Hace tiempo que no escribo ningún post sobre algún libro de los que leo. En parte es porque últimamente no he tenido demasiado tiempo libre para leer y en parte porque tampoco lo he tenido para escribir.

Desde hace algunas semanas mi nivel de stress bajó lo suficiente como para poder dedicar algo de tiempo libre a la lectura, y finalmente terminé de leer The Elephant Vanishes.

Este libro es una recopilación de relatos cortos escritas por Haruki Murakami entre los 80 y los 90. Muy similar a Blind willow, sleeping woman, consta de varias historias sueltas, surrealistas, extrañas y entretenidas.

Aunque debo decir que hubo algunas que me resultaron demasiado raras para acabar de comprenderlas, en general es un libro que recomiendo leer por lo entretenido que resulta sumergirse en el universo particular de Murakami.

Aquí os dejo algunos de mis fragmentos favoritos.

Every morning, I still run past those five barns. Not one of then has yet burned down. Nor do I hear of any barn fires. Come December, the birds strafe overhead. And I keep getting older.
Although just now and then, in the depths of the night, I’ll thing about barns burning to the ground.

She stripped the sheets and pillowcase and ordered me out of my pajamas. My only refuge was the bathroom, where I showered and shaved. She was getting to be more and more like our mother. Women are like salmon: In the end, they all swim back to the same place.

“Doesn’t’ look like an airplane,” I say. Doesn’t sound like my voice either. Strangely brittle, as if the nutrients had been strained out through a thick filter. Have I grown so old all of a sudden?
“That’s probable because we haven’t painted it yet,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll gave it the right color. Then you’ll see it’s an airplane.”
“The color’s not the problem. It’s the shape. That’s not an airplane.”
“Well, if it’s not an airplane, what is it?” he asks me. If he doesn’t know, and I don’t know, then what is ti? “So, that’s why it’s got to be the color”

This occurs to me while I’m ridding the Yamanote Line. I’m standing by the door, holding on to my ticket so I won’t lose it, gazing out the window at the buildings we pass. Our city, these streets, I don’t know why it makes me so depressed. That old familiar gloom that befalls the city dweller, regular as due dates, cloudy as mental Jell-O. The dirty facades, the nameless crowds, the unremitting noise, the packet rush-hour trains, the gray skies, the billboards on every square centimeter of available space, the hopes and resignation, irritation and excitement. And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. And infinity and, at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it al up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That’s the city.
That’s when I remember what that Chinese girl said
This was never any place I was meant to be