Wind/Pinball
Two Novels
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Narrated by:
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Kirby Heyborne
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.
These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age—the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat—are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat.
Widely available in English for the first time ever, newly translated, and featuring a new introduction by Murakami himself, Wind/Pinball gives us a fascinating insight into a great writer’s beginnings.
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Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
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Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
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The Road Home
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, The Road Home is the best-selling story of Lev, a middle-aged migrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London in search of work after losing his wife and job. Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency. The world Tremain creates is both convincing and poignant.
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OK - nice narration - good characters
- By bea on 02-21-11
By: Rose Tremain
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
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Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Vita Nostra
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko, Julia Meitov Hersey - translator
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.
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Dark but beautiful
- By J. OBrennan on 11-19-18
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
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Fragile Things
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.
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Perhaps a different format?
- By Karen on 11-03-10
By: Neil Gaiman
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High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
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Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
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Netherland
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
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Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Art of Crash Landing
- A Novel
- By: Melissa DeCarlo
- Narrated by: Johanna Parker
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Mattie Wallace has really screwed up this time. Broke and knocked up, she's got all her worldly possessions crammed into six giant trash bags and nowhere to go. Try as she might, Mattie can no longer deny that she really is turning into her mother, a broken alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn't make. When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left by a grandmother she's never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn things around.
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Unlikable character
- By RueRue on 09-18-15
By: Melissa DeCarlo
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Great book ruined by the narration
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dull
- By Shelli Rodgers on 01-06-19
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Wonderful book, flawed narration.
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Great book ruined by the narration
- By David on 08-14-14
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dull
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Wonderful book, flawed narration.
- By REBECCA on 02-08-14
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Norwegian Wood
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Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
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Sorry, but I didn't like the narrator.
- By Kelly McCarty on 10-30-15
By: Haruki Murakami
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws listeners into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.
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Human Wonder and the End of my Patience.
- By Kindle Customer on 01-08-20
By: Haruki Murakami
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The Strange Library
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Listeners will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written.
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Wicked Fairy Tale
- By Tim on 12-24-15
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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1Q84
- By: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin - translator, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
- Length: 46 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....
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WOW, WOW, WOW.
- By Amanda on 11-06-11
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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The City and Its Uncertain Walls
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life. Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves.
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I used to like Murakami
- By MaRinLha on 11-21-24
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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Kafka on the Shore
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- Unabridged
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With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.
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What's better than Murakami? More Murakami
- By Dr. Curmudgeon on 04-11-14
By: Haruki Murakami
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Killing Commendatore
- A Novel
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Killing Commendatore, a 30-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna.
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A Masterpiece and A Good Novel To Start
- By Elif Kaya on 10-18-18
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
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Story
The 24 stories that make up Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman generously express the incomparable Haruki Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things for which we might wish. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.
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Fantastic, just like how all Murakami books are
- By MM on 05-05-15
By: Haruki Murakami
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Novelist as a Vocation
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
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- Unabridged
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In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously private writer Haruki Murakami shares with listeners his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.
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Love Murakami - Struggled with this Narrator
- By Harry Bartle on 11-30-22
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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First Person Singular
- Stories
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami comes a mind-bending new collection of short stories, all touching beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory...all with a signature Murakami twist. The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.
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A Murakami novel ruined by the wrong narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 07-10-21
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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Men Without Women
- Stories
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all. In Men Without Women, Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic, marked by the same wry humor and pathos that have defined his entire body of work.
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That's how we become Men Without Women
- By Darwin8u on 07-27-17
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
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What I Talk about When I Talk about Running
- A Memoir
- By: Haruki Murakami
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of Kafka on the Shore comes this rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running and the integral impact both have made on his life. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers Murakami's four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon. Settings range from Tokyo, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston, among young women who outpace him.
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It is what it says it is
- By Rick on 03-10-09
By: Haruki Murakami
What listeners say about Wind/Pinball
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Martin
- 09-10-20
Disappointing
If this is the great Murakami I have so long been waiting to read, I am quite let down. The stories of both novels are ok but ultimately unremarkable. Perhaps if you are reading /listening to explore his early work, this would have value as his first two efforts. But otherwise skip it and jump
to much later stuff. It’s got to be better than this.
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- Markhov
- 09-24-23
Early Murakami
This was my second time reading this, the first was on my own without narration after I found out that “The Wild Sheep Chase” was a sequel of sorts to this. If you have not read Murakami before I wouldn’t start here as even he considers it to be among his worst works however if you have read and enjoyed “The Wild Sheep Chase” or even some of Murakami’s short stories it is definitely worth a listen especially with this narrator. You do get a glimpse into ideas and structures featured on the Wild Sheep Chase and have additional time to become familiar with supporting characters common to both which makes both novels the better for it.
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- Cristela M.
- 05-25-18
If you are a Murakami Fan
And I am. So, I am going to say time well spent, but I can't say it was great. Overall experience for me was pretty good because Murakami's style speaks to me. I was captivated by 1Q84. I have to say, there were some moments in these books which made me think and stick with me. I may even listen to them again. However, when I compare to other works, I have to give this a lower rating.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Manny
- 08-17-16
I agree with the girl
He should have left her apt. instead of sticking around like a creeper and staring at her breasts and vagina as she slept.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-20-21
Nice narration. Not HMs best
I’ve read every murakami except this.
I really enjoyed Wind but pinball didn’t make too
Much sense as others have said. Still a great read / listen for Murakami fans.
Where it all began. Also nice narration.
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- Randy Thill
- 09-28-17
too young for me
I love Haruki Murakami's writing. It appears I like his later works better than his younger ones. These stories are OK, but at 70, they did not appeal to me. Youth's follies and interests are no longer what capture's my interests.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Erik M
- 01-18-24
impressive debut!
I've been loving Murakami for years now, but only just now got to Wind/Pinball. it did not disappoint! somehow he always captures perfectly the melancholy of a single frozen moment through the meandering flow of an almost-real life with just a touch of magic. enjoy it!
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- Darwin8u
- 08-12-15
FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY: Extra Ball at 600,000 points
My first exposure to Murakami was in my early college years. I checked out A Wild Sheep Chase (Boku #3) one summer from a military library and after I read it, but before I returned it, the library had mysteriously burned down. I'm not sure if I still owe the library a late fee or not. I had no way to return the book, and after reading it, I didn't ever want to. I saved it from the fire. I saved it from oblivion. It was now mine.
Both 'Hear the Wind Sing' and 'Pinball, 1973' are novellas best left to Murakami completists. There are better novels to start with and unless you are going to read more than ten Murakami novels, I wouldn't begin here. Start with 'Wild Sheep Chase' or 'Dance Dance Dance', or 'Norwegian Wood'.
\ * / Hear the Wind Sing/Boku #1 \ * /
"How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depth of night?"
― Nietzche
A nice first novel(la) with most all the known Murakami tropes already stirred in. There is music (pop, jazz, classical) with specific references to actual pressings. There are: cats, bars, whiskey, birds, alienation and needy women. Murakami ventures into existential philosophy and Western literature (both real and fake). It is all there. Things that would later pop up again and again in his later, stronger novels.
It isn't a river that flows very fast.
This isn't a page turner.
It is Gyokuro tea-steeping slowly. It is watching the stray leaves spiral to the center in a cracked, stoneware cup. It is the light and shadows dancing on you, while you sit in the shade watching people walk in and out of view. It is relaxing, interesting, and soon all you have left is the tasseography of a cold cup.
\ * / Pinball, 1973/Boku #2 \ * /
“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973
Like Murakami's first novel 'Hear the Wind Sing' (Boku #1), 'Pinball, 1973' (Boku #2) contains many of those elements that would define Murakami's fiction in the future. In someways this novel is both a story of loneliness and a love story between the protagonist and a specific Pinball machine. 'Hear the Wind Sing' seems to show early signs of Norwegian Wood, but 'Pinball, 1973' seems to be an early protonovel that would develop into Murakami's strange, dream-like later novels.
\ * / \ * / \ * /
If you check out Murakami and the bookstore or library burns down, watch out, you won't be able to rest until you've stalked every novel and read every page.
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- Asha Ember
- 10-15-18
Absolutely NOT B-list Stories
I'm a bit perplexed why some people write off these freshman efforts as somehow lesser than the rest of Murakami's body of work. True, they're a little rough around the edges when compared to some of his later novels, but there are plenty of popular/successful authors who have never written anything near the caliber of Hear the Wind Sing or Pinball 1973. What's more, they aren't nearly as self-important as some of Murakami's later works, giving them a raw yet honest tone.
Despite their being labeled as books one and two in the Rat series, I'd sooner compare Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 to the author's short stories, rather than his full-length novels. In many ways, this makes Wind/Pinball more accessible than some of my favorites, namely Kafka on the Shore, The Windup Bird Chronicle, and 1Q84. To that effect, I'd almost recommend Wind/Pinball as a starting point for anyone interested in his fiction. Based on how they react, I could easily steer them toward Norwegian Wood, Wild Sheep Chase, After Dark, or one of Murakami's short story collections.
By the way, here's where I'm coming from: I'm a fan, but not a "fan boy." I've read and reread nearly everything Haruki Murakami has had translated into English. I love the man's work, but not without criticism. For instance, while Kafka on the Shore rates among my top ten favorite novels, I was positively stunned by how bad Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage was. So it's not like I think the author can do no wrong, I just happen to think these novellas are somewhat underrated.
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- Tim
- 08-18-15
Two Short Stories
"Wind/Pinball" are two short stories from Haruki Murakami's early years. I'm very grateful that these stories got translated into English and into audiobook. They could had easily gotten lost in translation and have forgotten over time. These stories are the first from Haruki Murakami and just shows you the pure genius from this author. It makes me wonder how many other books that have to wait to be translated and what we are missing. After Murakami got these stories published in the 70's, he sold his night club and became a full time author. The best career choice that he ever made.
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