Är inte rädd för skiten, hatar den. Om du vill leva i ett samhälle där robotar tar hand om dig berör inte mig. Men jag ser hellre en människa i ögonen och säger "trevlig kväll" när jag handlar.

Speak to native speakers and get a more advanced grammar book

I totally agree, I read Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball pretty early on as well. And looking back you can really see that he was going in this direction already at that point. I know Murakami himself is not a big fan of Hear the Wind sing but I def agree with you that the "vibes" are there!

The thing is that in some ways Norwegian Wood really IS his one book. It's got everything Murakami-esque and as far as his stock characters go, they're really developed and 'real' in this one. It's just a beautiful sentimental and at the same time melancholic portrayal of what I believe is the stuff that really matters to Murakami.

But, it lacks the magic, one of his biggest trademarks.. which I believe many associate so strongly with Murakami that they'd never pick this book as his 'one book' when they could pick Wind-up or Kafka.

Thank you!

1. Cool, I must say I've been a bit bit sceptical about the relevance of magical elements in his writing ever since 1Q84, which was a bit of a disappointment for me. But this sounds promising!

2. That's awesome, congrats!

Gonna reread Yesterday now because of this post haha

Amazing, I can't wait to read it!

I also love South of the Border and Murakami's special sense of nostalgia. This nostalgia is a trademark and something that can be found in all of (most of) his books of course, but for me I felt it the most from reading South of the Border, Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart.

Two questions:

How far does he take the magic this time? Maybe especially in terms of plot; is the magic a big element or a detail?

How come you got an ARC? (Just curious hehe)

Does anyone know what novel he was writing at the time?

By reading Murakami. At first it was a pose, wanting to be like his characters, then it developed into something genuine

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who can see it, or hear it rather. In some semi-weird way the Beatles and Lana belong to the same musical universe to me.

So do I! Yeah it might just be something general like that; it's no secret that Lana is a Beatles fan:)

I wouldn't say that 'ärligt talat' is any more pretentious than 'tbh', at least not where I am from. 'I ärlighetens namn' though, is a bit more old fashioned or does belong to a higher register.

Do you have examples of this? I'd be curious to hear:)

"'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form Come in, she said I'll give ya shelter from the storm"

It is complicated, but then again Germanic languages have fairly complicated phonology;)

And honestly if you pronounce all of these as the German sch-laut you'll be fine! Most native speakers wouldn't notice much of a difference since the functional load is quite low! it's more important to get the difference between the sch found in kök and the infamous ɧ found in sjutton—to swedes, these sounds are as distinct as the german ich- and ach-laut.

It's crazy, especially when you consider that Something's Burning Baby precedes it... And this is objectively one of his "bad" albums

In Swedish these retroflex sounds are indeed found in cases where the orthography has something like "rs" in "fors" or "Lars" or "rt" in "fort" or "rd" in "mord" etc..

However, the "normal" sch-sound found in words like "kök" or "tjata" is not a retroflex but rather a voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative [ɕ] sometimes realised as a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], the sch-sound found in German "schnell" and English "shoulder".

Again this is maybe a detail but fun to know for the advanced learner :)

(Also if you hear no difference between [ɕ] and [ʃ] stick to [ʃ], it is a perfectly fine realisation that no native speaker would recognise as false)

Awesome, I'll have to check that out!

Sorry typo, fixed:)

Maybe I'm basic, but of course it's Love

Ich habe ihn 2017 getroffen, und dann hatte er natürlich schon teilgenommen. Er muss damals 20-25 Jahre alt gewesen sein.

Leider nicht, aber danke!