.
But as an antidote to the things I love about epic sci-fi (vast timescales, abyssal plots and lots of gadgets), it worked a treat.
Simple isn't the right word, just well explained, well thought out storyline. An archetypal Japanese ghost story in many ways. And best of all, it left me wondering about large chunks of it. No Hollywood style voiceover to fill in the blanks. I like the blanks, that's where you can personalise it. Moments of quiet interspersed with some quite shocking episodes, but not off-putting.
And a great quote which I use to myself quite often now: "Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all!" . Maybe that'll form my New Year's resolution.
So I guess a small thank you should go to Harukai Murakami and 'Kafka on the Shore'.
Always a risky thing to do with books, it wasn't the cover this time that drew me in. Jeez it had a cat on it, which is one of the first things to send me in the opposite direction of a book. I guess it was because it was a Japanese author, and it seemed intriguing. And maybe, pretentiously, it was because it had Kafka in the title, who knows.
But as an antidote to the things I love about epic sci-fi (vast timescales, abyssal plots and lots of gadgets), it worked a treat.
Simple isn't the right word, just well explained, well thought out storyline. An archetypal Japanese ghost story in many ways. And best of all, it left me wondering about large chunks of it. No Hollywood style voiceover to fill in the blanks. I like the blanks, that's where you can personalise it. Moments of quiet interspersed with some quite shocking episodes, but not off-putting.
And a great quote which I use to myself quite often now: "Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all!" . Maybe that'll form my New Year's resolution.
So I guess a small thank you should go to Harukai Murakami and 'Kafka on the Shore'.
posted by Netdata at 12:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home