Honestly, sometimes I just write here out of a fear of a big red X, and sometimes I suspect it's becoming crystal-clear. See, I've been Excel-charting my 5 chart-able New Years resolutions - despite my messy room and unorganized stuff, I like to make pie charts and lists and promises -and the best way for me to ensure that I feel guilty when I don't keep my promises is to have the failure recorded somewhere. (Negative reinforcement, people! The anti-gold star! It works! Screw what those evil child psychologists tell you!) For the last four weeks, I've failed at least one of the five. Usually two. And next to each failed week I insert a ClipArt GIANT RED X. And I have to look at them every time I check up on myself.

Living in fear of more red X's drives me to this page five days a week, and I am not afraid to admit it. But today something else drove me here, and that something is Haruki Murakami. Haruki Murakami is a big tease. He wrote a compelling novel full of dripping imagery and believable, intense relationships. He filled it full of well-placed objects that I THOUGHT would come to be of importance later in the story. He weaved three stories together seamlessly and set the stage up for what I THOUGHT was going to be a climactic symbol crash of all these well-placed objects, relationships, and storylines.

Wrong! Just as I was gearing up to cover my ears and be blown away, THE BOOK ENDED. I spent 7/8 of the book buried in it, ignoring my drivers at work, putting off using the bathroom, making my already too late bedtime later and later. I was spellbound, but also I was reading extra carefully to catch all the details so I wouldn't be confused when everything came together. It read like a detective novel - everything of the utmost importance. Since I'm not used to reading detective novels, I had to teach my brain to read that way.

And then what does Murakami do? He (spoiler, if you can count this ending as a spoiler) ends the book by putting a phone that keeps spewing murderous threats on the shelves of a 7-11, its murderous threats un-carried out. The main character goes home and sleeps next to her sister as the day breaks. Many of the major characters just sort of disappear and we never find out what THEY'RE doing.

Now, I'm actually not a climax junkie. I am perfectly happy with books having no discernable point as long as they're fun to read. But this book was set up like the most climaxy thriller ever. It had the creepy foreboding feeling. The seemingly pointless alternate storylines that you figure must be eventually relevant when they smash into the main storyline at the end. The lurking Chinese mafia (WHO NEVER ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING). All the characters having extremely creepy backstories.

And then... nothing. My cultural parameters have failed to expand wide enough for the Japanese style of storytelling, I imagine many Japanese majors would tell me. Maybe true. But he (Murakami) is still a giant tease.