It’s not only boy wizards and teen vampires who can still ignite a book frenzy: as already reported in The Rumpus, Haruki Murakami’s two-volume (or longer?) new novel 1Q84 came out this week in Japan. It has already broken sales records and is “on track to sell a million and ‘become a social phenomenon,’” according to the publisher.

Many of Murakami’s fans were disappointed when plot information leaked out before Kafka on the Shore was published, so he clamped down, and speculation has been rushing to fill the news vacuum for months. Plausible guesses include a riff on Orwell’s 1984 (“9” and “Q” are pronounced the same in Japanese); an homage to Lu Xun’s True Story of Ah Q ; and the X-ray crystallography identifier for mouse acetylcholinesterase.

Enter Daniel Morales, of the excellent blog How to Japonese, who decided to liveblog his first couple days reading the book. Why? He starts with a great story about the only kind of professor there should be—the kind who takes his Japanese literature students and former students out to cheer on an unsuspecting and befuddled Murakami as he climbs Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon. “It doesn’t make sense,” the professor says, “but we’re not doing it because it makes sense.” …more

I could never tell him apart from the other ones, Asch and Abramovitsh and Aleichem and the rest. And those titles like “Gimpel the Fool,” straight from the old country? Well Singer, and the translator of “Gimpel the Fool,” some guy named Saul Bellow, get as much life and humanity into a dozen pages as I’ve ever found in a piece of literature of any length. Then you flip to “A Day in Coney Island” and get all of modernity too, and keep turning to one story after another in a crescendo of astonishment and gratitude. …more

Roberto Bolaño’s überbook inspires a speed-read through literary history. …more