According to New York magazine’s “Anticipation Index” (which quantifies buzz on books, movies, music and TV, based on the amount of online chatter), Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is second-most talked-about forthcoming book, behind Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.

The question on library and bookstore buyers minds has been whether readers will be willing to tackle the 944-page behemoth. Now the question is whether readers will have time to pick up anything else.

Coverage has been heavy. In Salon, Laura Miller says this book about love in a paralell universe is “the international literary giant at his uncanny, mesmerizing best.” For those unfamiliar with the author, the New York Times Magazine profile offers a handy “Murakami Starter Kit.” The Washington Post‘s Michael Dirda says readers will want to read the entire book because, “Murakami possesses many gifts, but chief among them is an almost preternatural gift for suspenseful storytelling.”

In a YouTube video, designer Chip Kidd talks about creating the cover:

Amazingly, it is also available as an unbridged audio (just 36 hours long) from Brilliance Audio.

Some libraries bought it in the original Japanese, as well as Chinese, Korean, Spanish and even Russian.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 24th, 2011 at 9:04 am and is filed under 2011 -- Fall, Fiction, Literary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.