Rating: 
Summary: The Perfect Dream
Review: 5 stars doesn't do justice to this novel. It has been some six months since I put the book down and it shall be many, many years before I pick up another book that will catch my imagination so. Despite what other reviewers have written, I say that this is the finest of Murakami's works. No questions. That's all.Never before have I felt so enveloped by a written work. It kept me warm during the cold weeks of a Japanese January and the very mention of this novel or it's author sends me scurrying back to my blankets, on my futon, inside my futon closet (of all places). Emerging from this novel was like emerging from the most perfect of dreams. A worthwhile meal. A delicious Christmas.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book , so so translation
Review: After I read Dance, Dance, Dance from cover to cover and over and over in Japanese. I find that it is exciting the translation version is available. First of all, I must gave the credit to the translator, who did its best to translate the "thinking" of the writer, not just word-to-word conversion. However, it is hard and often impossible to translate the culture and racial mind-set into different language. For the English version, it lack of excitement and sadness of what I proceeded from the original version.
Rating:
Summary: Just nice!
Review: Well it's more than nice, sometimes Dance Dance Dance can be a little overwhelming on the fantasies, but i like it. Bizzare but still normal. I especially like how Murakami makes all the connections connect. He's got some nice sense of humor. And it leaves you with just the nice pleasant feeling.
Rating:
Summary: A beginners view of Murakami
Review: This was my first Murakami novel. It took me some time to get the hang of his style. I found it strange and compelling, full of atmosphere, a nice surprise. It has been a long time since that last happened to me.
Rating:
Summary: The Saga Continues
Review: As usual, I found this Murakami book an excellent read. While it moved a bit slower than Hardboiled Wonderland for instance, it still had me reading at every possible moment. Love, confusion, parallel realities, what more can you ask of a book?
Rating: 
Summary: An enjoyable novel but...
Review: Murakami has cashed in on the deserved success of A Wild SheepChase by writing what is superficially a sequel. He grabs a couple ofthe old characters, but quickly drops them. He introduces several new people, but he doesn't do much with them either. He's a writer desperately trying to clutch at wacky sub plots to bolster a weak central story. He alludes to everybody from Agatha Christie to Nabokov and sprays us with hundreds of empty references to popular culture. Where the quirky characters in the Sheep novel propelled the protagonist through the book, here they are just quirky for the sake of it. The one armed Vietnam vet/poet with a talent for making sandwiches is a fairly desperate apology for the author's lack of imagination: the guy has clearly escaped from a lesser writer's menagerie - perhaps an early Ben Elton book. Murakami borrows liberally from other writers and has a lot of pastiche, self-parody and self-deprecation. The novel has a minor character called Hiraku Makimura a novelist (the same age as Haruki Murakami) who by his own admission writes "crap novels". The character used to be the bright young thing of Japanese literature but now everybody has seen through him and he is reduced to cashing in on earlier successes by regurgitating old material! You can't accuse Murakami of taking himself as seriously as some of his readers do! I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anybody who wants a light read, but my earlier reading of Murakami had led me to hope for something more challenging and ambitious. In this novel he's just treading water. The protagonist is likeable, sympathetic and a wonderful companion for this 400 page ride. He is a worthy representative of this post-everything age, an introverted, decent man looking for meaning and direction, but also a man who is reduced to killing time: "I bought this...and this...and this...I didn't need any of them, but I wanted to kill some time. I killed two hours". He's tried everything - money, sex, marriage, cars, travel, business; liked them all, but ultimately found them all wanting. Now in his 30s he's just drifting in search of something...anything? This character was well developed in A Wild Sheep Chase, but he doesn't evolve much in this novel.
Rating:
Summary: funny, strange yet ultimately moral tale
Review: murakami has created a genre all of his own, so of course the themes are going to be similar. i was initially disappointed with this novel when i first read it 6 years ago, but re-reading it now i was all wrong. beyond the psychic teens, haunted-hotel-in-other-dimension, dead prostitutes, film-noir cops and our nameless 30's protagonist is a loopy but nonetheless moral tale about obligation and connection. murakami's characters always reach their enlightenment through relative inaction; stop work, don't take calls, go to hawaii or sit in the bottom of a well for a few days. dance dance dance leaves you with a feeling of completion, yet unease- what was the price of the final chapters' actions?
Rating:
Summary: how good can fiction get? This good.
Review: I have reviewed a lot of works of art, and many reviews have been silly or insulting, or just plain stupid, but I must say, seriously, that this book (and all by Murakami,) is wonderful. I love them all, but "Dance, Dance, Dance" takes the proverbial cake. Many complain that the protagonists of Murakami's books are all too alkie, and they find this to be a fault. I suppose I can see that, but damn, I love the Murakami protagonist, and I love every other recurring theme he uses. These are the books I have always wanted to exist, the books I have have always dreamed of writing. I can only advise reading them. All of them. Now. I mean it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful blend of Adventures
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. Murakami is splendid in plot, substance, and literary style. The metaphor of "shoveling snow" is especially an apt description of the world today. Actually, one of the greatest feats of Murakami is that he is able to mix the fantastical with the ever so real and mundane reality of everyday life. This book is about a 30-ish protagonist search for his ex-girlfriend and the various people he encounters and adventures he undergoes in the search. In the book Murkami takes you from neon-lighted districts of hip modern Tokyo to darkened chambers in Haiwaii. Despite its various adventures in psychic wonderland, you are never out of touch with the capitalist modern Tokyo whose lifestyle is emblematic of that in New York or any other modern city. This books is on par with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and loads better than his earlier novels--Norweigian Wood, Pinball 1973, Hear the Wind Sing. A definite read.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I scrolled past another comment that was headlined "my favorite book." If I was going to rate the books I've read, this one would be up there too. Hardboiled Wonderland End of the World is excellent too (more mind-bending) but Dance,Dance,Dance occupies a special place...
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