Book Trauma

I'm not a rabid Murakami fan but I do like a good portion of his writing. So I opened this with some high hopes. Most short story collections will usually contain a few good stories and this author is really good when he nails it. I guess this outing he hit his thumbs a few times. Let's start with the title after the quake. We're informed in the intro that these are thoughts set during the time of the Kobe earthquake. So why isn't it mentioned more in all of the stories? I realize that it's supposed to be a catalyst but except for two Honey Pie and Super Frog Saves Tokyo it's a tenuous one at best. While the latter sounds like it might be silly it's the better of the two. It shows the helplessness of the average mundane human in the face of something as catastrophic as an earthquake and how our deepest wishes are that someone might save us. While Honey Pie is sweet it really didn't strike me as something Murakami would even write.The other four stories are more his style with Landscape with Flatiron being the only one that stood out. Again Murakami explores one of his favourite subjects, death, which he doesn't need the excuse of an earthquake to write about. The rest were more or less forgettable to me.Unfortunately I have to average this out so I'll give it 3 stars but Super frog really deserves a 5 on it's own.