≫ Download The Strange Library Haruki Murakami 9781846559211 Books

The Strange Library Haruki Murakami 9781846559211 Books

Download As PDF : The Strange Library Haruki Murakami 9781846559211 Books

The Strange Library Haruki Murakami 9781846559211 Books

Is this supposed to be a joke? A children's book? Has success gone to Murakami's head? So, a kid goes into a library and is lured into a basement maze, where he is locked up by an old man who plans to eat his brain. A ridiculous Mel Brooksean Igor is charged with watching and feeding him. There is an obligatory female phantom, who serves no purpose. Ultimately, the boy and the man is sheep's clothing (no joke) decide to "escape". The boy makes his way home after being missing for three days. His mother, alleged to be very protective of him, says nothing but feeds the boy breakfast. Sheep man is gone. Obligatory phantom girl is gone. Uggg. If Murakami writes another turkey like this, he will certainly no longer be my favorite author. Good thing I only wasted 20 minutes on it.


Tags : The Strange Library [Haruki Murakami] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this is a unique and wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight murakami fans. 'all i did was go to the library to borrow some books'. On his way home from school,Haruki Murakami,The Strange Library,Random House,1846559219

The Strange Library Haruki Murakami 9781846559211 Books Reviews

Haruki Murakami is ever inventive in his prose, but as his poetic cadence combines with the concepts of graphic imagery, it brings even more light to the subtext of the story. The Strange Library is both delightful and surprising, and is highly recommended, as both the digital and the actual paper versions.
The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami is an illustrated novelette with emphasis on the "ette"; it's really just the 1982 short story, "Toshokan kitan" translated into English (it hasn't appeared in any of Murakami's English-language short-story collections) with illustrations by Chip Kidd. It is of interest to careful Murakami readers because it has references to other Murakami works. The Sheep Man makes an appearance, and one cannot help but notice the "other worldliness" of The Strange Library in comparison to the "other world" of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

So, is it worth the $7.99 the book costs on ? Or the $10 it costs for hard copy? I would say, "yes," at least to me. It took me half an hour to read, but at the same time, reading manga volumes rarely takes much longer, and they cost around the same amount. I really think that if you truly love a genre, you should support it, and I love illustrated novelettes and graphic novels. ****1/2
‘“If all they did was lend out knowledge for free, what would the payoff be for them?”
“But that doesn’t give them the right to saw off the tops of people’s heads and eat their brains. Don’t you think that’s going a bit too far?’”

If you haven’t ever read a story by Murakami before, he’s odd. Very odd. I’m trying my best to review this without giving away any spoilers at all for those who just want to read the story and for those who like to dig for the deeper meanings.

That being said, The Strange Library is a short story presented in a lone book. The book itself is odd, the cover has to be flipped open and has very strange vintage Japanese illustrations to match the story. Everything about the story seems simple and straightforward- not digging deep into characters or plots- adding a richness and dreamlike quality to the story.

But, if you take it to the true Murakami level of reading (we’re talking deep philosophy here) then the reader just might see that the story really revolves around the boy, his pet bird, his mother, and death.

<<<<www.readingbifrost.com>>>> visit blog for original review with details (contains spoiler)

Overall The Strange Library was a fabulously odd short short story wether you’re just looking for a quick read or something you can sink your teeth into. I’d suggest getting a hardcopy instead of an ebook for this one just because the Chip Kidd design does add a lot to the story.
Strange Library is a dark work, powerful in its own terms, yet ultimately quite stark and grim.
The first thing to note is the exquisite design of the book. A version will not do. It is a beautiful object and is meant to be handled and appreciated for the artistry of presentation. There are all sorts of little things, like, for instance, a notation on the spine of the book that let's one know that one cannot read the book outside the precincts of the library. So, you, the reader, are also inside the strange library.

The voice of this work is vintage early Murakami Whimsy, laconic humor, a mysterious beautiful girl, a sheepman, labyrinths, and worlds with permeable borders. Critics sometimes note a connection to the French theorist, Lacan, and a theme of ever deferred desire in Murakami. This may be true, but this work is more Heidegger and his notion that all being is "being towards death," for mortality is the overt threat and deep context that suffuses the entire tale with ennui.
For the rest of this, I am going to talk details, so this is a spoiler alert. Don't read further if you do not wish to discover the plot and denouement.

The modern West is secular, superficially optimistic, and more deeply nihilistic. This is my view. We distract ourselves from the ominous and ever present danger of death, which we nonetheless have hidden away as much as possible. Our consumerism is driven by the need for novel spectacle to keep darkness at bay. And yet, we are also still the heirs of Western Christendom. Why this excursus? Because Christianity tells a story of death's defeat. The most fundamental reality is deeply comic, because life has the last word.

So, even a secularist in the West will often bear a trace of religious belief. We like happy endings and we "believe" in them. Thus, Murakami's tale will be unsettling and disappointing, because it subverts hope. Death is victor in this fairly tale for adults.
If one wants a rationalist version that could explain the plot. Here it is. A little boy, thoughtful and sensitive, is living with a sick mother and his pet bird. At a subconscious level, he knows his mother is dying, but he doesn't want to face it. Then one day, his pet bird dies. The death of the bird makes grief and loss existentially real for him. The yawning abyss of loneliness that awaits should his mother die suddenly becomes overwhelmingly real. The little boy hides out in a library for three days. He loses his new shoes. When he returns home, his mother is sweet to him and doesn't berate him, for she is full of unspoken understanding.
The last page of the book is written in tiny print. The boy's voice is reduced to almost nothing. His grief wishes to make tragedy disappear. He announces that his mother has died of a mysterious illness and he is alone. Grim, single m.
In this context, the fabulous tale is an effort to escape what cannot be escaped. That is why the boy's allies disappear and his seemingly successful attempt comes abruptly to nothing. The boy's courteous nature before the menacing old man is a wish that decency and good manners would win out over evil and decay, but it just doesn't. More could be teased out, but this is probably already too prolix.

Bottom line This is a good, early work, but you might feel cheated. You might feel it's unnecessarily bleak and mean. One might alternatively appreciate the work as a blend of adult insight, ingenious design, and child-like dreaming that embodies an idiosyncratic myth. The darkness at the end may appear a relief from sentimental and too cheaply bought victories.
This reader appreciates the latter possibility, but as a believer in what Peter Leithart calls "deep comedy," I was rueful of the ending. I prefer Murakami when he offers a more comic vision, though I suspect his metaphysical agnosticism more naturally tends in this direction.
Is this supposed to be a joke? A children's book? Has success gone to Murakami's head? So, a kid goes into a library and is lured into a basement maze, where he is locked up by an old man who plans to eat his brain. A ridiculous Mel Brooksean Igor is charged with watching and feeding him. There is an obligatory female phantom, who serves no purpose. Ultimately, the boy and the man is sheep's clothing (no joke) decide to "escape". The boy makes his way home after being missing for three days. His mother, alleged to be very protective of him, says nothing but feeds the boy breakfast. Sheep man is gone. Obligatory phantom girl is gone. Uggg. If Murakami writes another turkey like this, he will certainly no longer be my favorite author. Good thing I only wasted 20 minutes on it.