Relationship with an Object

I’m still not sleepy, and it’s half past 8. Ok! Let’s do a double post today, I’m on a roll. My train of thought has now led me to what I was reading earlier in the toilet, Murakami’s book  Kafka on the Shore.

 First, let’s do a quick roll-back. I don’t like to read books more than once, nor watch the movies I’ve seen before again. I like to claim Murakami as being one of my favourite authors, however I’ve just realised that without re-reading them, I’m missing out on a lot of what, presumably, he’s trying to get across with his books. Unlike J.K. Rowling’s Potter series, he’s not really trying to tell me a story. The selling point isn’t the plot per se. Of the many things that he is, Murakami is also a critic of society.
For whatever reasons I’ve decided to re-read Kafka on the Shore. All of a sudden I began to notice things that I didn’t before in this book. For example, the simple-minded character Nakata. (don’t worry you needn’t to read the book to understand the rest of the post, al though it would be a plus), he was created to be stupid so that it gave Murakami the chance to let other characters in the book explain things to him, the society, in a perspective in which the author wished to highlight. This is very clever yet subtle, and made me appreciate him even more as a writer.
That little enlightenment has made me come to realise that, I needed to adapt my way of reading to suit each author/book. For this particular one, I must resist the temptation to plough through and try to get a story out of it. A story isn't the sole entertainment of a book after all. I think the reason I tried to rush through it was because we were trained as such since we were a child, with story books and all, and as we grew older the stories got longer and more complicated to a point in which sometimes, there are no real plots. I don't want to reveal too much, but if you haven't read the book, give it a go! It's definitely worth reading ...
This of course relates back to Kendo otherwise it wouldn't be on this blog. I would like to explore the relation one has with a shinai.

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I'm sure it was a really good post, but a year on and I'm trying to complete the half-written posts on my blog I haven't a clue what the fooks I wanted to say about the shinai. Sorry!