As part of my 2K10 Re-Engage With Reading! program, I’m reading a few novels in a row to get the reading muscles back from atrophy. [book: The Sea], [book: Norwegian Wood], and now [book: Dance Dance Dance]. This one’s getting off to a great start: part Murakami Weird, part Murakami Disaffected Narrator, part supernatural detective novel. Just great.

A couple quotes that have made me laugh so far (and really, I don’t laugh out loud at books very often at all):

First, about the narrator’s schoolmate, who’s now a movie star:

> Although, come to think of it, in real life the guy had been pretty much like the parts he played. He was nice enough, but who actually knew anything about him? We were in the same class during junior high school, and once we shared the same lab table on a science experiment. We were friendly. But even back then he was too nice to be real — just like in his movies. Girls were already falling all over him. If he talked to them, their eyes would go moist. If he lit a Bunsen burner with those graceful hands of his, it was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

His mind is wandering off, constructing a movie scene in Egypt for some reason (after he’s, for some similarly unknown reason, told a woman about swim clubs in ancient Egypt):

> Cut to a spectacle scene on the order of [film: The Bathing Beauty] or [film: The King and I]. My classmate and the princes and princesses in a grand synchronized swim routine in celebration of the Pharaoh’s birthday. The Pharaoh is overjoyed, which further boosts the youth’s stock. Still, he doesn’t let it got to his head. He’s a paragon of humility. He smiles the same as ever, and pisses elegantly. When a lady-in-waiting slips under the covers with him, he spends a full one hour on foreplay, brings her all the way to climax, then afterward strokes her hair and says, “You’re the best.” He’s a good guy.

Oh, and right now — page 84 — he’s talking with a guy (incorporeal being? I don’t know) who’s dressed in a sheep outfit. The narrator refers to him as “Sheep Man.” Soooo … that happened.