BOOKS READ 10: DANCE DANCE DANCE BY HARUKI MURAKAMI.
I loved this book.
Absolutely loved it.
Josh and I had been walking around gastown and had already seen two used bookstores and we walked past one (Albion) and this book was on display and I was absolutely elated to see it, but the person working at the bookstore wouldn’t be back for another five minutes. So Josh smoked a cigarette and the guy still hadn’t come back and Josh told me that you can find Murakami anywhere and we should just keep walking. Begrudgingly I went. Murakami is easy to find new, but not in a used edition (everyone and their dog reads Murakami in the used book store world), and as we went over before, I only buy books in the flesh when it’s used.
We somehow ended up in gastown a few days later and went by the store again and the book (!) was there (along with other great ones, the place is a total gem).
The owner said that he didn’t like Murakami, but this book, this book was fantastic. He had to be the first person that I heard say he didn’t like Murakami (but I guess it’s bound to happen), and I asked him why and he said that the guy was weird and a good example of why he didn’t like him was “Kafka on the Shore”. He thought there was an unnecessary amount of gratuitous violence in the book and Murakami could have only put that in because he truly enjoyed it, which is kind of disturbing. I haven’t read the book, but okay, understandable. But the owner loved “Dance Dance Dance”.
And I loved “Dance Dance Dance” too. It is definitely my favorite Murakami book so far (second would be “Sputnik Sweetheart”, and I’ve only read “Norwegian Wood” and “Blind Willow Sleeping Woman”). It was Murakami at it’s best to me, where you are reading dreamily and somewhat sleepily along and then something happens/is said that hits you like a ton of bricks out of nowhere that connects every small thing that has happened in a big way and it just makes everything around you stop and you feel only the enormous weight of that occurrence. It’s exhilarating.
I also love this cover the most out of all the covers John Gall has done for the Murakami books at Vintage.
