Customer Comments

First of all I must say that one of my many ' dream bucket' scenarios would be thus.. We are sitting at a small glass topped table at an outdoor cafe eating whatever delicacy, sipping wine and trading stories as if they were currency. Haruki would be caught within a story within a story and I would be nodding, smiling and gesturing for another bottle of wine. Okay, that's enough. I love anything he does and this certainly didn't do anything to diminish my profound respect for a great writer. If you haven't read Mr. Murakami begin with Norwegian Wood and then, then begin your journey into a surreal landscape of beauty and struggle that always plucks at the chords of our own human experience. In IQ84 at one point I began laughing because a man and woman who are caught in an alternate reality, lost to each other and following their own labyrinthine journey back or forward to each other, reminded me of story that I'd share with Haruki at that outdoor cafe. He is simply unique and brilliant. Try him!

Shakespeare would have loved this one. In what form does a mans love or infatuation towards a beautiful woman take and how does it transform into an artifact as dangerous as any weapon of mass destruction ; words so powerful that their journey, passing through the many hands of a medieval London, becomes life or death. Are you ready for some time traveling some six hundred years ago with some luminary characters.. I would love to give a short synopsis of this wonderful intricately woven medieval subterfuge with a cast of characters who to some will be old friends but I will honor my no spoiler modus operandi in documenting brief opinions on my reads. A nice comfortable reading chair, a little Port and Raine my feline bunk mate sprawled out on the hooked rug before the fire were the backdrop for total immersion into a thin slice of medieval England, beautifully wrought by an expert in the field. While navigating the warrens of old London, the inner sanctums of Royalty, an Oxford that had seen better days or the encampments of those that thirst for power, you are taken on an incredible bumpy and convoluted trip through a world that at once seems too raw in human foible and yet all too familiar but perhaps more veiled. The extremely dangerous mission of locating a book that the narrator, poet, esquire and self stylized chanteur or singer of information accepts from his very close friend, Geoffrey Chaucer will lead him, you, through a tangle of assassins, power mongers, maudlyns and jacks, bishops, princes, dukes, kings and knights. A bit of a let down today. The writer, bringing forth his own inimitable expertise of the time along with exhaustive research to the degree that you the reader become transported almost seamlessly to a fascinating moment in our history. I actually recommend reading ~ a note to the reader ~ in the back of the book to perhaps get a feel for the historical characters. 'Joan Rugg threw back her head, cackling incautiously. "Who'd have thought it?" The bawd smoothed her dress over her generous thighs, her chins aglow in the lamplight: a bullfrog's throat on a moonlit pond. "The very king of England, by the cross, and his life in the hands of five whores!"'

Thought I'd chime in here and do a little passionate book babbling. If you love to read two pound books that are rich with detail, plot and sub plot, unforgettable characters, lavish backdrops and all with a very definitive philosophical cast and yes breathtaking scenes where ounces of pages pour through your hands and of course hours vanish, where time slows down yet speeds up making an extra cup or two of coffee in am necessary to negotiate the realities of the day, this is for you! For those in the Northern latitudes that find the light dwindling and the hearth reignited here is a story. Not always kind and pretty but intrinsically satisfying and oh sooo good.