Murakami is delicious. I enjoyed reading South of the Border, West of the Sun. It is an easy read that requires just enough thinking to solidify its substance. More though, I dig the fuck out of Sputnik Sweetheart. The arc continually oscillates, impossible to figure out until swinging from your own Ferris wheel. Murakami writes about love and it is accessible, not overly wrought with either end of cliche.
I remember reading Garcia Marquez for the first time. I was with a Colombian woman at the time and we were drinking chai at a bookstore in Fort Collins. I knew very little of Colombia, which is still the case, but she said to me "Steve, baby, if you want to feel the essence of my home, you must read this book. It is magical realism. I hope that you like it." The book blew me away and I felt something close to sad when I finished it. the Buendia family has since popped up in my poetry from time to time... I've still got the coverless copy sitting on the shelf of important books.
I might have mentioned it earlier, Danzi Senna's Caucasia is another good read.
Starting reading Langston Hughes' "The Best of Simple" this morning. Man, the shorts fed to me sophomore year of high school were watered down.
Recently read "Never Fall Down" by Patricia McCormack. It's a memoir written as the fictional account of a Khmer Rouge survivor. I've been doing a lot of Khmer studies over the past year or so and have stayed away from the memoir pit, I would however, recommend this to anyone, regardless of interest in Cambodia. Khmer, as might be the case with other Asian languages, has only present tense, and the speaker, Arn, uses only present tense in English. "I go to camp" opposed to "I am going" or "I went." "My family kill in jungle" juxtaposed on "My family was killed in the jungle" brings a humanizing quality to this story that I don't often experience. It could be because of having some insight on a few Khmer grammar rules, but i dig it. It also got me thinking about the Buddhist experience of time and language facilitating an unconscious reinforcement of the present.