From the Bookshelf of Josei and Seinen Readers…

1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)

Haruki Murakami,

Jay Rubin (Translator)

Start date: December 1, 2013

Finish date: December 28, 2013

Discussion: Novel/Light Novel Discussions

Why we're reading this: 1Q84 was chosen in a poll by the members for Winter 2013.
[close] 1Q84 was chosen in a poll by the members for Winter 2013.

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Novel/Light Novel Discussions

* About this folder
By Mike · 1 post · 8 views

last updated Nov 25, 2014 09:20AM

Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation
By Mike · 60 posts · 14 views

last updated Apr 04, 2015 04:48AM

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What Members Thought

Jan 05, 2012 Phoebe A rated it really liked it

Shelves: japanese, love-story, fantasy-surreal, loooooong, 1305-list, bts-reads

No matter what other people say, I still love Murakami's work. I'm a fan (and there's nothing you can do about it! lol).

His pattern is still there. Let me show you the Murakami bingo: (view spoiler)
But his works never fail to amuse me.

Tengo is a math teacher and an aspiring novelist. He is only working, however, behind the scenes as he is editing and being a ghost writer. Komatsu, his boss, asked him to rewrite Fuka-Eri’s novel because he sees potential in it. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2015 Selena Pigoni rated it it was ok

Shelves: japan-stuff, timey-wimey, just-no, jnln-bc

This book. Was long. I thought it would never end. Not that I mind long books. Lord knows some of the Harry Potter books are as long as this one.

No, the problem with this one was that it seemed to be long for the sake of being long.

There's so much pointless description and extraneous detail. There are points where whole passages of books are quoted to us. I don't mean a paragraph here or there. I mean three or four pages worth. In a row. About Gilyaks. Which don't have anything to do with what's This book. Was long. I thought it would never end. Not that I mind long books. Lord knows some of the Harry Potter books are as long as this one.

No, the problem with this one was that it seemed to be long for the sake of being long.

There's so much pointless description and extraneous detail. There are points where whole passages of books are quoted to us. I don't mean a paragraph here or there. I mean three or four pages worth. In a row. About Gilyaks. Which don't have anything to do with what's going on in this book. We get treated to pages itemizing exactly what Tengo did in the seaside town his father is hospitalized in. I found myself skipping paragraphs and even pages because it was all stuff I really didn't need to know and didn't care to know.

There was also the repetitive narrative. Between what finished as a book with at least four perspectives, we had entire scenes repeat through the eyes of different characters without learning anything new. Just about everything with Ushikawa could have been cut and I wouldn't have noticed (in fact, I might have been happier, but I'll talk about that later). Ushikawa's investigation just reveals things we the reader already know and takes chapters to do it. Not short chapters, mind you. These were the same length as the others in the book or even longer. We also had the same scene in the classroom 20-or-so years ago that repeated at least three times without much detail added any of those times. There's a point where repetition stops reinforcing certain aspects and just becomes super annoying and wastes time. 1Q84 was well past that point for me.

Character-wise, things were... okay. I liked Aomame and Tengo well enough. Aomame is an assassin, has a chip on her shoulder, and is generally a well-rounded character. Tengo is a writer/math-teacher who gets in over his head and is also a generally well-rounded character. I liked seeing how their stories played out, for the most part, and how their stories were beginning to overlap.

Then there were the other characters, Ushikawa in particular. I hated Ushikawa. A part of me hopes that you are supposed to detest Ushikawa, that he's meant to be that horrible character you hate. From what I can tell, however, this wasn't the case. There are whole chapters centered around him. If he was meant to be disliked, you wouldn't have had to sit in the back seat of his story for so freaking long, and I HATED that time. He's a creep who stalks and spies on people. He's a liar and he only cares about himself. Every moment I spent in his PoV was agony.

Overall, the story was pretty good, but could have been better if not for the amount of time-wasting I felt was going on. This story takes forever to get started, has a pretty good middle part when everything's actually happening, but then slows to a crawl at the end again. As for the ending itself, I think I disliked it simply because of how long it took to get there. It just wasn't worth all that slogging through never-ending blah-blah-blah, you know? ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 25, 2014 Megha rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: south-east-asia, 2015, sci-fi, japan

If we go by creativity, the story line is very unique, interesting concept. However I found the writing was very armature given the authour's standard (or perhaps the effect was lost in translation). There were few glimpses of quality writing but most of the part remained unimpressive.

Just like any Murakami novel, here too the characters were unemotional, detached. So were the conversation between the characters, highly superficial and unreal.

Even the end was so abrupt that you would feel that a ...more

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Dec 24, 2013 Mike marked it as dnf · review of another edition

Quick notes: Never got past the second chapter. It's not that I'm not interested nor that this is bad, but there was something missing to compel me past the deliberate pace and extremely dense writing.

I'll likely revisit someday, but with so many other things to read it will be a long time. ...more

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Jan 20, 2014 L.G. rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy-horror

This book took me several months to finish. I would put it away for a few weeks and then continue. This is the second book I have read by this author. Although I enjoy his works, I have to be in a certain mood to be able to enjoy them and not become distracted.

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Aug 15, 2013 Tani rated it did not like it

Shelves: male-author, fiction, 1001-books-you-must-read, 2013

Ugh. Did not enjoy this at all. Perhaps my expectations were too high? Regardless, not at all thrilled. In fact, bored out of my mind. So glad that it's time to move on. ...more

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