{"id":534,"date":"2017-06-28T16:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T22:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=534"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:23:16","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:23:16","slug":"book-the-wind-up-bird-chronicle-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/28\/book-the-wind-up-bird-chronicle-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1408531948l\/23002156.jpg\" alt=\"The Wind-up Bird Chronicle\" width=\"159\" height=\"250\" \/>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nYear: 1994<br \/>\nAuthor: Haruki Murakami<br \/>\nLength:\u00a01,572 minutes \/ 26.2 hours<\/p>\n<p>A coworker of mine suggested this book to me a few months back. The title sounded interesting, so I put it on my Overdrive wish list and waited for it to become available. Both he and I have a somewhat thorough understanding of Japanese culture, so once I got into this book, I found myself imagining it as an anime. Of course, because <em>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle<\/em> was originally written in Japanese, there are plenty of cultural idiosyncrasies that might be hard to understand from a different cultural viewpoint. At times, the content is a bit weird, the sex awkward, and the violence strangely surgical.<\/p>\n<p>What was quite refreshing with the narrative in <em>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle<\/em>, was its timelessness. Written in the early 1990\u2019s and set in the mid-1980\u2019s, only a few technological items (i.e. a land line, an early computer, etc.) haven\u2019t held up well over time. Everything else about the story is so character-driven that it could probably happen at any time. These characters are odd, to say the least. From psychic sisters named after Mediterranean islands to a wealthy perfectionist mother and her mute son, many of their sub-plots do end up tying together in the not-so-surprising ending.<\/p>\n<p>As a \u201cchronicle,\u201d the book does feel episodic at times, hence why I imagined it as an anime. Because I have seen a lot of anime, the content of this book didn\u2019t surprise me. There\u2019s some weird stuff out there, and Japan seems to create quite a bit of it. While the sex and violence might be off-putting to some, it\u2019s not necessarily erotic or graphic in its presentation; it is merely a fact of life. A strange life, to say the least, but a life nonetheless. Parts \u201cslice of life,\u201d \u201charem,\u201d and \u201cpsychological thriller,\u201d in terms of genre, <em>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle<\/em> is an excellent book for anyone already accustomed to Japanese storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>A prime example of an almost \u201cstandard\u201d Japanese plot, I give <em>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Year: 1994 Author: Haruki Murakami Length:\u00a01,572 minutes \/ 26.2 hours A coworker of mine suggested this book to me a few months back. The title sounded interesting, so I put it on my Overdrive wish list and waited for it to become available. Both he and I have a somewhat thorough [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,54],"tags":[685,616,55,686,688,8,687],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-book","tag-685","tag-anime","tag-book","tag-haruki-murakami","tag-japanese","tag-review","tag-the-wind-up-bird-chronicle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}