Well, this book made feel less worried about the “it was all a dream” fear; but it was so tense, I felt vaguely anxious the whole time I was reading it (even when not actually reading). This was the only book I hadn’t read previously, and now I am really excited for book six. So much so, I just spent an hour playing with Rowling’s site.

Murakami’s second novel was a direct sequel to Hear the Wind Sing and was only published in English as a Japanese language guide. I had to interlibrary loan this one from Missoula, Montana. Montana! I got a kick out of that.

Having read about this book in the lit crit book I just read, I already knew a lot of what happens in the story, in some detail in fact. But it was still a worthy read and definitely made me want to play pinball by the end.

manda just reminded me that I never read this book, having been much intrigued when it was published in the US last year with some mixed press. Readers who don’t have a nerdy interest in the finer points of grammar, as well as a working knowledge of British humour, probably wouldn’t find much in this “zero tolerance approach to punctuation” to compel or even vaguely entertain. But if the idea of anthropomorphizing punctuation marks sounds entirely straightforwardly amusing,…

As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs as “separator” (punctuation marks are traditionally either “separators” or “terminators”) that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organising words into sensible groups and making them stay put: sorting and dividing; circling and herding; and of course darting off with a peremptory “woof” to round up any wayward subordinate clause that makes a futile bolt for semantic freedom.

…then you’ve probably already read this.

While vaguely biographical, this book is mostly a critical look at Murakami’s work (up until its publication). Jay Rubin is one of the handful of the translators who have brought Murakami’s work into English; as such this book looks at more than just the works available in English, since Rubin obviously has the means to read the assorted as-yet-untranslated stories. It’s presented in chronological order with anecdotal insights into Murakami’s life often inserted as asides and occasionally longer biographic passages.

When I first read Norwegian Wood several years ago, I wasn’t entirely impressed. Sputnik Sweetheart only made me uninterested, but after the quake was so good, I gave him another chance. Now I feel that I probably read my least favorite of his books first.

Readers expecting to learn where certain elements of his book derive from may be disappointed to hear how almost boring his life has been. Though he did at one point own a jazz club in Tokyo, much like the character in South of the Border, West of the Sun.

I’m sad I have to return this to the library today as I didn’t really get through it all, though I had felt that it will probably end up on my wishlist when I first took it out anyhow. Written by the woman who started the gardening website You Grow Girl, it’s the guide to gardening you would expect if you’ve ever looked at the site before. In the introduction, Trail describes how the site and this book came to be:

… Before I knew it my urban deck was littered with pots of this, that, and the next. It was then that I discovered I had a Godzilla-sized hobby on my hands and it was time to pick up a book or two. Boy was I in for a shock. I discovered that there were few publications in any media that appealed to my perspective as a young, frugal urban gardener with no permanent space and only a sweltering hot deck to my name. The gardening world focused on a very specific demographic—older suburban ladies—and I wasn’t a part of it. Gardening books took it for granted that I had a sprawling backyard and an eager bank account and wasn’t it all so deathly boring!

Full of handy information for beginners to more experienced gardeners, it has a smart design and beautiful photographs and illustrations and includes projects geared toward gardens of all sizes, from a backyard plot to window boxes.