I'm being injected in the knee Wednesday, with instructions to stay off feet for the next 48 hours thereafter. I suppose I could read the Murakami and call it Japanese practice. But I'm much more likely to read The Kingdom of Gods, which I was saving for precisely this occasion.
On an unrelated note, why do people who write prefaces feel it necessary to summarize the plot? Don't they realize this is an unforgivable sin? Recent instance was The Life of Milarepa, that I bought with the $10 I won in the lottery Saturday night. And that isn't even a novel. I was expecting the preface to give me some background to the history of Tibetan Buddhism, and got it, but then I was in the middle of Whosis telling me the highpoints of Milarepa's life. Dude, sorry to be so shallow, but that's why I'm reading the book.