BW4: Alexandre Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo Readalong

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, 

be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is 

what you do when that storm comes.”

― Alexandre Dumas

Next week we begin our read of the adventure novel  The Count of Monte Cristo written by Alexandre Dumas. 

Book Synopsis:  "Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration."

Written in serialized format in 1844 -1845, the story is inspired by real life events which took place between 1815-1838 and real life people, among whom is Alexandre's father Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, who was the highest ranking black officer during the Napoleonic wars, and thrown in prison,  along with fellow sailor and scientist Déodat de Dolomieu.  The story behind the story  is taken from the life of shoemaker Pierre Picaud, who was engaged to a rich woman, and falsely accused by three very jealous friends of spying for England, and is thrown in prison for a period of time, and uses his exploits during and after. 

We're going to take it slowly with plenty of time built in to talk about the story. The Count of Monte Cristo is composed of 117 chapters and we'll read three chapters a week, (approximately thirty pages give or take a few) and get to know the characters, dig into the themes presented, and allow us to explore rabbit trails. The page numbers are based on the Penguin Classics paperback version, translated by Robin Buss.

  

 

Chapters	Pages
01 – 03	07 - 32
04 – 06	33 - 61
07 – 09	62 - 88
10 – 12	89 -111
13 – 15	112 – 147
16 – 18	148 – 186
19 – 21	187 - 211
22 – 24	212 – 235
25 – 27	236 - 266
28 – 30	267 - 299
31 – 33	300 – 358
34 – 36	359 – 412
37 – 39	413 – 435
40 – 42	456 -484
43 – 45	485 – 524
46 – 48	525 – 557
49 – 51	558 – 581
52 – 54	582 – 620
55 – 57	621 - 652
58 – 60	653 - 677
61 – 63	678 – 704
64 – 66	705 – 732
67 – 69	733 - 760
70 – 72	761 – 773
73 – 75	774 - 820
76 – 78	821 - 860
79 – 80	861 - 895
81 – 83	896 – 931
84 – 86	932 – 962
87 – 89	963 - 986
90 – 92	987 - 1012
93 – 95	1013 – 1039
96 – 98	1040 – 1056
99 – 101	1069 - 1090
102 – 104	1091 - 1115
105 – 107	1116 – 1150
108 – 110	1151 – 1173
111 – 113	1174 – 1206
114 - 116	1207 – 1229
117	1230 – 1243

Alexandre Dumas was a prolific writer and if you've already read The Count of Monte Cristo, and don't want to reread it,  dive in to any one of his stories. If you have a hard time deciding, Molli of Discover Walks Blog suggests 5 Best Books Written by Dumas.   Bill Morris of the Millions explores Seven Reasons Why Alexandre Dumas Will Never Die.   

The story is available to read online through multiple resources including Gutenberg and the Literature Network  as well as in audio format.  

Do you have any preconceived notions about the story?  Have you watched the movie with either Richard Chamberlain or  Jim Caviezel?   

Please join me in reading The Count of Monte Cristo. 

*********************

Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.

BW35: Sigrid Unset and the Kristin Lavransdatter readalong

Sigrid Unset - Courtesy of wikipedia

Sigrid Unset, born May 20, 1882, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. During the presentation speech, by the chairman of the nobel committee,  Per Hallstrom said of Unset's works:  

"Her narrative is vigorous, sweeping, and at times heavy. It rolls on like a river, ceaselessly receiving new tributaries whose course the author also describes, at the risk of overtaxing the reader’s memory. This stems in part from the very nature of the subject. In the series of generations, conflicts and destinies assume a very concentrated form; these are whole masses of clouds which collide when the lightning flashes. However, this heaviness is also a result of the author’s ardent and instant imagination, forming a scene and a dialogue of each incident in the narrative without taking the necessary backward look at the general perspective. And the vast river, whose course is difficult to embrace comprehensively, rolls its powerful waves which carry along the reader, plunged into a sort of torpor. 

But the roaring of its waters has the eternal freshness of nature. In the rapids and in the falls, the reader finds the enchantment which emanates from the power of the elements, as in the vast mirror of the lakes he notices a reflection of immensity, with the vision there of all possible greatness in human nature. Then, when the river reaches the sea, when Kristin Lavransdatter has fought to the end the battle of her life, no one complains of the length of the course which accumulated so overwhelming a depth and profundity in her destiny. In the poetry of all times, there are few scenes of comparable excellence."

Unset wrote a number of historical fiction novels including the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy - The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross. 

Which are available individually or in the complete Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy edition translated by Tina Nunnally

"In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tina Nunnally's award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.

As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.

With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway's most beloved author, one of the twentieth century's most prodigious and engaged literary minds and, in Nunnally's exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall."


A number of Well Trained Mind 52 Books readers are taking the plunge with Unset's Kristin Lavrandatter trilogy  and we will begin  on September 2nd.  Grab your hubbies and get them reading along as well.  Tyler Blanski of the Catholic Gentleman in his enthusiasm for the story asks "Are you Lavrans, or are you Erlend?"

We're going to take it slowly with plenty of time built in to talk about the story.  Each book has three parts and vary in length from 92 to 160 pages approximately. We'll read one part a week with an extra week or two thrown in for variations in chapter length in Book three if needed, plus reading speed and discussion.  


Book One -The Wreath
Part I  – Jorungaard   Ch 1 to 7 ( 92 pages)
Part II – The Wreath      Ch 1 – 8 (92 pages)
Part III – Lavrans Bjorgulfson  Ch 1 – 8  (100 Pages)

Book two – The Wife
Part I – The Fruit of Sin  Ch 1 – 6  (114 pages)
Part II – Husaby  Ch 1-  8 (158)
Part III – Erlend Nikulausson Ch 1 – 7 (126 pages)

Book Three – The Cross
Part 1 – Honor Among Kin  Ch 1 – 6  ( 116 pages)
Part II – Debtors  Ch 1 – 8 (160 pages)
Part III – The Cross  Ch 1 – 7 (140 pages) 

Join me in reading Kristin Lavransdatter. 

*************************************************************************

Link to your reviews. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.

BW19: W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham - Courtesy of Carl Van Vechten 

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything 

but the best, you very often get it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Our armchair travels are taking us to India as we follow in the footsteps of W. Somerset Maugham. This post is brought to you by Jane, one of our 52 Books Well Trained Mind Book a weeker's, who kindly offered to guest post this week.

************************************************

If I had only one word to describe W. Somerset Maugham's writing, it would be "exquisite." Not that I have read everything produced by this prolific novelist and playwright, but those works that I have read never disappointed.

Maugham was a best selling author in his day with many of his novels being made into films. What is often called his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage, was transformed from page to screen three times. The same is true for The Painted Veil. I can't help but wonder if the exotic settings of many of Maugham's novels contributed to his popularity in the teens, twenties and thirties. The Moon and Sixpence, loosely based on the life of painter Paul Gauguin, is set in Paris and Tahiti, The Painted Veil in China. The book we are about to read, The Razor's Edge, will carry us to India. But more on that book later.

Maugham was born in 1874 into a family of lawyers. He lost his mother at age 8, his father two year's later. His childhood under the care of his uncle was dismal and lonely.

Eventually Maugham finds his path. He attends medical school, but on the side he is always writing. London's turn of the century slums where he does medical work provide insight into the human soul.

When WWI begins, Maugham is too old to enlist but joins other literary comrades in the so called Literary Ambulance Corps. Before America's involvement in the war, Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish were among the volunteers. Robert Service and Jerome K Jerome were also among the drivers. (Idea for a 2018 Bingo square: WWI Literary Ambulance Corps author!!)

After the war, Maugham joins British intelligence which leads to another book, Ashenden: Or the British Agent.

The Razor's Edge comes later in this career. Published in 1944, this novel focuses on a wounded WWI veteran who abandons his comfortable American life to pursue truth. From war to the Depression, from Chicago to Paris to India, we shall follow Larry Durrell as he seeks to find the meaning of his life.

I suspect when all is said and done that many of you will also find the writing of W. Somerset Maugham to be exquisite.

Please join me in reading Razor's Edge or the book of your choice by W.Somerset Maugham.

*****************************************************

Please link to your specific post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading. Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week. No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.

BW9: Fairy Tales aren't just for Children

I have a special guest post for you this week.  Robyn (Crstarlette) from the Well Trained Mind 52 Books group, is here to talk about Fairy tales that aren't just for children and entice us into joining her in reading From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner.

***************************************************************

We all know that fairy tales are not just for children. In Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tales, Marina Warner says of the Grimm Brothers and their tales:

In 1812, the first edition of their anthology, comprising eighty-six stories, came out in an edition of 600, with an apparatus of notes running to hundreds of pages. It was not really intended to be read for pleasure at all by the children and households of its title; it was a learned work setting out to reconfigure the cultural history of Germany along lines that would emancipate it from the monopoly of classical and French superiority.

Earlier, in the seventeenth century, upper-class women gathered in French salons and retold folk tales, each trying to make the tale sound as if the teller were just making it up in the moment and, through the tale, commenting on and critiquing their conditions. In Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale, Jack Zipes says:

Up through 1700, there was no literary fairy tale for children. On the contrary, children like their parents heard oral tales from their governesses, servants, and peers. The institiltionalizing of the literary fairy tale, begun in the salons during the seventeenth century, was for adults and arose out of a need by aristocratic women to elaborate and conceive other alternatives in society than those prescribed for them by men.

The term “fairy tale” comes from the title of a book published by one of these women of the French salons: Les Contes de Fees by Madame d’Aulnoy.

Zipes later says, “With regard to the origins of the fairy tale for children, it is practically impossible to give an exact date,” but importantly, though people did start writing fairy tales for children, using them for entertainment and as moral instruction, they were taken back and returned to adults, and they continue to be written, revised and retold and used as inspiration for novels and short stories in all sections of the library.

In addition to many retellings and fairy-tale inspired works in the children’s section, you’ll find Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood in the adult literary fiction section, Robin McKinley and Jane Yolen in the YA section and Neil Gaiman everywhere. Some of us have recently enjoyed The Bear and the Nightingale, which in my library, is in the adult SF/F section, and Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles is a SF fairy tale YA tetralogy. The magic and tone of fairy tales is carried over in the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo Calvino.

The non-fiction section has more than just anthologies. There are fairy tales retold in the poems of Anne Sexton, Catherynne M. Valente and Theodora Goss. Fairy tale scholars, such as Marina Warner, Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar have given us essays, histories and interpretations. At the end of Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tales, there is a recommended reading list 128 books long. For a literary magazine, you can subscribe to The Fairy Tale Review. And on the Internet you can read the archives of The Journal of Mythic Arts (where you will also find adult, YA, nonfiction and poetry recommended reading lists).

Marina Warner included her book From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers on her own recommended reading list (in Once Upon a Time), but it’s also on the nonfiction list at the JoMA site and it comes with some pretty good reviews on Goodreads, and that is what we’re beginning this week. 

For myself, I’m hoping to read two chapters a week to finish the book in about three months, so am planning on the introduction and chapter one this week. Others might choose a more leisurely pace.

*********************************************************************

Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In Your URL field link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.

BW19: Monuments Men and Art Fiction/History Mystery Reading Month

Hello May!  The new month quietly sneaked up on me and we are in the homestretch with only 4 weeks left until James is done with 8th grade. Ye gads!  Never imagined I still be homeschooling when he reached high school, but time flies when you are having fun.
 
I enjoy learning about art, but sometimes the non fiction art books, despite the beautiful and sometimes mysterious pictures, can be a dry subject.  Which is why I love art fiction and art history mysteries.  And I managed to pass on the love to my son when he was younger through delightful kids books written by James Mayhew and Laurence Anholt, plus Getting to Know the Worlds Greatest Artist's by Mike Venezia. 


Even though I don't read a lot of non fiction for fun, I had heard great things about Monuments Men by Robert Edsel and preferred to read the book over watching the movie.  And I didn't complain too much when the book arrived and immediately disappeared into my son's room upon arrival. 

Now it's my turn, and since a few folks on Well Trained Mind are interested in a readalong, I am declaring May - Monuments Men and art fiction/history mystery reading month. 

One of my favorite art history mystery writers is Iain Pears, from Oxford England, who wrote The Flavia De Stefano mysteries about a Roman art theft squad which starts with The Raphael Affair.  I've read the majority of his books and currently have Giotto's Hand in my stacks.

Currently on my radar are two new to me authors Tracy Chevalier, most known for her story -  The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Susan Dunant who wrote The Birth of Venus.   You'll note that the three authors have something in common, they all live in England.  If you've been armchair traveling along with me, I told you we'd be extending our stay in England for a couple months.  *grin*

For my non fiction buffs, check out Goodreads Best Art and Art History books and fiction wise, Popular Art History mysteries.

Join me in reading Monument's Men.

**********************************************************************

 Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

BW2: Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami -  January 12, 1949

In honor of Haruki Murakami turning 65 this month, I am reading Wind Up Bird Chronicle.  

Synopsis: Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.    In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat.  Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.  As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Last year, one of the gals over at Well Trained Mind introduced me to Murakami through his book 1Q84 and I was hooked.  And since we are armchair traveling through Japan this month, it is a perfect time to read more of his stories. 

Haruki was born January 12, 1949 in Tokyo, Japan.  He began writing at the age of 29, inspired by all things, a baseball game. Hear the Wind Sing, his first book in Trilogy of the Rat, was published in 1979 and he won the Gunzou Shinjin Sho, the Gunzo New Writer Award for new writers, established by Gunzo Magazine.

He soon followed up with two more books in his Trilogy of the Rat:  Pinball 1973 in 1979  and A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982.  He won the Noma Bungei Shinjin Sho (Noma Literary Award for New Writers) for A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982.  During this period of time he sold his bar, Jazz Cats, which he had opened in 1974, and began writing full time.

In 1985 he wrote Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Year  for which he won the  Junichi Tanizaki Award.  In 1991 he moved to the United States where he taught at Princeton and also wrote The Wind Up Bird Chronicle which was published in 1994. He won the prestigious Yomiuri Literary Award.

He moved back to Japan in 1995, where he's gone on to have published numerous books including Kafka on the Shore, a short story collection - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and his latest in 2011, 1Q84.   

Check out his facebook page maintained by his publishers Alfred Knopf  for articles and interviews.  

Join me in reading Wind Up Bird Chronicle or one of his many other fascinating stories.

**************************************************************

Link to your reviews or year end wrap up posts:    Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.  


 

BW29: Calvino Readalong

If not for Susan Wise Bauer's Well Educated Mind, I would have never heard of Italo Calvino's 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler.  It is another one of those intriguing, weirdly written books that I seem to gravitate to every few weeks.  According to Amazon:

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.  

It's a story within a story and begins with the narrator telling you how to to read the book.  The odd chapters are from a second person point of view with instructions or preparation for the next chapter and the even chapters are the story and in a variety of points of view. I'm going to be diving into the story within the next week or so.  Some of the ladies on the Well Trained Mind have decided to join me as well.


Books like these always remind me that reading is a visceral experience, a journey through a writer's creative mind and sometimes I just need to take the time to slow down, absorb, and enjoy the ride.  I was thumbing through the book and saw this sentence "An odor of frying wafts at the opening of the page, of onion in fact, onion being fried" and immediately upon reading the word wafts smelled onions even before getting to the end of the line. Now I'm hungry.  *grin*

Come along and join me in reading If on a winter's night a traveler.

*****************************************************************

Link to your reviews:    Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post. 

BW14: New book releases and readalong

Happy Sunday and Happy Easter to those who celebrate. We've had a restful and relaxing Spring Break and I've been curled up in an easy chair for most of the week with my nose in a book or meandering about the internet.  All those things on my to do list...are still there.  But do I feel guilty about it.  Not in the least.  *grin*  In my meanderings about the interwebz I came across some new releases that intrigued me. 

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

Synopsis:  When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the “ungettable” Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn’t wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner’s, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel—and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera—where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby’s parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous—sometimes infamous—husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott’s, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda’s irresistible story as she herself might have told it. 

For those who have read F. Scott Fitzgerald's  Tender is the Night , it was written during one of the darkest periods in his life when Zelda was hospitalized for Schizophrenia.  She also wrote a semi autographical book Save me the Waltz while in the clinic which infuriated Fitzgerald because it contained autobiographical material he intended to use  for Tender is the Night.  He forced her to revise it although she did, there are parallels between the two stories regarding their marriage.  It would be interesting to compare the two stories.


Another book that jumped out at me weirdly enough was The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that create the World's Great Drinks by Amy Stewart which lead me to Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother.  My son and I have had many a conversation about Lincoln's mother and how she died from milk sickness so of course I had to buy it.

Also being released this week,  from Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist is his newest book Manuscript Found in Accra  which I'll be reviewing this week on My Two Blessings on April 5th.

Synopsis:  July 14, 1099. Jerusalem awaits the invasion of the crusaders who have surrounded the city’s gates. There, inside the ancient city’s walls, men and women of every age and every faith have gathered to hear the wise words of a mysterious man known only as the Copt. He has summoned the townspeople to address their fears with truth: 

“Tomorrow, harmony will become discord. Joy will be replaced by grief. Peace will give way to war. . . . None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments. So, when you ask your questions, forget about the troops outside and the fear inside. Our task is not to leave a record of what happened on this date for those who will inherit the Earth; history will take care of that. Therefore, we will speak about our daily lives, about the difficulties we have had to face.” 

The people begin with questions about defeat, struggle, and the nature of their enemies; they contemplate the will to change and the virtues of loyalty and solitude; and they ultimately turn to questions of beauty, love, wisdom, sex, elegance, and what the future holds. “What is success?” poses the Copt. “It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.” 

Now, these many centuries later, the wise man’s answers are a record of the human values that have endured throughout time. And, in Paulo Coelho’s hands, The Manuscript Found in Accra reveals that who we are, what we fear, and what we hope for the future come from the knowledge and belief that can be found within us, and not from the adversity that surrounds us.  

What new books have you discovered lately? 

******************************************************************
1Q84 Readalong 

Those who were interested in reading Hopscotch, finished just in time for our April Readalong - 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  It is a chunkster at around 1000 pages depending on whether you are reading the Hardback or paperback.  1Q84 originally was published in three volumes in Japan in 2009-2010 and released as one book in North American in 2011.  As with Hopscotch (thank you Stacia), I became interested in reading the book after hearing several  people talk about it and since quite a few already had the book in their stacks proposed a readalong. Our readalong will begin April 7th which should give more folks time to obtain the book if they haven't already or clear the decks to dive into the story.  It is according to Murakami,  a mind bending ode to George Orwell's 1984.  

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.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

******************************************************************

Link to your reviews:    Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.