My manager once asked me how I got to 'know of' various books, what convinces me a certain author is worth reading (and/or spending money on), do I join some book club or something, what do I try out this book and not that one. It's a good question and one I ask (of myself and of friends) at times.

i.   A friend or favorite author recommended it.
ii.  A good book had it listed in its biblio or as part of its narrative (or you were bleedin' impressed with a quoted text)
iii. A bookshop was promoting it.

My books are largely a result of factor (ii), but in the case of Haruki Murakami's Kafka On The Shore, it's a dead-on (i). Less than a month ago I saw Kia Meng hold one of Murakami's books at a gathering. This morning I've reached p.280-ish of Kafka and we've got characters quoting things like:

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory." (Henri Bergson)

"At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating." (Hegel). The girl proceeds to expound the phrase: "Hegel believed that a person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness."

A page later, a guy who's the embodiment of Colonel Sanders (a'la KFC) chides a truck-driver:

"A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?"

Now get this. The Bergson and Hegel quotes/remarks are smack in the middle of a love scene and made by a college girl prostituting herself for tuition money. Her client was the truck-driver. Colonel Sanders was the pimp.

I feel like that whale cum dunce. And I likely won't think of KFC the same way again.