For those of you who know what the book is about and how it ends, you could sense my confusion. While I didn’t thoroughly enjoy handling the enormous book, I did enjoy experience it (and there is a difference).īut my copy of the book was also mis-bound - after the apparent ending on page 925, there were the obligatory “about this author” pages, and then out of nowhere the book started up again on page 901. But the packaging for this book is absolutely beautiful, and that sort of tactile sense of peeling back the translucent cover, looking at the layers between the hardcover and the jacket, and rubbing that pretty spine of a book cannot be replicated with an e-reader. When I saw the book at BookPeople and picked it up, I thought to myself, “This is a book that makes a very strong case to have a Kindle,” because it’s heavy, and books that are that heavy can be a hinderance to read - you basically have to rest it on your chest while lying down, or stoop over it on a table while sitting. I could see them being awkward to others - like how I get tripped up when I start a science-fiction novel and people have weird names that all sound the same.įirst, I want to talk about the actual cover art. I think it helped that I’m familiar with the Japanese language none of the cultural context or names were awkward to me. I’d never read a Murakami piece before (though now, I will probably seek out The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles) so I was green to his style of writing. I approached the novel after learning the vague premise, that other people whose opinions I respect loved it, and that the cover art was beautiful. I can’t say that I loved it, but I did enjoy it. It took a month of reading a few chapters here and there, before bed, to finish Murakami’s 1Q84.

1q84 review