16.May.2010 Short Sunday: Sleep by Haruki Murakami
Back in my high school days, I was so into mountain hiking and camping it drove my parents crazy. It wasn’t so much about the activities, more about how unsafe it was for a bunch of teenagers to hike faraway mountains considering how wild these places are in Indonesia. There isn’t much organization or safety net at all. Combine that with youth sense of adventure and carelessness, it’d make any parents squirm.
Anyway gone are the days when I needed to slip out in the dawn and faced all the dramas before and after each adventure. I have grown many more years and Australia is as safe as snug. My parents can breathe easily.
I haven’t gone camping or mountain-hiking for a long while, only some bush-walking (To clarify, mountain-hiking is sort of like bush-walking with much higher elevation and takes longer time. For me back then it ranged from 12 hours to 2 days (we had to camp midway)), so I got excited when we bought a small tent on sale. I built them on our backyard, threw in some quilts and pillow, and spent the rest of Saturday afternoon yesterday inside the tent, reading. Funnily it was actually warmer inside the tent under the mild sun than inside the house (we’re entering winter) so I was happy to stay there for hours. It was bliss.
I read one short story from Haruki Murakami‘s short sollection The Elephant Vanishes titled Sleep. It’s about a housewife who finds that she can’t sleep one day and starts to read a lot during the night when everybody is asleep. It’s recommended to me by Rob, you can read his review here. I thought the story was a typical Murakami, with dreams and weird things happening. I wasn’t fond of the ending (also my problem with most Murakami’s works), but it was a fun story. How good is it to not have to sleep, ever? I would love that and spend it reading! Just like the woman character in the story. We spend 1/3 of our life sleeping. Without that, we’d practically have our life extended by a third. That’s a lot!
In the story there are references to Anna Karenina, which the character spends the most time reading. I’ve been wanting to read that for a long time but have not so I was worried of spoilers throughout the story, but it wasn’t too bad. Any interest to for Anna Karenina read-along? Next year maybe?
Have you read any Murakami’s short story? Which one is your favorite?
mee 
