Haruki Murakami

So this guy is my current focus in Japanese literature.  Last year I had a general category of Japanese literature, which kept on leaning towards Murakami, and I have read a couple of his books over the years, but it has been in the back of my mind to get a closer look at him, his life, his works.  So last winter I began to collect his books until I had them all ( excepting the latest one, Killing Commendatore because it's still in hardcover and the rest of my collection is soft). 
This is my idea of fun, to just focus on a single author for a year or two depending on their body of work, and usually I purchase their entire bibliography because I know that these are books that I will want to revisit again like old friends.   Last year I listened to a couple of Murakami's audio books but there was a great deal of pleasure in reading the books this year.  As is my habit, I begin at the beginning and read on in order of publishing until the end.  Starting with these two gems

  which I enjoyed immensely.  I feel as if I have been given a bead on who the author is.  All of my research tells me that he writes from his life and everything is flavoured with his music, his occupations, and the literature he reads.  Not that I think what happens to his characters happens to him (though that would be fascinating!).  I feel like I have made a new pal, and he is really very interesting.  What will he do next?

'Fessing Up

Okay... so I didn't even last three months before I went back to my old reading habits.  Which explains why the blog entries dropped off after Spring Break. 
I was too busy reading reading reading! 
I should have known better than to try to curb that.  So I quit, simple as that.    One big difference though is that I want to write again.  So maybe it wasn't a completely futile exercise in trying to modify my behaviour. 
You know how people sometimes put off things for when they retire?  Say that they don't have time now for such indulgences?  Firstly, that just pisses me off.  Not only is it judgmental, it's not true.  What if (and I have seen this happen), you kick the big bucket shortly after you retire?  What if putting off these indulgences now only sour the life that you are currently living?  I have seen this also and I have learnt from it. 
A year or so back, I was thinking about what kind of life I would have once I retired, and it was a shock to realize that I was already living ideally.   Ever since I was a teenager and knew how I would like to live, the fantasy has always been the same; I have always wanted my own home which would be full of all the things I treasured most,  books and music.  So there you are, or should I say here I am! 
I am happiest with a book, so why change that?

It's Right There in The Title!

It's right there in the title!  I'm saying that right off the bat because this time I will be revealing spoilers about this book all over the place...  and I don't feel bad about that.  Well... maybe I should because not everyone has read about Bovine Spongiform Encephelopathy (BSE), so I guess it wouldn't be as readily apparent to everyone!  When I first became vegan, I did a lot of reading: The Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman, Diet For  a New America by John Robbins, Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Markus, The Moral Lives of Animals by Dale Peterson, Vegan Freak by Bob Torres etc.,  plus I've watched  a few programs about Mad Cow Disease and the Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant. 
So when the protagonist of this book, Cameron Smith, starts to show some symptoms, it's not too hard to leap from the big fat hint in the title to BSE.  It didn't stop me from tearing up when his symptoms were confirmed however...  and tearing up again after he is hospitalized and his brain can no longer tell his lungs how to work.   Everything fades to black.   
What happens next I can only describe as an odyssey of the mind.  Cameron's hallucinations take him on a wild ride across America with a classmate and a possessed garden gnome, having bizarre adventures, and experiencing life ...making friends, fighting bad guys, getting lucky with his high school crush.  I know that sounds a little bucket-listy, but Bray really crafted a great story here.  While there is no way to feel good about the fact that Cameron is dying before he really got to live, his hallucinations give him a kind of peace.  A gift before dying.  So yeah...I got a little teary-eyed at the end too. 
 It doesn't really come up at all, how Cameron contracted this disease... and I won't go into it here, except to say that I appreciate the fact that this book wasn't used as an opportunity to preach or teach about this issue.  This was story telling at it's finest and I am grateful to have read it.