flemmings | (no subject)

My copy of 1Q84 pt 1 arrived today, speeding from Japan as if from New York. I hadn't realized it was a hardcover. Perhaps that will make for easier reading, or perhaps not. When Murakami is good, he is very very good, and when he is bad he's A Wild Sheep Chase, which goes nowhere and takes forever to do it. Cannot work up any enthusiasm for that book, and I've barely got to the sheep so far.

I'm being injected in the knee Wednesday, with instructions to stay off feet for the next 48 hours thereafter. I suppose I could read the Murakami and call it Japanese practice. But I'm much more likely to read The Kingdom of Gods, which I was saving for precisely this occasion.

On an unrelated note, why do people who write prefaces feel it necessary to summarize the plot? Don't they realize this is an unforgivable sin? Recent instance was The Life of Milarepa, that I bought with the $10 I won in the lottery Saturday night. And that isn't even a novel. I was expecting the preface to give me some background to the history of Tibetan Buddhism, and got it, but then I was in the middle of Whosis telling me the highpoints of Milarepa's life. Dude, sorry to be so shallow, but that's why I'm reading the book.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For the front of the cover shows somebody shot,
And the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

-- if I remember my Chesterton correctly.

Back covers will occasionally still do this, I note disapprovingly, even mystery novels. (I suppose you must tell me who gets murdered first, but it's beyond beyond to add things like 'and then her partner is fatally wounded and Sue must track a relentless psychotic killer.')

1Q84, FTR, tells me nothing but the title.

Ugh, the back copy on the paperback version of book 1 of Cyteen is one massive spoiler! It would work fine for the omnibus, but for the single volume it spoils the middle of the damn plot. >.>

Some publicist working late and not thinking, no doubt.