Our second Marinuska was such a blast! Katie chose the book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murikami. Because Murikami is Japanese, we created a Japanese themed book club. Katie’s sister in law made takoyaki , a traditional Japanese street food consisting of wheat based flour and diced octopus. She was nice enough to make non-octo versions for those of us who have read The Soul of an Octopus  by Sy Montgomery and will no longer eat these amazing animals. The Flour Shop brought ube cookies made with Okinawan sweet potatoes and we had an assortment of Japanese beers to go with it all. The craft this time was out of this world – we did Shibori dyeing! It was so fun and I loved seeing everyone’s very different creations.

If that wasn’t enough…we had a GREAT conversation about the book. This book has so many different layers, in addition to the double story lines. Someone brought up the idea of this being a story of a psychotic break and my world was rocked.That had never occurred to me and now I have to re-read it! I think we may have brought up more questions than answers and that’s what makes this book so great, leaves you with so much to ponder.

Other Murakami books that were discussed/recommended:

• A Wild Sheep Chase
• Kafka on the Shore
• Norwegian Wood
• IQ84 was not necessarily recommended until I went to a gnome painting event (yes, I said gnome painting) and was talking about Marinuska. Most of the Marinuska participants would not recommend it.
• Men Without Women: Stories was not discussed at all and I am adding it here as a reminder to myself that I want to read it.