Haruki Murakami – Jam and Idleness

Two Wednesdays later, still housebound

Well, no, I probably shouldn’t be writing this. I have, it turns out, an official case of the flu; the doctor last night referred to it as Influenza, to underscore how serious she was about my doing nothing, not even leaving the house to walk 5 minutes to the Starbucks, for at least the next…

In the world to come there will be no room for such people

As I noted over at Bookphilia back in 2010, finding anything by Osamu Dazai around here is a real challenge. A few months ago, I found his novel of post-war upheaval, The Setting Sun, in the delightful Ten Editions. Knowing that I might suffer from another years-long Dazai drought, I tried to hold off on…

Preparing for the International Festival of Authors like a good little book nerd

Every year, Toronto hosts the massive, and massively popular, International Festival of Authors. It’s a gathering of contemporary writers spanning over a week and is as full of breathless gushing and long line-ups as you can imagine. I’ve been a few times, having had the pleasure of seeing how well David Mitchell and William Gibson…

Running in different languages

Today, I finished reading Haruki Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I gifted it to myself back in August, but decided not to read it until a couple of weeks before I ran my first race…ever. That’s correct: I am 37 years old, and I have never run a race,…