This is a pretty funny book — not, like, the prose (though I llked the prose!), but the sheer chutzpah of taking a bunch of very lightweight magazine articles Murakami wrote for a spread and trying to sell it as a $25 artifact. That's probably the most interesting part of the book, come to think of it: Murakami's a guy now who's at that status, who can blather on for fifty pages about anything and there's probably a critical mass of folks willing to buy it. There aren't that many authors at this point who fit that bill, right?

All of which to say — this book is not really worth the price of admission, but if you find yourself owning it (maybe you're a Murakami completionist; maybe you were morbidly fascinated by the concept; maybe a great-aunt of yours remembered that you mentioned Murakami a few years back) it's not a bad time. Murakami talks casually and humorously less about t-shirts and more about the various strata of life that bring him to own and wear them (beer; running; university; and so on). Nothing revelatory, but also nothing unpleasant; it basically reads as him rambling for ninety minutes about all the things he likes in life. Which, again, is not the worst thing in the world.

★★