Booktubers, book awards, and general book discussion

Descending to ‘recommendations from google rather than personal experience’, Daikanyama T-Site looks like it has some pretty cool design but I suspect fewer books than some of the other big shops.

Oh, the other good thing about Book-off if you’re buying manga is they don’t shrink-wrap it; at least last time I was there some years ago I think new manga tended to be sold in shrink-wrap, which is great for ensuring your copy is in pristine condition and discouraging tachiyomi, but not so good for being able to tell whether something is worth buying. (Apparently shrink-wrap isn’t so good for sales either so perhaps there’s less of it these days?)

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Shibuya also has a big book-off I can recommend.
Other than that you can also try tsutaya. I Like the atmosphere in them a bit more. Really chill and i think they always have an integrated caffee.

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I actually originally planned on T-site but was told by a Japanese person pretty much exactly that - it’s a cool building but not actually that many books.

As for manga - I don’t read much and what I do I prefer digital for space concerns. Not being able to flip through a book prior to buying would definitely kill my interest too though! Being able to skim the first few pages can really inform whether it’s the sort of book I’d like or not.

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I ended up going to the Shinjuku Book Off, but it seemed only one floor was novels and nonfiction? The other two seemed to be dvds/cds and anime stuff. So I thoroughly browsed the novels but I hesitated on buying any bulky books (luggage weight) and most smaller books weren’t terribly appealing. Nonfiction either didn’t have the sort I like to read or I just failed to browse it correctly.

After Book Off was (other) shopping and lunch after which I was thoroughly sick of Shinjuku and just wanted to go back to my hotel’s area. So… No Kinokuniya for me. Oh well. I have no lack of books :joy:

Today’s very small haul:

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Look at the cute little ghosties on that cover! :heart_eyes:
I thought it’d be humorous, but it seems it’s actually a straightforward collection of ghost stories by someone(=Akutagawa winning author) who says they can’t see ghosts?

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Looks like she won the prize in 2013 for 爪と目 which I’ve never heard of, but probably there was much fan fare back when it won the prize.

I read the first page of the book and it seemed like an easy (but engaging) read but I assumed all fiction. The first story is the title work 私は幽霊を見ない. If it’s actually a first person work from the author that will be interesting :thinking:
It will probably end up couch reading at some point as my plane reading is spoken for, but eh, it’s a long flight, maybe I’ll stick this in my bag anyways.

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Let me know how it goes, if you do get to read some of it soon. I’m very curious.
I had seen 爪と目 before but I have no idea if I’d like it so I hesitate to try it. There’s something about the imagery of the title that bothers me. :sweat_smile:

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So I bought JミステリーSpring 2022 because 織守きょうや had a short story in there and I was curious about their writing as 記憶屋 has come up alongside the question of if their writing as YA fic or not. I only read the start of their short story and it certainly doesn’t feel YA (a man comes home early from a business trip to find his wife murdered) but when updating books in Bookmeter I realized that 花束は毒 is by the same author (I clearly bought this due to the cover without paying attention to much else…) and it does feel somewhat YA, but…not light novel-y? It feels like it’s a bit too grown up for YA, but a bit too…tropey? unrealistic? to feel like a regular adult novel. But thinking on adult novels in English, some of them are like this. I’m only 20% done, so not far into it. Anyways the basic jist of the plot so far (no major spoilers, but some minor ones):

花束は毒

Some details may be fuzzy as I read this like a week+ ago and haven’t touched it since. The gist should be there, though.
So it starts out recounting the story of the MC and his cousin who go to the same middle school. His cousin is getting bullied and he doesn’t want to tell anyone and cause a fuss. So, MC sticks by his side as much as possible because witnesses would be problematic for the bully.
Eventually, cousin gets in contact with a girl at the school who is some sort of prodigy 名探偵 and pays her to make it stop. She does so, but in a way that makes MC uncomfortable.

Years later, MC’s beloved 先輩 is receiving threatening letters about his upcoming marriage, which is greatly distressing him. He refuses to seek help, but MC decides to seek help on his behalf. He finds the now professional 探偵 agency of the girl he met in middle school and purchases her services in determining who is sending the threatening letters and why.

That’s where I left off. I’m actually way behind book club readings so should do those, but will probably end up reading this or the ghost book today as I’m very jetlagged and don’t want to read anything which requires true concentration :melting_face:

It’s both! So I’m now on the 2nd or 3rd chapter and it’s basically essays of ghost stories from the author and the author’s friends/family/acquaintances, but the writing has little gems that had me giggling. For example:

窓から尿みたいな西日がさしている

and the author talking about how she wanted to meet a ghost, but only if it was famous person A or famous person B, because that would be cool, but some rando wouldn’t be. And how in her elementary school the girl’s bathroom was haunted by multiple ghosts, but the boys’ bathroom had none so they made up 5時じじい which is an old man who comes out at 5am.
Just…lots of little silly things interspersed with some more serious topics. It’s not a Must Read but I’m enjoying it.

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Thanks for the book reviews! 花束は毒 was vaguely on my list but I guess I can remove it based on what you wrote. And the ghosties are definitely on my list now. Is there an actual eerie atmosphere anywhere, do you think, to make this a potential Halloween read, or is it just matter-of-fact with doses of humour?

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The latter I’d say. Nothing really spooky at all so far, and the darkest it’s gotten is an old man saying how he witnessed a suicide after which point his shoulder hurt, his friend told him it was related to the incident, so he went and got exorcised and his shoulder was fixed!

It probably would fit the general Halloween theme, but no shivers.

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In a Parallel Universe™ known as the Natively forums @omk3 started to wonder about what the Compulsive Readers club should read next, and encouraged me to step forward and suggest something from my ginormous 積読 pile, which I happily follow up to here :blush:

I have this habit of buying books that I know next to nothing about :grin: So I basically wrote down here what I know about them. Maybe one or the other strikes your fancy?


バイバイ by 鷺沢 萠
170 pages
She is a representative of the so-called “Freeter”-Literature (“freeter” are people who work only part-time). A few of the author’s books were nominated for the Akutagawa prize, but none ever won. The author herself [trigger warning]committed suicide at age 35, and I don’t know how much this influences her writing.


Unnamed Memory I 青き月の魔女と呪われし王 by 古宮 九時
404 pages. Warning: Light Novel!
Romance, kinda medieval setting. Vanilla recommended as good N1 grammar practice.


むらさきのスカートの女 by 今村夏子
160 pages.
Akutagawa winner.


アンダーグラウンド by 村上 春樹
780 pages. Warning: Non-fiction!
Interviews around the gas attacks on the Tokyo tube in the 80’s (I think?). Curious to see whether he’s able to sneak in some Murakami scenes :wink: Might be gruesome and/or sad, on the other hand.
It’s basically three parts (iirc) so we could decide to just read one of them.


木洩れ日に泳ぐ魚 by 恩田 陸
298 pages.
Onda Riku - curious to see whether I will like this book of hers. I learned the term 木洩れ日 in 鹿の王 and love it ever since, so this can’t be a bad book, I figured.


舞姫 by 森鴎外
34 pages. Warning: Old!
One of his most famous books. Available on Aozora but unfortunately only in old Japanese (as far as I could see). I found one edition on BookWalker that got modernized, which is what I will be reading (but please feel free…).


献灯使 by 多和田葉子
224 pages
Akutagawa winner. Book has been translated (the English title is “The last children of Tokyo”). Dystopia. Author is Japanese but moved to Germany long ago (she also writes in German).


夏の約束 by 藤野 千夜
200 pages
Akutagawa winner. The author is a trans woman.


新装版 御宿かわせみ by 平岩 弓枝
299 pages
Edo time drama. Warning: long series (~35 books). My Japanese host mother’s favourite author. (I don’t think that says anything in terms of quality or such, though. It just carries a bit of nostalgia for me.)


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Mmm, it seems to be there in both old-kanji-and-kana and new-kanji-and-kana flavours, but either way it’s in 文語…

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Yay, long book lists, my favourite! :smiley:

Out of these, I was already interested in reading むらさきのスカートの女 at some point, and I already own 木洩れ日に泳ぐ魚, although it hasn’t yet been voted out of the Mystery Book Club, so I’m not sure whether it would be a good idea to start it independently (not that I think it’s likely to get picked, though).

I had also heard of ‘The last children of Tokyo’, but wasn’t sure I wanted to read about frail, sickly children. A quick look at the translation reviews tells me that it’s more strange than heartbreaking, which is a good sign. Possibly interested.

夏の約束 sounds very interesting. My only slight concern is that it seems to be a collection of short stories, and I tend to prefer novels. Possibly interested.

バイバイ Not sure what to expect from it, really. A man is in a relationship with three different women because he can’t end relationships? Could be interesting, could be boring, could be straight romance stuff. No idea.

For the rest, I’d rather avoid period novels and non-fiction, they tend to not engage me as much as other genres. And if we’re going to read older fiction, we must not forget that poor 糞尿譚 that’s still sitting half-finished… :eyes:

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御宿かわせみ sounds interesting (wikipedia summary suggests Edo period mystery-ish stuff) but it’s likely to be a while before I get round to making a new book order…

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Oh yes sorry if I worded this poorly, I was mainly referring to the language here, not the kanji and kana. My edition’s first page looks like this:

and I for one wouldn’t be able to tell that this is the same as the Aozora text :sweat_smile:

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True that :see_no_evil: Maybe we should get our act together and finish that one next, then? :sweat_smile:

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You know how I have the habit of idly browsing a publisher’s whole collection when they have a sale? This time I did it with 小学館 and two titles caught my eye:
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あの日、君は何をした, a mystery novel about two seemingly unconnected stories.
and
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鳴かずのカッコウ, a spy novel set in Japan (a manga otaku joins the Public Security Intelligence Agency?)

Also from my own 積読:
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硝子の塔の殺人 - highly praised by @pocketcat, this is a mystery and not a fantasy or light novel as the cover would suggest.

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水たまりで息をする
By the same author who brought us おいしいごはんが食べられますように, this promises to be a stranger novel, about a man who suddenly refuses to have anything to do with tap or bottled water and stops bathing. :upside_down_face:

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震える天秤 - An accident caused by an elderly driver, and a village with secrets to hide. Social mystery. (got this randomly in another sale, as I do)

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タクシー Another random pick, a taxi driver whose passenger dies in the taxi, and he’s determined to get her to her destination. Apparently a suspense novel?

I will definitely get back to it at some point, as I was really enjoying it. It was rather hard work though, so I’m waiting for a less busy time to start afresh.

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That sounds interesting! Although I don’t know if I’m even part of the compulsive readers because I have yet to start reading ユートロニカ. But I did finish 闇祓 yesterday so I guess that’s a start?

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Of course you are! Everyone can be, you just need to love reading and make impulsive decisions on what to read next (or concurrently) :grin:

Yay! Overall impressions?

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I enjoyed it a lot, but iirc it’s ~600 pages? It was quite long. It’s not Literature but it’s somewhere between a parody and a love letter to classic mystery writing. I found it delightful. It has an audiobook, too, I should mention.

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