Haruki Murakami’s latest book – the title of which translates to Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage – went on sale in Japan last month, and in that time it’s been selling over a million copies a week. You can catch a glimpse of the book’s first and earliest reviews over at the NY Daily News. (By the way, did you know Murakami translated The Great Gatsby into Japanese?)
Murakami’s Latest is Flying Off the Shelves
The Last Interview
Recommended Listening: Fresh Air on Melville House’s Last Interview series with Ernest Hemingway, Nora Ephron, and Philip K. Dick. For more interviews, check out who The Millions has interviewed recently.
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Tilting Druglords
Look, it’s hard being the bloodthirsty kingpin of a multinational drug smuggling cartel. Apparently Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has been feeling a bit sorry for himself post-capture, so what did Eduardo Guerrero, head of Mexico’s prison systems, think would cheer him up? He brought him a copy of Don Quixote.
Murakami Profiled
Ahead of 1Q84 hitting shelves next week, Sam Anderson’s big profile of Haruki Murakami has arrived. Also don’t miss Chip Kidd‘s discussion of 1Q84‘s book design.
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Unfamiliar Discourse
Recommended Reading: Je Banach on what literary discourse offers in an age of extremism. For Banach, literary discourse is “the language of our future because it is the language of confronting that which is foreign to us.”
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Monster Mash
Infographic of the Week: Are you ready for Halloween? Check out this infographic of literary monsters from Morphsuits at Electric Literature. Pair with our essays on reading House of Leaves on Halloween and long hallways in horror films to get in the spirit.
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Talking to Ourselves
“Like walkie-talkies that require a button be pressed to speak and released to hear, does reading require that either the voice of the author or the voice of the reader’s consciousness be silenced at any given moment? Such an analogy suggests that reading is an act of hospitality toward another’s mind, in which we silence our voice in courtesy to the voice of another’s consciousness, a voice that alternates with our own in conversation.” John Biguenet on silent reading.
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