white books on the shelf

his books are white.

three titles standing in the shelves of national bookstore in the last week of the sale. when i saw them, i felt a strange attraction to it. i must try and reading his work.

haruki murakami and i met in powerbooks sometime in december last year. i was waiting for a good friend in powerbooks in makati. so there i was, pouring over the titles and the authors in the store. but something about norwegian wood asked me to stop by and see of his other works. i did not carry enough cash then, so i said that i would be back.

i was not able to come back though.

so when i saw dance, dance, dance, a wild sheep chase and a wind up bird chronicle, i told ava and myself: it is now or never.

i grabbed a copy of dance, dance, dance.

finished it in a week.

the day before the national sale ended, i found out two things:

(1) national in sm davao carries only one copy of each of the three titles. so, got a wild sheep chase, the last would have to wait; and
(2) i have a new favorite writer.

maybe its the main character of the two books that captivates me. he (is nameless) nears thirty at the chase book and is 34 in the dance one. but the connection is deeper than that.

the themes are even inter-connected without the feeling of murakami doing a hard sell (i.e. forcing it on the readers). he does not do references and all that. i (and probably all readers) was surprised how similar events were used in both books without making you feel at a loss of perspective and of details.

his two books are magical and conveys the workings of the mind of a modern man. surrealist, modernist, call it what you may.

maybe that is why i ride his groove.