Now what?

Well, over the weekend I finished Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (and really enjoyed it, but more on that in a bit) and now I'm left with the inevitable question -- now what? 

See, our house is filled with books, but I've probably ready about 95% of them and am uninterested in reading 4%, which leaves 1% (which believe me, is still quite a lot of books!!).  Usually I try to prepare by having the next book sitting on the nightstand right under the book I'm reading.  Then as soon as I finish one book, I pick up the next and read at least the first page of the new one. (Okay, i'm a little strange. . . )  This time I was caught off guard though.  See The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is over 600 pages long and I thought I'd be at it for at least another week or two, but I was a bit under the weather and spent a good portion of the last 4 days reading.

Now I need to go wander the house, looking at bookshelf after bookshelf, picking through piles of books. . . wondering what I'll read next.  I feel a little displaced without a book in progress!

Oh, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?  Much better than Kafka on the Shore (my thoughts on that one are here).  This is magical realism at it's best and I can see why Murakami has such fans now.  You may be put off by it's length, but there aren't an overwhelming number of characters or things going on, so it's a nice easy read.  And now that I've finished the book I've read some reviews.  The funny thing is -- many reviewers seem to have the problem with this book that I had with Kafka on the Shore.  I however, found the ending of this book to be satisfactory.  While all the ends are not tied up neatly, I rarely find that I want that in a book. 

Comments

[toni]

I picked up this book from the library over the weekend (the joys of books and A/C!). Really enjoying it so far. His observations about the character of people are lovely.

[--Deb]

I read that one on vacation in May but didn't really love it. A little too weird for me (says the long-time fan of sci-fi and fantasy).

I'm the same way about finishing a book, though--I have to immediately pick out the next one. It doesn't matter how late it is at night, I can't go to sleep without an "active" book waiting to be picked up first thing the next morning. (Known in family parlance as "needing a fresh book.")

And, on the rare occasions I wander around the bookshelves, fruitlessly searching for a book to catch my interest? I call that being "bookless." The fact that I own thousands of books has nothing to do with it--at that moment, I'm bereft, abandoned, lost. Truly tragic. Almost as bad as that poor book-lover who breaks his glasses at the end of that Twilight Zone episode.

[Chris]

Hmm, now if you'd read this book first and then read Kafka... I wonder what you would think?

[anne]

I've been cruising through books lately, too. I went through a period where I read about five books in two weeks (I was having heat-induced insomnia and reading late late into the night). I'm reading Bel Canto right now, which I'm enjoying, although I was a little hesitant about it at first, and I also really enjoyed Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem, which is a truly weird but fascinating book.