Rating: 
Summary: Unbelievably creative and imaginative, terrific imagery
Review: This is a great book. Couldn't put it down. Murakami never ceases to amaze me with his creative ideas. It's like, man, I never would have thought of that. Especially the whole separation of person/shadow/mind concept. When people ask me what the books about, all I can say is, "It's really hard to explain." Knowing that my explanation couldn't do it justice
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, Strange, and Delightful!
Review: I felt that I didn't read this book so much as I "watched" it. Like a movie or a fantastic dream, and written with Mr. Murakami's usual finesse. Believable characters, and indeed, a hard-as-nails world at the last train-stop of the universe. A world within a world, it echoes "A Wild Sheep Chase," but expounds upon this in a delightful way. Yet again, Haruki Murakami proves that there are still original writers out there with style, imagination, and the talent to pull it off. Fabulously done! Subarashii! Rippa! Oishikatta
Rating:
Summary: Murakami creates a facinating techno-deranged world
Review: It's been a while since I read this book and his 'A Wild Sheep Chase' but I found both books hard to put down once I got into Murakami's world. I found that there is a great feeling of presence in his narrative
descriptions of places and the environment that his characters inhabit. This is very cool to experience, due to the strangeness of the events and places described in the book. I really feel present alongside the protagonist as circumstances take him to ever more bizarre encounters. Eagerly awaiting more from Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: Fear and loathing in Tokyo
Review: It is the world in the near future, and Information is all.
The narrator of this fantastic, and unnerving, novel finds
that his mind is subject to the power and terror of
dark forces. Two stories are being told: one, the narrator's job as a "data
shuffler", moving numbers from right to left brain; the other, his unconscious
journey in to the "end of the world", where he reads the "old dreams"
of a humanity that does not know death. Murakami has produced a wonderfully eerie myth for the next millenium. I highly recommend this novel.
Rating:
Summary: You will think you're dreaming, perhaps you are.
Review: Murakami's books in general involve the fantastic interwoven
with the real. It is not, however, a "tale of two cities",
nor a deranged man's insomnial (is that a word?) visions. It
is a tale of one man, one life and the synapses of a life
devoid of meaning until one day....It is a life which you
long to be a part of. He writes so clearly, so
much like he can see what you do everyday and can write it.
You can relate to it like your life. And that is exactly the point of his books. How much is your life worth? How
do you see yourself in his books? Do you realize that he,
Murakami, himself is searching for an answer; perhaps you
might know the answers to? The plot's end is a peace. He
tells you that you will survive. The monotony of a daily
life is not a struggle. It is, sometimes, the only syrum to
the bacteria eating your brain.
Rating: 
Summary: Immensely rewarding, flawlessly written, tough to crack.
Review:
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (hereinbelow referred to as Wonderland, for obvious reasons) is a fantastic
story of a man who lives in two very different worlds. Murakami
is the kind of modern author most big-name reviewers refer to as
"hip", "jazzy" and "dazzling," but for the rest of us, he just
speaks in a say-it-like-you-mean-it language that communicates
directly with your spinal cord. He's always up to something in
Wonderland, and yet it's never quite clear what. His main
character, as in his other novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance,
Dance, Dance, is an outsider who lets the world go by with only
the odd blip on his otherwise quiescent radar screen. He's easy
to identify with, and lets you see Murakami's two worlds through
perfectly "him"-colored glasses.
Alfred Birnbaum's translation (Murakami writes only in Japanese)
is nothing short of perfect. The prose reads as though it came
from an American pen, which, paradoxically, is one of the elements
which has made Murakami a multi-million-book bestseller in Japan.
Wonderland is by turns a page-turner, an escapist fantasy, a biting
social commentary, and a serene meditation; all of these are testaments
to Murakami's clever (and at times inscrutable) pacing, and also a
nod toward his high regard for the entertainment value of literature.
Of the three books mentioned above, it is by far my favorite, though
it's perhaps less accessible than A Wild Sheep Chase. Give Murakami
a chance. He knows what he's doing, and he has fashioned a a pair of worlds that you appreciate more and more as you live in them.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: This is my favorite Murakami book. I picked it up on a whim, based on the jacket copy, and it has become one of my favorite books.
While not perfect - some chapters are a little loose - the story is one of the most intriguing things I've ever read. Alternating between the 'real' and subconscious every chapter is a neat trick that makes you ponder the very reality of the story. Which world is the 'real' world? Towards the end the story even turns a little Lovecraftian - Which was very surprising for a Japanese author. The books also poses one of the most interesting physics problems about time I've ever been introduced to. There were many themes in this book I agree with and wouldn't be able to articulate without it.
It's not only greatly entertaining, it makes you think about the world a little differently.
Rating:
Summary: Imagine David Lynch's direction and Goddard's montage
Review: I absolutely loved this book. First few chapters were "oh-kay" and typical of Murakami, but wait till you get to the middle of the book when things start inter-tangling between the two stories. Yet another fantastic novel by Murakami, and I have to say that the man is pure genius! Modern book reader's writer.
Murakami just convinced me that he can not only write fantasy/sci-fi if he wanted to, but do it better than anyone. I like the fact that almost no one in the novel has a real name. Every character has a simple title (related to their traits or professions). This characteristic, in itself, becomes the most important key to the mind of the narrator. I would also throw in the Jungian factor in the novel (archetypes, personality traits & most interpretations within the novel).
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in mystery novels. You'll see that not every story/adventure ends in having sex (Dan Brown).
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I started reading this book unsure of what to expect (having heard that the translation of Murakami's books can be bad, and what not), but this book is definitely brilliant. Brilliantly brilliant, in fact. I plan on reading it again after the first reading sinks in.
Rating:
Summary: A linguistic paradise - or prison?
Review: As a student of language (English in my case) and linguistics, I loved this book. It was recommended to me by my father-in-law who also seems to have loved it. To over-generalize, it is a higher-brow version of Douglas Adams with a bit of Oe mixed in.
Much like both of the above authors, there are intertwined sub-plots constituting the larger story. Moreover, like the above, the reader (at least myself) begins to wonder about his or her own life. What are the limits of perception, how much does linguistics define what we see?
I highly recommend this book, it isn't a work quickly forgotten.
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