“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the glove. How would I know?”
‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami
Amazon
Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Slaughterhouse 5’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen
‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by Haruki Murakami #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1xl via @SandraDanby
SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS 
Murakami is a sensation for many readers but I can’t read his work. Got half way through The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and decided I’d given too many hours of my time to a book I didn’t enjoy and couldn’t relate to. I respect your admiration for the opening paragraph of Hard-Boiled but my frustrated experience with Bird left me unwilling to try another of his books.
Did you like the book as well as the opening?
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Yes, I’ve read five or so of his books, not all, and not for a while. SD
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Sandra, would you especially recommend this book, (besides the opening) or any of his others? I’d be willing to try another of his books if it came with a glowing recommendation from someone whom I admire.
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I started with ‘Norwegian Wood’, perhaps try that. Probably more accessible when you are not used to his style. I’m very fond of Murakami, there’s no-one quite like him! 🙂
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