The City and Its Uncertain Walls

#Reading log

2024-12-10: Haruki Murakami has been one of the most influential authors for me since I started reading regularly in 2012. I remember picking up 📚 1Q84 on the iPad so many years ago. How fascinating that book was to me. Then it’s been an ongoing relationship over the years, but now it’s been a long time since I read Murakami. It was just coincidence that I stumbled upon this new release in the Kindle store. And it fit in perfect before the Christmas holidays. It reads as beautifully as ever. His style is to nail down the everyday essentials to the most simple style.

2024-12-16: The main character is a man whose name we don’t know. When he’s 17 he meets a girl from a writing contest, and they start going out together. They take walks and talk about everything. One day she tells him that she’s only a shadow—her real self exists in a town far away, with a high wall. The boy and girl lives in different cities but they exchange letters often. But at one point the letters don’t come from her anymore. Later on in life, the man falls into a hole and finds himself in the city she mentioned. It’s apart from reality and there no one has a shadow. There’s a gatekeeper who is the only one allowed to exit the city. There are unicorns strolling around, they call them beasts—and they die when winter sets in. The man works in the local library. He’s a dream reader there. He hopes to find the dreams of his lost love. This is typical Murakami style. His books are whacky but so down to earth. They describe motion of the everyday life. But they introduce this mystical air to it. Something that’s just a little bit unreal.

2024-12-18: The concept of a boundary between a world over here and a world over there. It’s about this fine line of reality and dream. What is real? Sometimes it could be hard to tell. This is a theme that crosses through all of Murakami’s books.