Inhae's blog

I know that it is a little early for a end-of-the-year book haul, but I don’t care 😈. I have ordered 15+ books on Amazon and received them a couple weeks ago. Here they are:

Mystery and crime fiction

『密室の鍵貸します』and 『密室に向かって撃て!』 by Tokuya HIGASHIGAWA (東川篤哉)

These two books are the first and second volumes in the Ikagawa city (烏賊川市) series. This year, I read the last book of the series and loved it so much that I decided to read the whole series in order. There are 8 books in total.

『AX』 by Kotaro ISAKA (伊坂小太郎)

This is a novel that I want to read since I first saw it. I didn’t want to buy the big format though and had to wait for the pocket edition to come out. I have only read one book by Kotaro Isaka and loved it, though reading it was also a strange experience. Since then, I have been wanting to read more books by this author but never got around to it.

『幻夏』 by Ai Oota (太田愛)

I know nothing about this book, but I keep seeing it on Amazon, and it has very good reviews. It is quite long (almost 500 pages), but the story looks great.

『祈りの幕が下りる時』 by Keigo HIGASHINO (東野圭吾)

This is the tenth and last book in the Kaga series (加賀恭一郎シリーズ). The first book I read in Japanese was the first book of the series 『卒業』, and I have continued the series over the years. Finishing the series will feel like an accomplishment for sure!

『聖女の救済』 by Keigo HIGASHINO (東野圭吾)

Fifth book in the Galileo series (ガリレオシリーズ), this one has been translated into English under the title Salvation of a Saint. The Galileo series does not mean as much to me as the Kaga series, but I love it, and I am quite excited about this one because it is a novel (three of the first four books were collections of short stories).

Literary fiction and medical fiction

『星々の悲しみ』by Teru MIYAMOTO (宮本輝)

This is the only book of literary fiction I bought, so I chose one by my favourite author so far (of literary fiction). Teru Miyamoto has written so many books that it was hard to chose one. I wanted to read his more recent novels, but they were not available as pocket books so I will have to wait.

『泣くな研修医』 by Yujiro NAKAYAMA (中山祐次郎)

While this is a novel, this book is praised for its realistic depiction of the life of an intern. There is a second volume entitled 『逃げるな新人外科医』. I have been reading some medical nonfiction in English lately and it made me want to try reading in this field in Japanese too. I fear there will be medical terms that I don’t know, but at the same time, I expect them to be mostly in kanji, which would make them easier to guess and remember.

Non fiction

『あのころ』by Momoko SAKURA (さくらももこ)

This is a collection of essays by Momoko Sakura about her childhood. I believe that there are three books in this format. I already read and loved 『まるこだった』and thought it was time to jump into another one.

『殺人犯はそこにいる』by Kiyoshi SHIMIZU (清水潔)

I am very excited for this one, because I believe I never read true crime in my life, so this will be a first for me. This year, I read a book on death penalty, 『誰も知らない死刑の舞台裏』, that went over some cases that have shaped criminal law in Japan. This made me want to learn more about famous criminal cases and this book looks like a good start. It goes over the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case that started in 1979.

『裁判官失格』 by Ryuichi TAKAHASHI (高橋隆一)

Here again, it is 『誰も知らない死刑の舞台裏』 that made me want to read more about judicial penalties and court ruling. I am particularly interested in the decision process that leads to life imprisonment or death penalty, and it looks like this is a topic that will be present in this book. (edit: I have read this book already, and it was not at all on death penalty vs life imprisonment. Overall, I was disappointed in the content…)

Others

『恋する寄生虫』 by Sugaru MIAKI (三秋縋)

I was impressed by another Miaki’s book that I read recently and enjoyed very much, even though this is not my usual kind of reads. I decided to read another one and chose the author’s best known novel. I was tempted to read the manga adaptation, but it is three volumes and my order was already far more voluminous than planned.

『ちびまる子ちゃんの慣用句教室』 and 『ちびまる子ちゃんの漢字使い分け教室』

These two books belong to a series of books for children called 満点ゲットシリーズ. The series covers a wide range of topics that are mostly subjects that children learn in school. It uses the character and fictional world of Maruko chan. I already have the one on honorifics 『敬語教室』, and it explained things so much better than any textbooks for language learners I have read… I think this series can be useful for Japanese learners, so I wanted to try a couple more topics before writing about them on my blog.

『自分を好きになりたい』by Pon Watanabe (わたなべぽん)

The other manga I read by this author were mainly on consumption habits and house keeping, but in every book, she talked with sincerity about her own experience and about accepting oneself as one is. I wanted to read 『自分を好きになりたい』 for some time because it has very good reviews and I definitely love Pon Watanabe’s vision of life.

That’s it for this post, but there is actually something else in my book haul that will be the core of my reading challenge for 2021. I am super excited about it, and it is hard to not just start right away, but I do have a whole plan for 2021, and I am sure it will be a lot of fun! I will talk about it in December, so stay tuned!

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read detective novels in these languages. I post about my reading progress and language study here. Best way to get in touch is on Mastodon 🙂

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