Although people catagorise reading fiction in the same vain of popular culture as films, TV, video games etc., for this writer one of the key differences that makes the former uniquely stand out is that I find it to be an almost exclusively past-based past-time. What I mean by that is that there's very little market beyond absolute hardcore fans of individual authors for upcoming books in the same vein as other mediums. A great deal of this is likely down to the fact that it's quite difficult to come up with exciting advertisements for novels, compared to the glory of film trailers, game adverts (though most of those usually have a 'not game footage' disclaimer at the bottom of the screen which makes me not want to buy it out of spite) or even for albums, since the overall appeal of a good book generally just isn't something that can be described in a short blast without lacking. There are exceptions, of course, usually resulting in massive sales for something like The Da Vinci Code, but these are few and far between.
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| I didn't queue at midnight for this... |
This isn't something that's ever bothered me, because I think that one great feature about becoming a literature fanatic is the beautifully ever-growing realisation that there are far more unread genuine classics out there just waiting to be found than you ever might have expected. For every author you already enjoy there are three others with a similar style you might enjoy just as much. For every genre you become a fan of there are at least five other sub-genres spinning out of it waiting to offer you a brilliant new perspective on the same themes. Even if changes in the English language mean you don't particularly enjoy reading older work (and to be honest I've been getting lazier and lazier in that regard the further I move away from my past academic life) there's still an uncountable amount of amazing books from the last one hundred years out there.
But in some ways it is a bit of a shame that I very rarely get excited about new books coming out, because there's a lot to be said for the sense of anticipation arising from expectation. In the past I used to get this feeling at least once a year when Terry Pratchett announced a new Discworld book, so that when I finally grew up (a bit) and got a job I made sure I bought a new hardback copy as soon as possible. For a little while I used to do the same with new novels by Michael Crichton, until my fan love for him brought on by modern science thriller classics (by the standards of the genre) like Jurassic Park and Sphere was eroded through increasingly dull new books. As regards to Pratchett, the sheer number and apparent limitlessness of his productivity meant that the allure of a new Discworld book lost its shine over the years.
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| Sadly boring cover. |
But what was supposed to be a short intro has gotten way out of control, so time to get to the point of this post; in five months I'm finally going to be able to get my hands on a book that I've been waiting for for about two years now- or three if you count the time elapsed since the release of 1Q84 (clumsily reviewed in its two parts here and here). A new book by the best author in the world, Mr. Haruki Murakami is almost here. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was first announced by the author in February 2013 and arrived on Japanese shelves only two months laster. Since then I've been scouring various sources for the announcement of the inevitable English translation (I would learn Japanese but I can barely speak English), and in that time it seems to have been translated into every damned language except English, which has been really annoying me.
Regular Murakami translator Phillip Gabriel is once again translating, and I know that the reason for the wait is simply the difficulty in performing the task to the quality that fans expect. In fact a gap of a year and a half is actually the shortest time yet for a Murakami translation (Norwegian Wood had a thirteen year gap), presumably thanks to the increased interest in his work shown by the midnight openings for the 1Q84 release, so I probably shouldn't complain. And anyway, at the start of this column I was somewhat bemoaning the lack of enjoyable anticipation in the book world compared to more up-to-date media, so I really definitely shouldn't complain. Thankfully the cycle should begin again after because I'm fairly sure I read recently that Murakami's next project is already in motion, a new collection of short stories that have already appeared in various places, so that shouldn't take too long to come to fruition. The anticipation cycle continues.
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| ... But I did queue at midnight for this. |
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