let’s put some coal back in the ol’ train, shall we? i missed you the past week, ol’ girl. didn’t get any quality time together, did we. well, we’ll ease back in with some easy stuff.

a wild sheep chase – haruki murakami – 4 stars

the single longest session i spent reading this book was a friday night when all my friends were doing other things or out of town. friday nights with no one to talk to get kind of weird, i think, because you spend all week gearing up for it and when nothing happens you feel so detached. your insides are ready to get up and go and your outsides have nothing to tell them. so i walked a half mile or so down to the barnes and noble at the yuppie mall, sat in a corner with a blended coffee drink, and ripped through this book for about an hour and a half. my thinking was that sitting alone and reading in a public place is at least slightly less lonely than sitting alone at home and reading.

that’s the sort of feeling that went perfectly well with this book, too. i imagine the nameless protagonist — whose anonymity i only realized halfway through during a conversation about nicknames between he and another nameless character — feeling exactly the same way for the better part of the book. he’s not unhappy, but he’s not excited about anything. he’s clever and funny but he doesn’t seem to have any direction or goal or preoccupation for himself even though he wishes he did. so he drifts into this little adventure that’s sad and interesting but most importantly, something to do.

for a japanese novel, it was either translated or written extremely well, because i had to keep reminding myself to picture the characters as japanese, and the book’s language was part of why i enjoyed reading it so much. the way they talk and the things they think are so honest and likeable, i wanted to spend time with them. i don’t know if i gained any insight into life as i know it from reading this book, but i was sure glad to have someone so pleasant to pass that friday night with, even if he was fictitious.