Hacker News Books

Just finished "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami (as recommended by this HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9127092). Haruki is amazing!

If you haven't read it yet I'd recommend Kafka on the Shore by Murakami. I have read The Wind Up Bird Chronicles twice but I still think Kafka on the shore is my favorite Murakami work.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (no relation to author :p) and For Whom the Bell Tools by Ernest Hemingway.

(On a fiction binge)

Interesting, I've only read 'Kafka on the Shore' and haven't read another Murakami because I didn't connect with it at all. Maybe I should try 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle'?

I really liked Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, although most of Murakami's stuff is pretty amazing. He does short stories for the New Yorker every now and then, too: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/kino

I've read 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' and 'Kafka on the Shore' but I didn't liked them as much as 'Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World'. I also have '1Q84' in my queue, maybe I'll give it a try.

I just finished "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami. While it was really interesting, I am not sure I fully understood it. Still recommending to everyone that likes a little bit of fantasy combined with fiction and lots of cultural references :)

Thanks for the list. Principles by Ray Dalio is next on my list. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami is one of my favorites ever. Murakami is such an amazing writer. Check out Kafka on the Shore and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami, great books.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Histoire d'O by Pauline Réage

My Life in Art by Constantin Stanislavski (This one seems to be taking me forever, even though it's entertaining. Biographies are not really my thing.)

I have read 1Q84, and yours is the only response so far that mentions this book. It was a fascinating book.

While "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki" is more anime-like, I found "Hard Boiled Wonderland" very full of (unpronounced) deep and profound thoughts.

I found "Sputnik Sweetheart" to be the most original work of art by him.

I am yet to read "Kafka on the Shore", "Wind Up Bird Chronicle", and some of the others.

I've read a fair bit of Murakami and I think he's at his best when he's deep into the surrealist, magical realism stuff. South of the Border only really touches on that. Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are books of his that I rather liked. I thought The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was a bit flabby but there is an excellent section of the story about Japanense soldiers in Manchuria during World War 2 that makes up for it. I know a lot of people that just don't really connect with his work though so there is that.

"The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared"
by Jonas Jonasson
(Love it -- hilarious, witty, a pleasure to read)

"Kafka on the Shore"
by Haruki Murakami
(Strange good -- but I'm not sure if I liked it as much as liked "The Wild Sheep Chase")

"One hundred years of solitude"
by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
(Very slow, had a hard time honestly)

"Gone Girl"
by Gillian Flynn
(A fast, exciting read but found the ending unsatisfying. But would recommend)

"Still Life with Woodpecker"
by Tom Robbins
(Fantastic prose, fantastical characters and situations. Will read more from him)

And for technical books, I read "The Art of Agile Development". Was alright.

Yes, I discovered him last year and read about five or six other books and plan on reading rest of his books next year.

I do like "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" and "Kafka on the Shore". On the other side I didn't like "After Dark" that much.

I second Snow Crash reco. I've read Kafka on the Shore and Wind-Up bird chronicle by Murakami and loved both. Wind-Up bird was very hard to finish at points but I'm glad I did. The more I think about the more chills I get. The book is truly a dream. I'm not sure what is largely about but I will never forget how it made me feel. It's impossible to explain.

Almost a day late, but I'll throw this in here if people come by later looking for more suggestions.

From this year, I read all but two of the Haruki Murakami books and all short stories. I love his writing style (great translations), and the fact that the stories are about not all the time realness. Kafka on the Shore is a great starting book. Also Norwegian Wood is another example, though this strayed away from the magical aspect I like of his.

Another from this year was The Dubliners, collection of short stories from James Joyce. I was stuck in Dublin during a snow storm this past spring, so I'm sure this lead me to like the stories more, but I swear they're amazing and I haven't found anything else like them. They're all tiny points in people's lives, and the things that happen make differences for the people or are also easy to remember and not forget. Get one with reference notes in the back too.

Besides those, Love in the Time of Cholera was another one way up on my list. Similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I think I prefer slightly more, but reading both is interesting to read since Cholera was written 20 years after Solitude and we can see how the author changed over time.

Overall though, my absolute top tier books are East of Eden, Catch-22, and My Struggle (Knausgaard). 1000% read those. I like including these so if somebody reads this and likes these books as well, they can somewhat trust my other suggestions.

Definitely try 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle', I think it is regarded as one of his best works although it is a bit slower paced.

For me 'Kafka on the Shore' contained a bit too many magical events that were then left unexplained and unexplored- but I didn't think it was bad at all.

The other novel I really liked was the 1Q84 trilogy.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I'm excited to take a look at some of the examples you mentioned!

Side comment, but somewhat related: I just started getting into reading and the most recent book I finished was Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I just started 1Q84, also by Murakami. Those books really do something to my brain when I read them. Ever since I got into it, I've had these strange desires to write a book of my own, but since I have no experience in the matter, I was thinking of clever ways to procedurally generate plot points, then let a randomizer run in a loop until it generates something interesting.

For example, in multiple arrays, you could create lists for different plot elements: ex: "main character is a " [student, engineer, pilot, detective]. You can do something for physical features as well, and personality traits, and generate completely randomized characters. Then, you could do something for the plot as well... If I were able to do this as a starting point, I could write a story by filling in the blanks, so to speak...

So, is there a popular forum or perhaps Twitter that all of these enthusiasts hang out at? =D

Murakami books are rather weird; when I first read Kafka on the Shore (my first Murakami book), there didn't seem to be anything happening in story; yet, I couldn't put it down and was up the whole night finishing it.

I think his appeal is his ability to describe surreal events and commonplace events in the same sentence without a hiccup; it feels very natural.

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and the Haskell Book.

I was reading Kafka on the Shore and thinking that the frequent mention of crows must have some symbolic value. Then I visited Japan and I understood: Murakami was just being realistic. Crows are everywhere. It is quite ominous to walk through a quiet Japanese park (and I mean dead quiet) and suddenly see a huge flock of crows appear.

I read Kafka on the Shore in 2016 and let me tell you, I'm not a big reader (I'm working on it), but it had me thinking about it for weeks.

The book itself is like a dream state, it's magic; There's something about it where even when I think about it again, I get taken off into the lands within the book. I hear other Murakami works are similar in that regard. It is really hard to explain but it had me thinking about my life, who I am as a person to outsiders who meet me, how I see myself and what I feel my purpose in life is, etc.

I am also reading Kafka on the Shore by Murakami.

Before that I read Norweigan Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End Of The World by Murakami, as well as Godel, Escher, Bach which took forever (I read on the subway).

"Kafka on the shore" by Haruki Murakami.

"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn."

- Kafka on the Shore, Murakami

Under immensely troubling times - not as bad as war or famine, but much worse than a startup or relationship failure - these books kept me going:

  - The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
  - Mastery by Robert Greene
  - Courage Under Fire by James B Stockdale
  - Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
  - Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

I was recently reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murikami and there is a scene mentioning his contributions to the war. I am not sure whether the historical book the main character Kafka reads is real or doctored, but the scene where the author becomes absorbed by it mentions how Eichmann was frusrated by the logistical complexity of this operation. He was unnerved by how much was expected of him to make all Jews disappear with increasingly minimal resources. It was operational tempo that bothered him, not ethics. It was how he might be remembered for his failure to accept the task in front of him.

I cannot exactly remember the frame of reference of main character as he read this in the scene. But I do remember thinking: how did I think I would make it through the military as an officer when I was a young little wannabe patriot?

I think we see this now too. Many people complain about gamification of war. I do not think spy planes and Apache gunship HUDs (heads up displays) make that happen, they just add post-modern flare. If society does not gamify war and killing, we have convinced ourselves we will not win, not fight hard enough.

An end to my many anecodtes. My grandfather was a WWII vet, and very much hated it (only was promoted once in the brig for unlawful dissertion). I was always remember his favorite quote: "they trained us very well to kill but never to stop." It haunts me all the time.