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dejv

Out of 32 books I read this year I recommend:

Somehow tech/startup related:

- Spelunky, Derek Yu: book about creating the game of Spelunky + notes on game design

- Disrupted, Dan Lyons: book about "old" guy working in startup

- Hatching Twitter, Nick Bilton: book about Twitter

Non-startupy books:

- A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami: modern Japanese novel

- The Hills of Chianti, Piero Antinori: story about wine company and notes on wine making, wine marketing and other stuff from one of the most notable wine company from Italy (700 years old, owned by one family whole history)

- The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clark: scifi classic

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Curious if you have read other Murakami?

Yes, I discovered him last year and read about five or six other books and plan on reading rest of his books next year.

I do like "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" and "Kafka on the Shore". On the other side I didn't like "After Dark" that much.

Not the author of the parent post, but...

Murakami is awesome. I've only read After Dark and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, but I'm hooked. I'll definitely be reading Norwegian Wood, Kafka By The Shore and/or IQ84 in the near future.

Nice! Recommend 'Hard Boiled Wonderland' as well. His most tightly plotted and laid out book, if you like that part of his work. His non-fic is great as well. IQ84 is a bit long winded and sort of a 'b-side' IMO, might want to save that for last.

I read Kafka on the Shore in 2016 and let me tell you, I'm not a big reader (I'm working on it), but it had me thinking about it for weeks.

The book itself is like a dream state, it's magic; There's something about it where even when I think about it again, I get taken off into the lands within the book. I hear other Murakami works are similar in that regard. It is really hard to explain but it had me thinking about my life, who I am as a person to outsiders who meet me, how I see myself and what I feel my purpose in life is, etc.

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