Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Dec 22, 2011

Ian rated it:

Twenty Revolutions

My most feared birthday was my 20th.

For people older than me, the most significant birthday was their 21st.

But when the age of legal adulthood was reduced to 18, turning 21 no longer had the same significance it once had.

Before then, you could be conscripted into the armed forces at 18, but you could not drink alcohol until you turned 21.

So, if you were old enough to die for your country, surely you were old enough to More...

72 comments like (51 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2011

Lou rated it:

This Story is on one side a story of misadventure and a melancholic exploration of adolescent love and another side a thought-provoking and poignant study of memory, morality and mortality. Murakami never disappoints and always writes with a poetic richness that leaves almost every line hanging with symbolic possibility, loved it!
The main protagonist takes you back to the 1960s and his youthful goings on with his peers, his adventures are steamy so comes with adult warning! The story is More...

14 comments like (34 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2010

Weinz rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

14 comments like (27 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2009

Amang rated it:

Setelah perkenalan yang mulus lewat karya pertama Haruki Murakami yang berjudul Dengarlah Nyanyian Angin, aku semakin mantap untuk menjajal novel kelimanya yang beken: Norwegian Wood. Desas-desus buku ini bikin mual karena vulgar sudah lebih dulu beredar di beberapa komentar teman-teman Goodreads, tapi berpegang pada buku pertamanya yang sebetulnya juga sudah vulgar, aku pikir isi novel yang ini pun pasti tidak terlalu jauh melenceng. Harus dipahami betul-betul, Haruki Murakami bukan penulis kac More...

21 comments like (19 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2011

Joel rated it:

This is apparently the Murakami book that "everyone" in Japan has read, and disaffected protagonist Toru Watanabe is apparently a Holden Caulfield-esque figure for a lot of Japanese youth. To me, though, the book less reflects Catcher in the Rye than it predicts Zach Braff's Garden State, an ode to a time in life when the big choices seem so big that you don't end up making them at all, and find yourself instead drawn to the safety and comfort of nostalgia and memory.

Though More...

16 comments like (24 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2007

Kate rated it:

Book Review: Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (Vintage, London, 2000)

I have never been good at reading translations. It's always in the back of my mind that what I'm reading is not the piece in its original forms: it is not how the author originally wished it to be presented. I don't know, therefore, whether it is to Murakami or Norwegian Wood's translator Jay Rubin who I should give the credit for keeping me thoroughly engaged with this one.

I immediately connected to To More...

1 comment like (22 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2011

Kristin rated it:

I can't explain it! I want to inhale the pages of this book, grind them up, and snort them right up my nose! I want in placed directly in my brain, my very Bloodstream! Murakami's words make me feel just like Nicole Kidman in that scene in Moulin Rouge where she is rolling around on that fur rug in her negligee, moaning and writhing in pleasure and saying 'Yes! Yes! Dirty words! More! More! Naughty words!' Although Murakami's words aren't so much naughty and dirty as they are prismatic More...

2 comments like (13 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2007

Katherine rated it:

This is supposed to be Murakami's "normal" novel, the one you can give your friends who aren't ready to deal with house-husbands facing their subconscious at the bottom of a well or with doppelgangers trapped in ferris wheels.

The story begins with Toru and Naoko, a pair of painfully shy students whose relationship is always overshadowed by the suicide of their mutual friend many years ago. While Naoko retreats further into herself and her unhappiness, Toru slowly and uncons More...

0 comments like (30 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Astrid rated it:

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will More...

0 comments like (21 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Ben rated it:

There are three main themes: The unpredictable nature of growing up, the sadness of death, and love. Essentially it's a love story, and it felt like your typical one, until about halfway through. Then I slowly realized that it had become something so much deeper than that; something so much more.

Part of its attraction had to do with the feeling that I'm similar to--and that I strongly understand--the protagonist. Plus I've had my own complicated set of relationships recently, so More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Yulia rated it:

How this book became one of Murakami's most famous and popular baffles me. In fact, when asked about it in an interview, Murakami himself said that he was puzzled by its popularity and that it really isn't what he wants to be known for.

What can I say? There's too little of the characters that do spark my interest and much too much of the depressive girlfriend and her kooky friend at the mental institution. Also, the scenes which were supposed to be funny about his college roomma More...

12 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Kelly rated it:

Close your eyes. Feel the breeze sweep the hair off your neck. Breathe in. Breathe out. Hear the birds welcoming the day. Smell the dew-soaked grass. Breathe in. Breathe out. Open your eyes and soak in all the beauty and heartache today has to offer...This is Murakami's greatest ability; he pulls you into his own world and, at the same time, awakens you to your own. It is also his cruelest trick.

And while I love Murakami and could talk about his books all day, it really is difficult to More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2010

mp rated it:

I had started out thinking that at its heart this book was a love story. But it is about so much more than that - love, coming-of-age, death, loss and sorrow. Murakami does an amazing job at putting complicated feelings into words. I loved how he keeps reminding one of the simplest pleasures of life all along the story - beauty of the sunset, walking on a moonlit path, smell of the coffee, freshness of a spring day, caress of a gentle breeze and of course music. It is only fair to give a part of More...

6 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2008

Seth rated it:

Having read Kafka on the Shore, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, After the Quake, and Sputnik Sweetheart, I decided it was high time I read the novel that really put Haruki Murakami on the Map of Superstardom. Norwegian Wood, by all accounts, was the work that made his later triumphs possible. Still, I approached the work guardedly, recognizing that popularity and quality rarely go with hands clasped in loving security.

In short, my fears were deftly allayed.

Norwegian Wood, while b More...

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2007

Ed rated it:

Murakami has three kinds of writing: surrealist short-fiction, short romance novels, and epic labyrinthian meditations. Personally, the romance is my least favorite of his styles. Not that I dislike them, but they tend to wear thin on me after a few. That said, once I finally got around to Norwegian Wood, one of the first and most infamous of Murakami romances, I can see why the formula became a temptation. Definately my favorite of Murakami's short love stories, forget the whole "Catcher i More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2011

Bel rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (31 people liked it)

Apr 16, 2011

Marco rated it:

Da sempre mi sono chiesto come vivessero i giapponesi. Ora lo so. I giapponesi bevono, fanno sesso (tanto sesso) e nel tempo libero, quando proprio non hanno un cazzo da fare, si suicidano. Ecco, di questo parla Norwegian Wood. Potremmo chiudere qui l'abuso di una delle più belle canzoni dei Beatles per scopi illeciti. Ma visto che sono una persona giudiziosa e ho voglia di divertirmi, continuerò a sparare sulla croce rossa. Da notare il fatto che ho dato due stelline e non una. Del resto, anche More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2010

Sandybanks rated it:

“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

Norwegian Wood is supposed to be Murakami’s realistic novel; there are no mind-bending revelations, or even cats that talk, but a strong sense of ephemerality pervades the novel in a way that is at times surreal. There is nothing extraordinary about Toru Watanabe, the first-year student protagonist; he is studying drama, though he seems to have no More...

12 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Greg rated it:

A Japanese version of The Catcher in the Rye, only with more atmosphere and depth, and a lot more sex? Does that sound like something you might be interested in? Then, I'd humbly submit Haruki Murakami's slim, ethereal novel, Norwegian Wood.

Norwegian Wood is, of course, a Beatles song, the opening lyric of which is "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." The song itself, as well as the idea presented in its lyric of first love and the stinging memory thereof, a More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2008

erry rated it:

"Kematian bukanlah akhir dari kehidupan, tetapi merupakan bagian darinya"

- Haruki Murakami dalam Norwegian Wood -

Norwegian Wood, adalah sebuah kisah tentang generasi muda Jepang di era tahun enam puluhan. Ketika negeri sakura ini mulai menggeliat bangkit pasca keruntuhan mereka di PD II.
Ini adalah era kebangkitan dan kebebasan. Musik the Beattles, rock, dansa dansi, alcohol, sex bebas, kaum hippies dan lainnya.

Keanehan dunia kematian ternyata More...

41 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2009

Dini rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

13 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Fiona rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2008

Malbadeen rated it:

UGH!!!
This book bugged the hell out of me for a few reasons:
#1. There is a somewhat extended passage devoted to a lesbian encounter that wouldn't be so terrible in and of itself, as sex in general is a major topic BUT the novel as a whole leaned towards describing the physiological experience the woman were having and would brush over the mens again and again. There would be like 5 paragraphs on the woman and then 1 sentence were it would say something along the lines of, "she t More...

7 comments like (13 people liked it)

Mar 30, 2007

cindy rated it:

Love, loneliness, the constant desire to connect. It's a gentle, beautiful, haunting novella.

Midori: "So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year."

Watanabe: "Wow, and did your search pay off?"

M: "That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I"m looking for perfection. That makes it tough."

W: "Waiting for the perfect More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2008

sisterimapoet rated it:

It's been about ten years since I read any Murakami. When I read it then it was as part of a 'get to know some Japanese literature' thing I was trying. My Japanese friend told me that her friends all liked Murakami, but that her father disapproved. He recommended Mishima.

I think when I read Murakami then I thought he was ok, but possibly trying too hard to write a Western worshipping Japanese novel.

Apparently 'Norwegain Wood' is the most widely read Murakami. But I th More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Geoff rated it:

"Norwegian Wood" departs from Murakami's more surreal magical realism, and is often derided as "just a love story"; it is anything but. On the surface this is the story of a loner exploring two kinds of intimacies, one tragic and distant, the other exciting but comparitively mundane. "Norwegian Wood" exemplifies Murakami's often-overlooked gift for filling his tales with layer upon layer of reality, often weaving the everyday and the impossible, the bitter with the More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Michael rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2007

Martine rated it:

Norwegian Wood is a beautifully evocative account of Japanese student life in the late 1960s. It's a bit sentimental by Murakami's standards, but boy, is it engaging. At turns humorous, fascinating, melancholy and poignant, this story about an unusual student who is torn between two rather unusual women is probably the best book I've read this year. I just love the characters Murakami comes up with. Even the minor characters are special and endearing.

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

ميّ أحمد rated it:

...كانت هذه الرواية أول تجربة لي مع موراكامي
ولم تكن الأخيرة
بالرغم من أنها 398 صفحة تقريبا إلا أنني لم أشعر معها بالوقت
هكذا! تقرأ ولاتشعر بنفسك
شفافية الحوارات تأخذ بعقلك
الإهتمام بالتفاصيل تأخذ بعقلك
تلك التفاصيل التي تعيشك الحدث وكأنه موجود بالداخل
شخصيات غريبة كثيرة في هذه الرواية غير أن أسلوب الكاتب بالغ الشفافية وهذه ميزة يتميز بها أغلب من قرأتُ لهم في الأدب الياباني حيث لا تشعر متى بدأت ومتى انتهيت
أعجبتني لغة الكاتب وفلسفته حو More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2009

Víctor rated it:

Tuve consciencia de la existencia de este libro en mis cotidianas visitas al Gandhi en Monterrey, la cual quedaba a unos pasos de la oficina. Se me hizo curioso la insistencia de exhibir varios títulos de este autor en la sección de novelas. Consulté la entrada de wikipedia de Haruki Murakami y sólo vi "literatura pop" y me repetía a mi mismo que había cosas más interesantes que leer.

Llego a España y los títulos del autor los vuelvo a encontrar en prácticamente a todos las More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

reviews