There’s something magic about watching rotten, rusty barns and roll by and eating nigh-frozen sushi while listening to this song. (It’s even better after the snow has been and gone.)
This is my favourite of all the things written this weekend:
“Don’t you ma’am me, mister. I’m only seven years old.”
“Hey, in cat years, you’d be menopausal.” He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the vaulted ceiling hung with community service pennants for recycling and gardening and book drives. It was a good school. Amy liked it. It had been a good year, for her. “You could be one of those really hot cougar women, the kind all the paperboys want.”
“What are paperboys?”
“Kids who used to deliver newspapers. You’re too young.”
…I should hasten to add that the youngest speaker in that conversation is post-Singular. Just so you don’t get confused. Because while the story may end in some rather Shakespearean family violence, it’s not that kind of story.
Also I finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami remains, as far as I can recall, the only writer who can move me to tears. You’d think a book about being a runner and being a novelist wouldn’t be exactly moving, per se, but there’s something about Murakami’s ability to humbly forgive himself for being what he is, for accepting himself with all his flaws while still maintaining a rigorous set of personal and professional standards, that always undoes me inside.