Essays | Book Chatter

Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love
By Haruki Murakami
Knopf, 9780593320426, November 2021, 192pp.

The Short of It:

A very different type of Murakami read.

The Rest of It:

Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I love Haruki Murakami. I love everything he has written. Not because his work is perfection but because his writing is ALWAYS a palate cleanser for me and always so different from what I’ve been reading. Murakami T – The T-shirts I Love delivered, as promised.

Among other things, Murakami collects T-shirts and decided to write about some of his favorite pieces. This might sound as interesting as cleaning the lint trap of your dryer, but let me tell you, it is all very interesting. His musings about why a shirt is memorable range from his admiration over graphic design, the message it’s attempting to convey, or how it captures a certain moment in time, like his many marathon t-shirts. I’ve never been a big graphic -shirt wearer but with each page, I could easily appreciate his observations.

My only criticism is that I read this review copy on my Kindle Paperwhite so the many photos were in B&W which took away from some of the design aspects he was attempting to call out. If you pick up this book, and you should, get a physical copy or read it on on iPad with the Kindle app.

Murakami’s books come every two years or so due to them being translated so I was happy to see this one while I wait for new fiction to drop.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Strange Company
By Jean Ryan
MadeMark Publishing (March 12, 2017), 118pp.

The Short of It:

A collection of super short essays that promise to awaken your need for nature and its beauty.

The Rest of It:

Regular readers of this blog know how packed my schedule is. It’s not often that I have time to step out into nature and just observe the beauty around me but oh, how I crave it. Strange Company allowed me to do that if only for a short while.

Strange Company is a collection of nature essays about all sorts of things. Do animals feel compassion? Do they think as humans do? If the act of bleeding out a rare Horseshoe crab for the sake of science isn’t damaging to the creature itself, does it make it right to keep doing it? What about pesticides? Do you ever think about the impact that they might have on say… a bird’s food supply?

On a personal note, I absolutely believe that animals feel compassion. Every pet I’ve ever had has connected with me in some way. After the death of my mother, my dog would not leave my side. Years ago when I was diagnosed with Lupus and seriously questioned if I could survive it, my cat was right there, as I spent days in bed trying to work up enough energy just to go to work. So it’s no surprise to me that domesticated animals or even those in the wild can feel compassion. Just look into their eyes!

What I loved about this collection is that although each essay is short, often only a few pages long, they gave me a lot to think about. There’s a little bit of science for those who like facts, but there’s also a lot of heart. Ryan is a nature lover and it shows in her writing. I’ve read and enjoyed her work before and I am happy to say I enjoyed this collection as well.

Source: Review copy provided by the author. Thank you!
Disclosure: This post contains Amazon links.

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