I like to blog about the books I've enjoyed. I don't know if my words have ever influenced anyone or if they ever will but sharing my passion for the books helps me feel connected to all the book lovers of the world. For me, books, both physically and conceptually, embody the ideal of wisdom; the idea that there is truth worth knowing. Authors record the wisdom and the book transports it and when you read a book you consume part of the author; you become connected to something other than yourself. Even if the book isn't great the connection remains. Our memory binds us to the ideas we consumed.
Sometimes the wisdom of a book is concrete. It lays out in discrete words and images some knowledge the author wants to pass on. Other times the wisdom is obtuse; the meaning is ambiguous and needs to be mentally measured and prodded to be understood. The reader is left staring at his or her reflection in the cryptic mirror of the words trying to figure out what really happened.
I've gone down this odd route for a blog post because I just finished a really good book called Kafka on the Shore that falls into the obtuse category. It was written by a Japanese novelist named Haruki Murakami. Don't let my introduction, or the name of the novel, scare you; Kafka on the Shore is fairly short at 448 pages and an easy read written in straight forward prose.
The story unfolds on two separate threads that alternate from chapter to chapter. The first thread follows a teen named Kafka Tamura. Kafka is haunted by his abandonment by his mother and a disturbing oedipal prophecy made by his father. The second thread follows a half man named Satoru Nakata. (I call Nakata a half man because during his childhood he experienced something that, for lack of a better description, stole part of his soul.) Nakata is a blank slate, and a man with a weak shadow, pursuing a predestined fate he doesn't understand.
These two threads weave a story that is at once very entertaining and very mind bending. The duality of the reading experience is further carried out through the themes of the book. Everything has two sides, two meanings - it's two, two and two through out the book. I imagine even the mysteries of the book would come clearer on a second reading and the book is good enough to warrant it.
Only you can judge whether this novel sounds like something you would be interested in but if you find yourself at the library or the bookstore and you're looking for something good to read think about this blog post and Kafka on the Shore. We will be inexorably connected from that point on.
