Takashi?

>>25412380
He is no genius and the three of his books I've read (Miso Soup, Rain, Piercing) felt kinda samey, but he would never write book as shit as norwegian wood and for that alone he is better.

>>25412380
I read In the Miso Soup years ago, and liked it. Wanted to read Coin Locker Babies after it, but ended up reading something else and just forgot about it.

>>25412380
The blackpill is that Japan doesnt produce any good literature. You need only take a look at their speculative fiction, where all authors remain intoxicated by the compounding effects of drinking too much of Franz Kafka's semen.

>>25412425
>norwegian wood
the story was meh but the writing was enjoyable

I picked up The City And Its Uncertain Walls and it was mid desu

Its about high school sweethearts and the girl uses this metaphor like :the real me lives in an alternate reality in a walled city" but it turns out the walled city is real and the narrator starts ending up there by accident when hes like 40. The walls move by themselves, people have their shadows taken away (their shadows it turns out are like doppelgangers or twins) and there are these unicorns and dream-logic type things happen there.

Huge pacing issues in the middle and many entire stanzas would be almost word for word repeats of previous ones because the same thing was happening. The world building was good and it was interesting at parts. There was a pretty cool horror scene near the end, and the setting itself did a decent amount of work.

It was sold to me as "existential romance" and I heard Sputnik Sweetheart was good, so I was expecting it be be a bit sexy and have some yearning. But in this one all of that stuff was crammed into the first 30 pages because it was about that feel when you have a gf in high school but you fumble that baddieand never move on or have any more romance ever again. There wasn’t that much whining about it either, they just became a content celibate librarian. Other women were introduced and we got the subtlest of teasing of romance with them but it doesn't deliver really, and Im not talking about goon material either. The lack of titilation is not my main qualm, and it isn't that i have brain rot from living in the 21st century: It is the fact that 100+ pages were literally redundant.

The Magicians Nephew my C.S. Lewis is a bit similar if you like "other world" stuff, but that one is better written.

Overall it was okay if you can handle tedious writing for the moments of brilliance, but it needed an editor to say "no." Maybe I would read a better book by him. I heard the surreal town is lifted from an earlier book of his. You can skip this one.

>>25412555
Retardnon, this thread is about RYU Murakami

>>25412380
He's the Japanese version of a weeb making a collage of his favorite anime but he with westernslop instead.

>>25412921
That's Haruki Murakami you faggot. Ryu Murakami writes about japanese underworld and pretty much hates soulless western consumerism, In the Miso Soup is all about that.
>>25412472
The writing was atrocious, I wanted to put on steel toed shoes and start kicking the retard who wrote all those LE EPIC MUSIC REFERENCE into back of his head until his skull would break and only bloody mush would remain on the floor (similar to what I would like to do to Warwick Davis)

>>25412915
>Charlie Bukowski, not Charles Bukowski

my bad, I only skimmed the thread for keywords. "Thoughts" on "Murakami." My review of the novel still stands. I did want to mention also that in The City, the dialogue was especially stiff - either smalltalk or exposition, or "as you know," type stuff, and i doubt it was because it was originally Japanese because I read No Longer Human, and the dialogue in that book is engaging.

When I saw mention of Norwegian Wood, I was certain I had the right guy. Ryu might be more up my alley.

>>25413013
>Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail of that day in the meadow. Washed clean of summer's dust by days of gentle rain, the mountains wore a deep, brilliant green. The October breeze set white fronds of head-tall grasses swaying. One long streak of cloud hung pasted across a dome of frozen blue. It almost hurt to look at that faroff sky. A puff of wind swept across the meadow and through her hair before it slipped into the woods to rustle branches and send back snatches of distant barking-a hazy sound that seemed to reach us from the doorway to another world. We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright, red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods. As we ambled along, Naoko spoke to me of wells.

its not bad desu, im guessing it's better in japanese. but again i agree - the story and the music references aren't my cup of tea either

>>25412380
He's the better one.

>>25413333
checked

>>25413333
which book should I start with?