Fond Memories Of Murakami
After watching the BBC documentary Imagine...A Wild Sheep Chase, about my favourite author Haruki Murakami, I got thinking about what his books mean to me. The first work of his I read was Norwegian Wood. I ordered the book just before I went away for a few days to work in a kitchen. When I got home, the book had arrived in the post. I was exhausted from working washing plates for 12 hours a day, so I relaxed with the book. It was a revelation to me. Clever, honest writing - I felt as if he was writing exactly to me. I read and I read, stopping only to order my next fix of Murakami - Kafka On The Shore. That book hit me just as much. So surreal, yet still spoke to me. I knew this was a writer whose work I must cherish.

Shortly after finishing those two books, I found myself in a full time job. It was dull and monotonous - working in a university library. One day when returning books to the fiction section, I came across a copy of The Elephant Vanishes (a short story collection by Murakami). Every time I had to shelve a trolley of books, I would slink off and read a story from that book. It really helped to transport me somewhere else, away from the tedium. Similarly, I bought a copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. By this stage, working full time was really draining my spirit. Every lunch time, I would put my headphones in and walk down to a local park. I'd eat my lunch and read the book. For an hour, I was transported away to a whole different place - where I would forget about the tedious work of the rest of my day. (It was around this time I got a new favourite band in Belle & Sebastian. I would listen to them most lunchtimes, and their music seems to have formed a bond with Murakami). When I think about that book (or that band) I remember the smell of the grass in the park, the feeling of being relief in the prose I held in my hands, and the disappointment when I had to close the book and walk back to work. I purposely never opened that book any other time than in that park, it was my little lunchtime treat to keep me sane.