What’s This Playlist All About? The author behind such modern-day classics as Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a well-known music fanatic. In fact, he recently announced he would be donating his entire vinyl collection of some 10,000 records to Tokyo’s Waseda University. To showcase his voracious musical appetite, one of Murakami’s faithful followers has taken on the task of compiling songs that the writer has mentioned in various interviews and Q&As, as well as on a website no longer available called, Murakami San No Tokoro.What You Get: Murakami’s collection is almost exclusively jazz; he did, after all, open a jazz bar in Tokyo well before he began writing novels. So, here, you can dive into nearly 250 hours (and counting) worth of jazz titans like Sonny Rollins, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, and Thelonious Monk, alongside classical masterpieces from great minds like Mozart, Bach, and Chopin.Best Surprise: Hearing a few Beach Boys gems (from 1965’s The Beach Boys Today!) between all that heavy-hitting jazz and classical is a nice little distraction. But this also makes us wonder: Where are The Beatles?Where Does One Even Start With This Playlist? Since there seems to be no organization to this mix, it’s probably best to just press play and let it shuffle. And if you’re looking to write your own novel, this may be your perfect writing companion.
