Why serious fiction is worth the effort: reading as active imaginative work, meditation, and friendship with a book.
Where it comes up 12
Within this theme 193
Concepts 16
- Fiction as a Tonic for Empathy
Tamir's case that fiction, not just self-help, distills emotions with sincere empathy, and that libraries and novels are portals and time machines where others have already overcome your…
- Fiction and Non-Fiction Polarity
Tamir's framework: non-fiction gives tools to improve your life but alone breeds the illusion of control, while fiction holds the joyous and sorrowful stories of the heart but alone risks…
- Hybrid reading model
Nectar of Time's mission: read fiction alongside non-fiction for growth rather than only optimization-driven self-help.
- Magical realism
Strange events inserted into recognizable everyday reality rather than a new world; for Salih this is what makes Murakami easy to enter and useful for coping.
- Reading as Meditation
Kurt Vonnegut's idea, which Grant shares, that reading is a form of meditation: sit, breathe, focus intensely on the words, finish calm and happy. Tamir adds that the happiness comes…
- Short Form to Bring Readers Back
Tamir and Logan argue publishers keep releasing huge novels that few people can finish. They should offer more novellas, short stories and collections to win back lapsed readers, the way…
- The Right Book at the Right Time
Some books must come into your life at the right moment because you can outgrow them, and others only open up years later. The book hasn't changed; you have.
- Active vs Passive Media
A film stampedes across your imagination and does the work for you; a novel forces you to turn letters into words into scenes and make sense of characters. Netflix is passive and easy…
- Western need for explanation
Salih's idea that Western audiences, raised on stories like Christopher Nolan's that resolve logically, demand explanations, while Japanese and Asian storytelling lets strange things happen…
- Murakamian
Someone who deeply resonates with Murakami's worlds and joins the online ecosystem of channels, groups and podcasts devoted to them; the episode's self-description for both speakers.
- Portal conversations
Tamir's name for Murakami's one-on-one scenes (a drink or coffee between two people) that feel like slipping into another universe, where incredible anecdotes are about to be dropped.
- Fiction vs. non-fiction
A thread through the episode: non-fiction 'hits you with the facts', while fiction transports you and can deliver the same lesson, or a bigger one, because we change by being moved…
- Literary vs Genre Fiction
Grant: only the author's technique divides literature from genre. 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 are science fiction but shelved as literature, and most literary novels are really…
- Self-Help Fatigue
Tamir's observation that self-help books lift you beautifully the first time you're sad or face adversity, but once you've read many they all say the same thing and stop working, and that…
- Plot vs Character
Grant rejects the literary snob's dismissal of plot: the great books have both, and long novels need a plot to carry the reader to the end.
- Reading Fiction Builds Empathy
Tyler cites a study suggesting fiction readers score higher in empathy, because reading is practice in switching places with other people.
Books 37
- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The book-club pick that made Tamir think 'I didn't know a book could do that to me' and pulled him into fiction.
- 1Q84
Tamir calls it Murakami's only real romance: unrequited love from page one.
- Kafka on the Shore
Both find it absurd: fish falling from the sky, Colonel Sanders as a pimp. Tamir only recommends it to die-hard fans.
- Steppenwolf
Grant calls it fantastic but 'dripping in imagery', in contrast with the sparing imagery of Japanese prose.
- Dance Dance Dance
Tamir's example of Murakami women as vanishing conduits rather than true romance.
- Meditations
Tamir's example of speaking with the dead: opening Meditations is talking to Marcus Aurelius, because books are how people become immortal.
- The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Murakami's new novel, due out November 19 (2024) in English, his first in six years and a kind of sequel to Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
- Hear the Wind Sing
Murakami's first novella, one of his 'kitchen table' novels written by hand at night after running his bar. Grant liked it and could see a young writer still finding his way.
- On the Road
Kerouac's novel of 1950s American hitchhiking. At 19 it filled Grant with a wild spirit; 30 years later it had lost its resonance. His example of a book that must come at the right time.
- Sleep
Murakami story about a woman who stops sleeping for weeks. Samantha read it while she herself was struggling to sleep and with a protagonist her age; it shook her out of self-absorbed…
- The Odyssey
One of the classic works Tamir read before turning to modern fiction.
- The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami
Matthew Carl Strecher's study of Murakami's metaphysical realms, the episode's organizing theme: why does Murakami send protagonists into wells, through walls, and across portals, and what…
- The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway's first novel. Grant once disliked the slow trout-fishing interlude in the Spanish mountains between Paris and Pamplona; now it is his favourite part.
- Dracula
Read in Grant's university literature class.
- Galatea
Miller's short story based on the Pygmalion and Galatea myth, published as a small hardcover. Tamir picked it up as the perfect gift: substantial enough to feel real, short enough that…
- Men, Women and Other Adventures
A handmade anthology Tyler gave Tamir for his birthday, assembled by cutting stories out of other collections and rebinding them with Bible onion-skin paper, with images and captions…
- Norwegian Wood
The Murakami novel Grant likes best; Tamir notes it is his only novel without magic realism.
- A Wild Sheep Chase
Mentioned as Grant tries to recall which Murakami book involves twin girlfriends; the twins are actually in Pinball, 1973.
- An Artist of the Floating World
Tamir won it in Grant's Patreon lottery; Grant urges him to read it for its light touch, where meaning lurks beneath the sentences.
- Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's novel. Grant was on the edge of his seat during the officers' horse race, proof that a 150-year-old classic with 'the aura of boredom' can still thrill.
- Atomic Habits
Named by Tamir as the kind of direct self-improvement book busy readers reach for instead of Murakami, setting up the closing argument for reading fiction.
- Dune
Mia just finished it and calls it the pinnacle of science fiction, full of 'cheat codes to human psychology' and philosophy, an escape from mortgages and an Orwellian world into one where…
- Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
A nearly forgotten novel about a recently widowed woman living in a London hotel for the elderly. Grant calls it heartbreaking and gets emotional thinking about it; he believes it was…
- Siddhartha
Part of the philosophical fiction Tamir read before getting into modern fiction.
- 1984
Grant's example of science fiction shelved as literature because of the author's skill.
- Absalom, Absalom!
Read in Grant's university literature class.
- Ecclesiastes
Biblical book named as the alternative source of Solomon's advice to leave unanswerable questions alone.
- The Alchemist
Mia calls it a complete, timeless work of art in defending fiction against nonfiction; also a parallel to her own search for a publisher. Tamir uses Coelho to recommend reading little-known…
- The Makioka Sisters
One of Grant's all-time favourite Japanese novels: 500 pages of trying to find a husband for the third sister, yet unbelievably compelling.
- War and Peace
Logan's shorthand for the wrong first book for someone trying to rebuild a reading habit.
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Where Grant says dragons and fantasy belong.
- Brave New World
Grant's example of science fiction shelved as literature.
- Fahrenheit 451
Grant's example of science fiction shelved as literature.
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Tamir's example of poetic prose you have to be in the mood for.
- Ramayana
One of the spiritual classics Tamir read before turning to modern fiction.
- Solaris
Tamir asks whether Grant has read or watched Solaris, pointing to a poster behind him.
- Ulysses
Widely considered the greatest novel of the 20th century; Grant calls it masterfully built but unpleasant to read without notes, asking whether a book that is that much work is good.
People 30
- Tamir Barzilai
Host of the Nectar of Time podcast; in this second official episode he shares his own path back into fiction via a pandemic book club and Haruki Murakami.
- Grant Shipway
Canadian writer, lifelong student of literature and host of the YouTube channel Grant Loves Books, which offers in-depth analyses of great 19th- and 20th-century novels. At 26 he left…
- Haruki Murakami
Japanese novelist and one of Tamir's favourite authors, who brought him back to fiction. Grant thinks he is wildly overrated, 'the Stephen King of Japanese literature', and dislikes his…
- Salih Yayar
German Murakami devotee (a self-described 'Murakamian') from Gütersloh who runs the Haruki Murakami Art YouTube and Instagram channels (mini-documentaries visualizing Murakami's books)…
- Tyler Dorchester
Tamir's barber of seven years and close friend; a deep reader of fiction, a published comic artist and a writer of unpublished short stories, raised on a farm in rural Alberta. Tamir calls…
- Kurt Vonnegut
American novelist and one of Grant's favourite authors; Grant saw him speak in Toronto in the 1990s. Cited for saying reading was his version of meditation, and (by Tamir) for his talk on…
- Hermann Hesse
German-Swiss novelist (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf). Tamir read him as philosophical fiction; Tamir says Hesse knew Carl Jung and that Jung's influence shows in his writing.
- Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises, whose slow fishing interlude Grant came to love only years later.
- Neil Strauss
Rolling Stone journalist and author of 'The Game'. His online COVID book club picked Hard-Boiled Wonderland, which led Tamir to his first Murakami book.
- Jack Kerouac
Beat Generation author of On the Road, a book that changed Grant's world at 19 but no longer resonates with him.
- James Joyce
Irish author of Ulysses. Grant is not a fan but admires his aim of exposing his frustration with his own country, which he wants to do for Canada.
- Tony Robbins
The main book in Colin's five-self-help-books experiment. One of his salespeople said Robbins had changed his life while still performing badly at sales.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist; Grant contrasts the absurd but aspirational narrator of Notes from Underground with Dazai's hopeless protagonist.
- J. D. Salinger
Author of The Catcher in the Rye, which Grant fears would now feel too self-indulgent.
- James Clear
Author of Atomic Habits, invoked by Tamir as the kind of direct self-improvement book busy people pick over Murakami.
- Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist; Grant marvels that Anna Karenina, written about 150 years ago, still thrills readers.
- Madeline Miller
Author of modern retellings of Greek myth. Tamir mentions her short story Galatea as the kind of short, giftable book publishers should make more of.
- Matthew Carl Strecher
Murakami scholar and author of 'The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami', who met Murakami at his university and knows his translators. His book gives the episode its framing question: what…
- Yukio Mishima
Japanese novelist and Dazai's rival; Grant recalls a story that Mishima was dismissive of Dazai as a human being.
- Hans Fallada
German author of The Drinker, which Grant read recently: deeply depressing, yet its protagonist still has desire.
- Homer
Ancient Greek poet of The Odyssey, part of the classic philosophical reading Tamir did before turning to modern fiction.
- Jay Rubin
Murakami's English translator (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the new Hard-Boiled Wonderland translation). Salih notes Rubin abridged Wind-Up Bird, so English readers miss passages later…
- Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Japanese novelist of The Makioka Sisters, one of Grant's all-time favourite Japanese novels.
- Kazuo Ishiguro
Author of An Artist of the Floating World, which Tamir won in Grant's Patreon lottery and has yet to read.
- Leo
Salih's friend from Kentucky and co-host of the Murakami podcast Convo on the Shore.
- Sigrid Löffler
Long-time host of the German TV show Das Literarische Quartett who called the sex passages in South of the Border, West of the Sun 'fast food' writing, was accused of prudishness by her…
- Alfred Birnbaum
Murakami's early English translator, who did the original translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, later retranslated by Jay Rubin.
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Lead host of Das Literarische Quartett who defended South of the Border, West of the Sun against Sigrid Löffler's criticism in the 2000 on-air row Salih describes.
- Philip Gabriel
Murakami translator (Kafka on the Shore, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, among others). Tamir half-jokingly suggests giving the full Wind-Up Bird to Gabriel to translate.
- Tim Ferriss
Mia cites him as someone with a cerebral, self-improvement fan base who still loves and honors fiction and comic books.
Quotes 32
It's hard to build a philosophy on hitchhiking. The book hasn't changed, I've changed. It's still a good book, it's just not a good book for me anymore.
For a while I would be obsessed with self-help books and this and that. And I realized the more self-help books I read, the less of a personality I had.
The best fiction-making machine that we have is our mind when we go to sleep at night. You're building worlds and stories every single night, and a novel is just that same thing in a pill format.
Reading fiction pulls you down from something, and it grants you more time for reflection and more time to try other things.
I've called fiction a tonic for empathy. Non-fiction is teaching you things that you don't know; it lives most of the time in the knowledge realm. With fiction specifically, it lives in the emotions.
Purist Murakamians like ourselves would say every word is perfect. I need to know exactly how he's cooking his pasta.
If you put yourself in that same lens, if someone wrote a story about you, you'd probably be a lot more empathetic towards it.
To me literature is a tonic for empathy. It's something that you can take and all of a sudden feel in ways that you weren't able to feel before.
That Japanese light touch: you need to look carefully, and you start to see something. It's not on the page, but it's there. It's lurking beneath the sentences.
Stories are useful, and in particular novels are portals into the multiverse. Imagine that your problems in your life have already appeared to other people before, and they have overcome it, and they can liberate you from the burden that you think is so unique and so your own.
The way people become immortal is through books. Every time you open a book, if you open up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, you're talking to the dead.
If you're just optimizing all the time, you're going to become really efficient and you're going to have no personality.
The scenes in Murakami novels you carry with you in your backpack for the rest of your life.
I consider him the Stephen King of Japanese literature.
He said, well, I read. I sit, I breathe deeply, I focus very intensely on these words that I'm reading, I feel calm, and when I'm finished reading I feel happy.
Reading fiction opens you more perspective than someone who talks about daily life only, because we're all living in our own world, in our own bubble.
This is Murakami, you won't get an explanation. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.
When you go to see a film it just goes stampeding across your imagination. You don't need your imagination when you see a film; it's all there.
It has that aura of boredom, and it's too long, and it's old, and classics are just a euphemism for boring. Obviously that's not the case, but you have to be willing to go on that adventure.
I was taking lessons out of it of how to get through when the best I could do was just dog paddle to keep my head above water, and it even actually just taught me sometimes that's good enough, because sooner or later something's going to shift.
Don't get bamboozled, don't join a cult, read a book. Your life will be better.
For me fiction is a tonic for empathy, and it's a tonic for any emotion that we choose to identify with.
One of my favorite feelings in the world is stumbling across a singer or an author and realizing they just knock you on your ass, and you realize they have a whole back catalog that you now get to dive into.
Everybody knows the silence after finishing an audiobook, and I thought to myself, holy s***, I did not know a book could do that to me.
I remember finishing it and just thinking, holy... I didn't know a book could do that to me.
You don't have time to read a book because you're not reading books.
Rating Murakami books if you're a Murakami fan is basically impossible. It's like asking which child is your favorite.
I read books with such awe. I'm like, wow, I don't even know how you came up with this stuff. I'm just impressed that you were able to put a book together.
There's something timeless about those emotions, because those emotions are perennial. It's not the sadness of 2024; that sadness existed in 1924 and 1824.
If we only rely on movies, which can't capture everything that a book captures, we're lost. We need books.
When you've got to tell everybody about this book, that is a weird kind of joy to have, because it's almost like it's bigger than you.
Those long books are very rewarding, because it's like a friend you've had for so many weeks, and every time you turn a page your friend shows you a new aspect of his personality.
Insights 29
- Fiction teaches you to value people without status
A narrator who shows you a character's trials makes you respect someone with no Bugatti, six-pack, or partner; extend that to people you rank below you and you realize you're not as low as…
- Magical realism has no entry barrier
Invented universes like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings keep a barrier between you and the world; magical realism plants the strange inside your ordinary environment, so it is easier to…
- Wisdom sticks when delivered with love
What stayed with Sheela was not the Gibran text but her father reading it with affection, and teaching his children the stars. As Tamir puts it, the teaching mattered because it came from a…
- A book can be good but not for you now
Judge a book's quality apart from its appeal to you at this moment: the same book can be bad for you today and good in 20 years.
- Check whose eyes the story uses
Before calling a writer sexist, ask whose perspective the story is told from: a young man's thoughts (Norwegian Wood) differ from a grown man's or a woman's own voice.
- Non-fiction instructs, fiction calms
Non-fiction hands you guides to follow; fiction calms you, lifts you out of your bubble, and opens perspectives and sparks that daily life never would.
- Novelists distill the non-fiction
Great novelists absorbed the knowledge of their era (Hesse drew on Jung), so fiction is a tool for joy and for understanding the world and yourself, not a mere pastime.
- Optimization alone flattens you
Reading only to optimize and grow makes you efficient but personality-less; you miss a whole other side of the world.
- Plotless books become internal plots
When a novel like Dance Dance Dance barely has an external plot, the plot moves inward into the labyrinth of the protagonist's psyche, which takes a more sophisticated lens to enjoy.
- Slowness makes excitement exciting
Reflective, slow passages pause the action so the exciting parts feel more exciting, something the young reader who wants speed often misses.
- There's nothing new under the sun
Your love and grief are unique, but they are functions of a human nature written about endlessly, so books, even obscure ones by unknown authors, can hand you tools others already used to…
- A book for people who stopped reading
Troll was written with two-to-three-page chapters that mimic a feed, so that people who think they've lost their attention span can ease back into reading. Friends who 'don't read anymore'…
- Consuming wisdom isn't doing the work
Podcasts, books and conversations about growth are as good as unread until you internalize them and act. People massively overcomplicate inner work. Free, simple, consistent sitting beat…
- Fiction soothes us through others' enigmas
When you hit the limit of what you can know, one of the few ways to soothe yourself is fiction: watching other people live through their own enigmas.
- Less fiction, less empathy
The breakdown of decorum and empathy may be partly, though not one-to-one, caused by people reading less fiction. Men read less fiction than women in every age group, and that may help…
- Lessons live in the conflict's resolution
Fiction must resolve its conflict somehow, even in a downer ending, and the way an author resolves a character's trap is where the reader finds a usable lesson about getting through.
- Match the challenge to your level
A crossword made for a five-year-old gives no satisfaction. Literature, like exercise, has to be pitched at your current comprehension and the effort you're willing to give.
- Only non-fiction breeds false control
Reading only self-improvement breeds the illusion that you can control everything just by saying so; reading only fiction can leave you living in a fairy tale. You need both.
- Reading about action is not action
Reading a book can feel like the equivalent of acting on chapter one's advice; things are often as simple as doing the thing, which is why we overcomplicate them.
- Reading makes you do the film's work
Reading forces the imagination to do the work a film does for you: turning letters into words into sentences, remembering it all, and working out why characters behave as they do.
- Reading satisfies because it is work
Like exercise, reading releases its pleasure because it is effortful. It is an active activity, not a passive one, which is also why it meets more resistance.
- The best self-help reads like literature
Tyler notices that Tamir describes his formative self-help books by how beautifully they were written, not by what they taught. The poetic, metaphysical non-fiction is what sticks and…
- Translation can change the book
Which translation you read matters: an abridged translation can drop whole chapters that add little plot but much atmosphere, so a fuller retranslation can feel like a new book.
- Vibe over content
With Murakami scenes it's often not the content but the vibe: two people with whisky or coffee feel like they've slipped into another universe.
- Books keep closed doors open
Every life choice steers you down one track and closes other doors; any book, from the Odyssey to Confessions of a Shopaholic, reintroduces you to worlds you no longer move in.
- Fiction teaches unconsciously
Fiction's lessons rarely arrive as a one-to-one character arc. They work unconsciously: ruminating on the problems characters face helps you deal with your own.
- Fiction teaches what no one will tell you
Some lessons, like 'things will come around', can't be told to you, especially when shame keeps adults from admitting loneliness. Fiction lets you learn them by proxy.
- Self-study can turn neurotic
Constant introspection into what you think and feel is valuable but can quickly become neurotic and self-absorbed. Sometimes a story is needed to remind you of a world beyond your own head.
- We change by being moved, not informed
Self-improvement through accumulating information has limits. We actually change by being impacted emotionally, which is why fiction and storytelling, not facts, have carried wisdom since…
Practices 16
- Build handmade anthologies
How Tyler made Men, Women and Other Adventures for Tamir.
- Read a lot, write a lot, find your signature
Logan's main advice to young writers: read far more than you do now, especially literature rather than only games and anime, and write a lot. There are only so many stories, so don't chase…
- Read fiction alongside non-fiction
Keep a hybrid reading diet: pair self-improvement non-fiction with fiction for perspective, reflection and imagination.
- Revisit the books of your youth
Go back to books you loved or disliked when young, to see how you've changed and catch what you missed.
- Train reading like a muscle
If you want to get back into reading, don't start with War and Peace. Start with a short story or novella you can finish in an afternoon or two. Reading is a muscle: students whose eyes…
- Convert friends with short stories
To introduce someone to Murakami, gift a short story collection and point to one specific story instead of a 600-page novel; Tamir finds nine out of ten people actually read it.
- Share short stories instead of books
When recommending fiction, Tamir rarely gives whole books now, because people seldom finish them. He sends a PDF or link to one short story from an author's collection that the person will…
- Supplement school with self-directed non-fiction
Tamir's view that schools, especially high school, don't teach you to formulate your own ideas.
- Copy fiction's lessons into a journal
Tyler's habit, which also gives him a way to answer the question of what fiction has taught him.
- Give the author the benefit of the doubt
When a section displeases you, first ask whether you're failing to understand it before blaming the author.
- Join a book club outside your taste
Join a book club that picks books you'd never choose yourself, to expose yourself to new ideas; this is how Tamir found Murakami.
- Join a book club to stretch
Tamir joined a book club in 2020 specifically to read fiction he would never pick up on his own.
- Join a book club you don't control
Tamir did this in 2020 to break out of heavy philosophical classics; it led him to Murakami.
- Read with the benefit of the doubt
Approach every author with the benefit of the doubt and awe at the effort behind a book; Tamir rarely rates a book below three stars and assumes he may simply not 'get it' yet.
- Read the overlooked books
Don't dismiss a book because it has few reviews, no major publisher or writing that isn't to your taste; a human perspective can still offer a gem.
- Read three books at once
Mia always has an audiobook, a paperback or e-reader book, and a library book going, and one is usually fiction. She borrows from libraries to support them.
Stories 28
- On the Road sent him to Toronto
At 19, at university in Ottawa, On the Road filled Grant with such a wild spirit that he jumped on a bus to Toronto to look up an old high-school acquaintance, which he now finds…
- Ryan Holiday on the Oracle
Tamir happened to be studying the Oracle of Delphi when Ryan Holiday spoke in Vancouver and told how a philosopher asked the Oracle for the best source of wisdom and was told 'the dead'…
- A closeted kid in 1980s rural Alberta
Tyler had a great childhood, with a huge extended family and great parents, but was in the closet with no role models, living a dark double life and feeling locked into a bad fate. Frankl…
- Ferris wheel and pan flute in Greece
Sputnik Sweetheart's images stick with both men. Salih sees Miu whenever he sees a Ferris wheel and recently reread the passage in Greece; Tamir thinks of the novel's mysterious pan flute…
- Gibran on papa's lap, stars in the garden
At five, Sheela sat on her father's lap while he read her Kahlil Gibran, which she didn't understand but felt as affection. In summer the family slept outside in the garden, and every night…
- Murakami story as homework
Within hours of meeting Samantha at his studio, Tamir gave her Murakami's 'Sleep' from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman as homework due the next week. She took it as a sign from the universe…
- Salih finds Killing Commendatore at 30
In April 2018, stressed and just past 30 after years of rushed business travel, Salih used a birthday bookstore voucher from his family. On a bright spring day he opened the prominently…
- The handmade anthology
When Tyler loves a short story, he cuts it from the spine of its book with a carpenter's knife and rebinds his favorites with Bible onion-skin paper, which acts like book glue. He built a…
- Zoe's two-moon mural
Tamir's artist friend Zoe painted a mural in his studio while listening to all 40 hours of 1Q84, adding glow-in-the-dark twin moons. She almost wanted to hate the book but found it too…
- Building a channel from old hard drives
Drawings online weren't enough for Salih, a visual person frustrated that so few Murakami novels have been filmed. He went through years of his own footage on his hard drives, combined it…
- Discovering Murakami in a pandemic book club
In early 2020, still reading heavy classics like the Odyssey, the Ramayana and Siddhartha, Tamir joined a book club so he wouldn't control the picks. When Murakami came up, he chose…
- Learning Jewish culture through Singer
Growing up in rural Alberta, not raised in any church, Tyler learned about traditional Jewish life from Isaac Bashevis Singer's translated Yiddish stories. When he met Tamir and his Jewish…
- Seeing Vonnegut speak in Toronto
In the 1990s Grant saw Kurt Vonnegut speak in Toronto: animated and full of warmth. Vonnegut said when his wife and daughter took up meditation he replied that he reads, which is his…
- Tamir's first Murakami on a long walk
During COVID in 2020, Tamir, then reading only business and self-help, joined a book club. After Neil Strauss's online club chose Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Tamir proposed it to his group. He…
- The Literarisches Quartett blowup
On the German TV show Das Literarische Quartett, one host called the intimate passages in South of the Border, West of the Sun 'fast food' writing. The others shouted that she was prudish…
- The fishing interlude grew on him
When young, Grant was bothered by the slow trout-fishing section between the Paris carousing and the Pamplona bull-running in The Sun Also Rises. Years later it is his favourite part…
- A British book for a British reader
Grant's Patreon lottery winner was an Englishwoman, so he sent her Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, a forgotten British novel she'd never heard of. Her whole book club decided to read it…
- A book club pulled him back to fiction
Tamir, a software entrepreneur with a shelf of non-fiction, joined a book club in 2020 to read fiction. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World made him feel transported, with…
- Book club turned Tamir to fiction
About four and a half years earlier, during COVID, Tamir joined a book club and set his non-fiction aside. Most of the novels were 'pretty cool' but changed nothing; Murakami was the one…
- Custom-bound Hear the Wind Sing
Tamir shows a one-of-a-kind copy of Murakami's Hear the Wind Sing, custom bound from an old book by a bookbinder he found through his Murakami book club.
- Internet cafe twice a week in Budapest
In 16 years in Budapest Grant never had home internet; he checked email at a cafe for an hour twice a week. Back in Canada he binged YouTube book reviews, thought 'I can do that', and only…
- Narrator switch in 1Q84 Book 3
Listening to 1Q84 on audiobook without realizing it was three volumes, Tamir was stunned when Book 3 opened with Ushikawa chapters read by a new narrator, a perspective shift that 'blew my…
- The 1,000-page German Wind-Up Bird
Salih shows Tamir the blue German edition of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, retranslated from Japanese in 2020 at over 1,000 pages vs. the 607-page Jay Rubin English text, with whole chapters…
- Vancouver bookstore owners love Dance Dance Dance
Hunting first editions in Vancouver's used bookstores, where Murakami books 'fly off the shelf', Tamir asked four owners (older, seemingly unmarried men who resemble Murakami characters)…
- Escaping into books during hard times
In tough periods Tyler escaped into books instead of 16 hours of TV. A great story woke up his slowed-down thoughts and energy, and he came back with ideas he hadn't had the day before.
- Meeting entrepreneurs in Indigo's non-fiction aisle
In the first half of his 20s, Tamir was addicted to non-fiction and kept running into his entrepreneur friends in the non-fiction section at Indigo, and never in any other section.
- Tamir's first-edition collection
Tamir owns every US first edition of Murakami's books, in paperback and hardcover, and buys first printings when he can.
- Book club hated his generous scores
In a pandemic book club scoring out of nine, Tamir gave high scores to books he disliked because the author had done a good job. Members hated it as a 'good effort ribbon'; he argued a book…
Films, music and art 4
- Das Literarische Quartett
Long-running German TV literary panel show. A 2000 on-air row over South of the Border, West of the Sun (one host called its sex scenes 'fast food' and was branded prudish) led to her…
- Grant Loves Books
Grant's channel of in-depth reviews of great 19th- and 20th-century novels, started after he returned to Canada; Tamir likens it to a whiskey to savour. It has a companion Patreon with a…
- Haruki Murakami Art
Salih's YouTube and Instagram channel of long-form mini-documentaries that visualize Murakami's books using his own travel footage, stock footage, graphics and music.
- Convo on the Shore
Murakami podcast co-hosted by Salih and Leo, discussing one book per episode (a recent one was on Norwegian Wood); Tamir is invited on.
Organizations and movements 1
- Haruki Murakami book club
Book club Tamir belongs to, through which he found the bookbinder who made his custom Hear the Wind Sing.