It's been a long, slow, deep, and ultimately gratifying read.

It's been a long, slow, deep, and ultimately gratifying read. Long and slow because the book - its first two volumes out of three - is long and my reading pace's always been slow. Add to that that I wanted it to be a slow process, I wanted to make the reading last on purpose. Deep because the book is deep, it has that distinctive depth some readers may perhaps fail to see. Don't be fooled by the apparent superficiality of the plot and the prose, by the overuse of the artistic license to resort to the unnatural and the surreal through off-the-wall turns and bizarre laws of physics, grant all that and you will find out that there is, as usual in Murakami's novels, much more to the picture than meets the eye. Grant that - and one should effortlessly grant such a trademark in his oeuvre - and your reading will move on with a grin across your face. And gratifying, ultimately, because I was uncertain upon starting. The hesitation was set by a significant change on the initial conditions this time around with respect to most of my previous readings of Murakami's back catalog - I didn't start with the English translation. I just couldn't, it's not ready yet. I had to make do with the Spanish one. I know I'm probably being unfair and that it's probably just me, but somehow I prefer to read Murakami in English. By and large. I knew it was going to take me a bit of adjustment at the beginning but once it was over, the reading ran fluent.

It was as gratifying as it could be - which is always a lot. Murakami's to me a safe bet, while I can still see why that doesn't have to be the case for everyone.

I'm in 1Q84 now, so to speak, two moons up in the night sky, involved in the story of Fukaeri and the Little People, of Aomame and Tengo, of a ten-year-old girl and an air chrysalis. I'll most likely remain in 1Q84 all through this 2011, unhurriedly delaying the ending of the plot.