#3: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

At the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, to read Kafka on the Shore is to be Kafka on the Shore.  It somehow has the power to envelope the reader and allow her to travel to a place where time isn’t much of a factor.  The story isn’t linear or cylical, it just eliminates time in order for people to find one another.  And even though the book takes on a metaphysical tone where cats talk and fish fall from the sky, the feelings in the book are so inherently human, that one finds it hard to believe that the story is one imagined only by a single person.  Boys grow up and sometimes girls get younger, so when seeing the worlds of several characters collide, it comes to the attention of the reader that we are sometimes pulled in a direction not because we want to, but because there are things beyond the edge of the world that need us to be there. 

To say Kafka took ahold of me for a while would be an understatement of massive proportions.  It allowed me to revisit places I’d never seen and watch as its characters became extensions of myself.  I’m not saying that everyone will have this experience with Kafka, but if you get the chance to somehow be changed by a simple arrangement of words, I’d highly recommend it.