The fortunately infrequent complaint of the daily commuter

[sabotabby]

I really wish people would keep their shootings to themselves. If you are going to shoot someone, do it at home or in a darkened alley, not on public transit, and certainly not on a transfer point between the subway and the LRT. You oughtn't shoot people at all, of course, but it's in particularly poor taste to do it where it affects many tired commuters who are just trying to get home.

I'd actually brought two books, but I finished Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World on the morning commute, and while Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller is brilliant and all that, it makes for not-the-greatest transit reading of all time. So reading wasn't even the distraction it should have been.

(The victim survived; otherwise, I wouldn't be so flippant. Despite at least seven cop cars at the scene, the shooter managed to escape and is still at large.)

Comments

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

So did you see the shooting or just the victim?

[sabotabby]

Just the investigation, which halted my bus and forced me on a bit of a trek to find a train station that was actually open.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

"Hard-Boiled Wonderland" huh. I'd like to think Murakami stole the title from my band's song but I guess it's probably the other way around. Anyway, one more reason for you to catch us at some unspecified future gig!!

[sabotabby]

Clearly! Have you read it? I think it won a prize for Most Disturbing Use of Unicorns or some such.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

...with Banksy winning silver for his 'Simpsons' opener? No, this is the first I've heard of it. I have blind spots.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I have gone this long with only having read one Murakami before this one. Which is a pity, really, because both were awesome and he's written a shitload of other ones.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I think Kafka on the Shore is the best I read, as it has a man who talks to cats in it. It also has an evil baddie who tortures cats, so maybe best avoided, come to think of it.

I haven't read Norwegian Wood, which is meant to be good.

I find him odd in that his books seem so Western and his characters eat sandwiches instead of sushi or whatever. But having been to Japan I can imagine that there must be a lot of people there wandering about in existential lone-ness eating sandwiches and talking to cats.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I thought that went to Not Wanted On The Voyage.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Whatever next?
I was about to say we don't get shootings here, but then by "here" I realized I meant in my little enclave, rather than in London as a whole. I am too middle class to venture near the vast swathes of scary estates where poverty and gangs run rife!

How is the Murakami? I find with his books I tend to go near-psychotic while I'm reading them, they're so intense and exciting, then the endings are usually anticlimactic, then after a week I've forgotten them altogther. But I remember the cats.

There was a theatre version of The Elephant Vanishes I saw years ago that was quite exciting.

That reminds me, what China Mielville (?) should I read as a complete new person having only heard about him from you? And as a feeble person not able to take much extreme scary stuff?

[sabotabby]

Shootings here, even in Scarberia, are not all that frequent. Hence it was a Big Deal.

I found the book awesome. The ending wasn't anticlimatic, just harsh. The other one I read by him, Underground, stuck with me a long time.

That reminds me, what China Mielville (?) should I read as a complete new person having only heard about him from you? And as a feeble person not able to take much extreme scary stuff?

You should read Un Lun Dun because it is not remotely scary or dark, but is in fact an adorable deconstruction of portal fantasy.