Just finished reading:
The Wind up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
This was my first Murakami book. It took me a while to read it because my attention got a little over-divided between different books, but I'm glad I finished it. This is probably the weirdest book I've ever read. It starts so simple and by the end it feels like the story has fragmented into a thousand tiny, ultra-surreal pieces. The descent into madness and full-on fantasy was gradual enough that it felt totally natural. One moment I was reading this simple story about a guy looking for a cat, the next, I'm buried up to my hips in incredibly abstract and metaphorical stuff. I can see myself reading this again at some point in the near future, and I'm probably going to start another Murakami book right away.
A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
I loved this too, though not quite as much as the Murakami book. Going in, I'd heard that Jim Thompson was known for delivering really aggressive prose, and I wasn't disappointed at all. Everything in this book is punchy as hell, with no wasted sentences, and it's full of hard hitting language. The overall story isn't anything especially innovative, but the way he tells it is pretty interesting, and I found certain scenes quite disturbing. Certainly, I would say this is more than a few notches above the average pulp novel, and I'll definitely be reading more by this author.