A Reader

I read a lot, but most of what I read is not literary. From time to time I tackle a book blessed by the literary types, possibly just to try and convince myself I'm not a Philistine. Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest are a couple of bricks I've read but been left more disappointed than impressed. Not that the authors lack talent and skill. I rather liked the books of Delillo and Franzen that I read - again just one of each, but I've never been impressed enough to read another, yet anyway.

Haruki Murakami is often compared to the first three of these, but I'm already reading my fifth Murakami novel - this time, A Wild Sheep Chase, and as always, I'm sucked right in. Murakami is more accessible, I think, and his imaginative power more impressive. Also, his characters, who are all Japanese, feel more real and vivid to me than the Americans who populate the novels of the American writers mentioned above.

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