It passed the time, but I didn't get into this book anywhere near as much as some of Murakami's other books. It's a kind of retrospective, longing for the supposed best days of your life tale, with the guy looking back at the year of '69, when he was 17 and the goings on at high school and what he and his buddies got up to. These teens are all full of American culture with music and film, and influenced by left wing movements and anti establishment, anti Vietnam war... they even barricade the school at the end of term as some kind of protest, including pooping on someone's desk. There's also the festival he decides to plan, which ends up just being a screening of a wierd film they made. But essentially everything they do is just a way of getting girls. So, typical teenage boys then.

I got this book as a present and man was it the perfect gift. I generally give a book 5 stars if I enjoy any part of it. It feels a shame to give this book only 5 stars since I enjoyed every page of it an awful lot.

reminds me of the movie "Sho o suteyo machi e deyô" by Shûji Terayama.

69 is of a whole different flavor. Unlike his typical murder-suspense novels, it's Murakami's semi-fictional memoir of being a rebellious high school student in 1969. Just like the fictional narrator, Murakami was also 17 in '69, was also born and raised in Sasebo, and was guilty of executing the primary misdeed in this novel. Avoid reading biographies of his high school years, because it will majorly spoil this book.

If you're of a younger generation, this novel may be difficult to read through because of the frequent pop culture references to various bands, musicians, and famous writers of that time. I recommend reading with the internet close at hand so that none of the references are lost on you, because true with Murakami's style, none of them are weak or pointless. Unfortunately, this makes reading this piece rather cumbersome.

Young readers may also find this to be rather slow paced for a Murakami novel. Personally, I feel the novel doesn't pick up until the sixth chapter, "Power to the Imagination", and the main plot is only suggested just prior to this. I feel it's rather late to start the main plot a quarter through the novel. I suppose though the first quarter we're given plenty of material to understand the characterization of Ken and his friends.

However, despite its slow start and numerous references, once this book finally sets its pace it really gets interesting. Once I had hit page 100, I couldn't stop until it was finished. It was definitely light hearted (if you discount the swearing, sexual connotations, etc, but who didn't encounter that in high school?), silly, and nostalgic, but it was done in such a way that YA novels can't even touch.