Book Twenty Six 2014: 

 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I am immediately aware as I type this that Haruki Murakami is one of *those* authors that split people straight down the middle. You will either be immediately taken away by his characters, world, writing or you’ll think he’s a cryptic nonsense-merchant of the highest order and throw his books away in frustration.

Be aware I am in the former group.

Being honest I’ve come late to him, the first thing of his I read was the epic trilogy 1Q84 last year but I fully intend to make up for time.

This book is *beautiful*. Hypnotic. Elegant. Entrancing. The sort of thing I would willingly press into the hands of anyone who loves books.

As I do frequently I’m not going to tell you anything about the plot, I always much prefer to find out important things like that by actually reading the book. Suffice to say that it’s set in Tokyo in the 80s and involves a similar mix to 1Q84 of solitary living, intertwining stories and a world that is at the same time very, very concrete and entirely not like the world we live in bordering on fantasy or SF…

I was talking about it on Twitter afterwards and more than one person said they had read it years ago and it had “haunted” them.

You should read it. I was hypnotised. He writes unlike anyone else.