I’ll try to keep somewhat to the proposal template from the other bookclubs.
Since I’m not up for reading something as old as Natsume Soseki (yet), I’d like to propose something from 森博嗣 (もりひろし) for any SF/mystery fans here: The first volume of his newest series,
彼女は一人で歩くのか？
English Summary
It’s pretty far in the future, where so-called Walk-Alones (robots so close to humans that you can hardly distinguish by looks alone) are commonplace. In this world, a professor called Hagiri is working on a device to distinguish between humans and these Walk-Alones. But his workplace gets bombed, and the Intelligence Agency sends a bodyguard to protect him. From there, they try to figure out who is trying to kill him and why.
Japanese Summary from the back of the book
ウォーカロン。「単独歩行者」と呼ばれる人工細胞で作られた生命体。人間との差はほとんどなく、容易に違いは識別できない。研究者のハギリは、何者かに命を狙われた。心当たりはなかった。彼を保護しに来たウグイによると、ウォーカロンと人間を識別するためのハギリの研究成果が襲撃理由ではないかとのことだが。人間性とは命とは何か問いかける、知性が予見する未来の物語。
For anyone interested in science (fiction), human-like robots, what makes us human, and so on.
Personal Opinion
I really like the writing style. I feel like the grammar and vocab (apart from the occasional science/future talk) is quite simple most of the time, but still not that easy to understand simply because of the mostly science-y and also philosophical theme.
Pros:
Most of it feels like simple wording, but there’s enough to discuss and ask questions regarding content.
Good length at about 260 pages.
It has lots of little chapters (6-10 pages), so it’s easy to partition for weekly reading.
I also like the pacing, it has chapters where he is just thinking about possible theories and others where lots of stuff is happening.
Cons:
I don’t know if this is “literary” enough for this club, and I also can’t really judge if the level is actually above something like Kino from the intermediate book club. I wanted to hear other’s opinions on that (I can post some more sample pages if needed).
I don’t know enough about the author (and also about Japanese) to be able to judge whether he has a place amongst other authors mentioned here
Bookwalker link for reading sample etc.