Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage in Reading with Style

Aug 31, 2014 Penny (Literary Hoarders) rated it liked it

Shelves: kobo-book, what-book-club-read, opinionless-bookclub, books-read-in-2014

3.5. The first 40% was making me unhappy. Very colourless for certain. Same Murakami as the one I read before: bizarre dreams, breasts and penises. Then Tsukuru went on his "pilgrimage" and it improved more then I expected. ...more

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Jul 10, 2014 Karen Michele Burns rated it really liked it

Haruki Murakami is a master of the writing craft. His newest book is really quite straightforward yet intriguing as Tsukuru Tazaki sets out on a pilgrimage of discovery. He was rejected by his tight group of high school friends, but never found out why, so he sets out to solve the mystery almost 20 years later. Murakami’s elegant prose is the real star of the show, though. This offering has just a smattering of the magical components of his other recent works and although I missed that in the bo ...more

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Aug 16, 2014 Snowtulip rated it liked it

Shelves: paper-book, own

2.5-3.0

It's hard to imagine that I might be losing steam for one of my favorite authors. This is reminiscent of his earlier works, but to me the story didn't connect together enough (this information is presented and just left hanging out there) and at the end of the story, the loose ends are to dominant for me to feel like a satisfied reader. ...more

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May 12, 2016 Rachel N. rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2016, japan, finland, translated, friendship, relationships

Tsukuru Tazaki was part of a close group of five friends in high school. Then after he went to college in Tokyo to study rail road station design his friends suddenly cut him out of their lives. Now in his 30s Tsukuru's girlfriend Sara thinks he should reconnect with his former friends to help heal the wound that are preventing him from living a full life. I have not read Murakami before and I really wasn't that enthralled by this work at least. It took a long time for anything to happen and tha ...more

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Mar 22, 2016 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, 2016-read, rws-2016-spring

The reader for the audiobook did a great job with this story. I really enjoyed listening to him and having the music played at the end of the book was also a nice addition after hearing about the particular piano piece throughout the novel.

This Murakami is much more like Norwegian Wood than like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Tsukuru doesn't have a well to climb down into or a portal into an alternate world. But he does have a process of realizing that a small life is still a l ...more

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