|| IF Book Club : The Next Chapter || - Page 113

Originally posted by: Unique.Sheep

They are all from the same series?

Maybe you can ask anam to change the romance book to something we havent read, or let you pick one😛

Yes, they are but they can be read as standalones.

It would be awesome but if only everyone agrees.

Originally posted by: Anam...

Will put up the books for the readathon within an hour. Are you using Goodreads, Storygraph or some other app?

I use only Goodread. It does everything I need, so I never bothered to register with other apps or sites.

Originally posted by: Shanam_77

Yes, they are but they can be read as standalones.

It would be awesome but if only everyone agrees.

Anam please take this into consideration😳

Originally posted by: Unique.Sheep

Anam, im confused. When picking 4 books, does that include the bonus ones or not?

4 books, not including Ugly Love. Pick any 4 books from options 1-7.

Link for Finlay Donovan is Killing It

My review of The Sputnik sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

"I liked the writing, not the story".

Yeah, that sums it up. Tbh there wasn't much story in the first place. Sumire was one odd bird and I loved her. I didn't like Miu. Her character seemed a bit sketchy and the writer didn't fully explored it in my opinion. The narrator's character was woven just perfectly. He was sanest of the trio.

The stories we read always have a purpose. The writer tries to sell his/her ideas and beliefs to us. But I was at a loss because I didn't understand what the writer is trying to sell us here. If its about the possibility of multiple universe, I am out. And if its about the unrequited love, we all have been there at some point. But I must say, he writes very intelligently.

I don't mind similes and metaphors but the book was laced with it and it deviates from the story. I didn't give two cents about the long lines, my favourite was this simple line,

"I know what's wrong, but what is right? ".

I am giving this book 3.5 stars and I do want to read Murakami's other books.

P. S:- I read ebook as well as the audiobook version of this book. The narrator's voice was very sexy. And I developed a tiny crush on him. When Miu hugged him, I internally screamed, "Back off, Lady". 😆

Originally posted by: Shanam_77

Yes, they are but they can be read as standalones.

It would be awesome but if only everyone agrees.

Both of you can get together and recommend a romance book (like Diya & Shreya did for Fantasy) when we need a romance read. Since the romance read for February was pretty bad, it will be sooner rather than later (most likely August/September).

Let the reads for this month be since I did put in effort to choose these books. If you want, I can add an additional genre (Young Adult) for the sake of another option.

Thank you Anam. We appreciate your effort. And Hinna and I would love to come up with options for some books in romance books and Yes, please add one young adult book. It would give me more options to choose from. 😊

Originally posted by: Shanam_77

Thank you Anam. We appreciate your effort. And Hinna and I would love to come up with options for some books in romance books and Yes, please add one young adult book. It would give me more options to choose from. 😊

Cant wait

Review of Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

2.5 stars

Things I liked in this book:

1. The characters. They were well-formed and interesting. I particularly liked Sumire and Miu. Sumire, for her quirkiness and Miu, for the mysterious air surrounding her. K was good but his narration bored me. But overall, the characters were really good.

2. Sumire and K's friendship. I adore friendship stories and the relationship between these two was a treat. Even if K's mind kept getting strayed😆 But really, the trust and love they had for each other was ❤️

3. The part where Sumire disappeared and the following 20 pages or so, and the 2nd document by Sumire. Because it might be just a grain of mystery in a sea of other things, but I'll still hang on to it😆 I particularly liked the 2nd doc. I thought Miu's story was very nicely narrated.

Things I didn't like:

1. Narrative style. The unnecessarily long sentences seemed to be there just to fill pages. The (over) abundance of similes and metaphors. Using them more sparingly would have been preferable. That's probably because I have absolutely no poetic sensibility but the narration was a bigger hurdle in my enjoying this book than even the confusing storyline.

2. The ending. Open-ended stories are fine but this one had too many things that didn't get any explanations.

In creative writing classes, they tell you to start developing a story from a theme, which can be formed by imagining things like "What if so and so happened?" "What if there were two characters with so and so personalities and they met under a given circumstance?" Then the writer develops the plot around it. This story seemed like it only gave us the "what if" part, and left everything else to the readers.

From what Anam said earlier, I understand now that this is Murakami's signature way of writing stories, but personally, I didn't much care for so many things left unexplained, things that practically made the base of this story.

This book left me so confused that I'm not even sure if it is the style or the magical realism genre that left me feeling so underwhelmed. I'll have to try more works under this genre to get that answer.

This is weird because I can't even say that it was a bad book or a bad theme. I found the theme pretty interesting, and feel like if it were written differently, I would have actually loved it. And even after all these complaints I have, I also have a feeling that this is one of those stories that is going to stay with me for a long long time. Doesn't really make sense to say this about something I just called 'underwhelming' but I guess that's just Murakami - making me confused even in the review part😆