translated – Bookish Luna

Hello and welcome to a post where I am sharing the books I am adding to my owned TBR. I have actually been reading a bit this past few months so of course I wanted to reward myself with some new books to add to my stacks. Most of the books I have been reading have been through my library digitally, but I recently went on a little adventure and came across a really lovely local bookstore and I wanted to support them. So, I ended up getting these lovely book. Also, I am adding a bonus of a preorder at the end of this post.

Local Bookstore Haul

Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada, Haydn Trowell (Translator)

I have to say, the cover of this book really pulled me in. The cover is a really lovely dark red berry color, with an illustrated girl on the cover in the same color dress. Oddly, you don’t see her face at all as the title is on top of it located on a doodled cloud. Then I ended up picking up the book and looking at the description. It follows a house wife (name is unknown at this time) who has visions and leaves her life behind. It sounded interested and spontaneous. Bonus, the book is under 150 pages. When I got home I added the book to my goodreads and I ended up noticing that this books ratings are not the highest and had only one written review, but I am still intrigued.

The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean

When I walked into the store I really wanted to get a nonfiction read or a horror book. Sadly, their horror was VERY limited. Only about 20 books and I will be honest I read them all. So, I ended up picking up the above talked about book and then walking over to the nonfiction and this title grabbed me right away. In recent years I have realized I really enjoy learning about the history of medicine. I have read and loved The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris. While The Icepick Surgeon is medical related, it explore the lengths people will go in to try to prove something. Some of the things in this book are medical, but it seems to focus on science in general.

Pre-Order

Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

Now, I wont go too much into this book due to the fact it is the second book in a series. The first book followed Jade Daniels a high school student who LOVES horror. She watches and consumes it to not focus on her not so great home life. But, this knowledge ends up coming in handy since she is about to be in a horror story herself. She deals with quite a lot and can be difficult to read for some. I will say, reading this I can see that Stephen Graham Jones loves horror himself with constant nods to other works. I highly suggest checking it out because I have not been this excited for a horror series in a long time.

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Hello and welcome to the July edition of Someone Picks My Books! This month I reached out to my cousin to pick a book for me. She ended up picking Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami, but you probably figured that out from the title. I have read a few of Murakami’s books so I was thrilled when she brought this one up so I get to read it. I was able to get it right from the library on my ereader so I got right to reading!

Description

A dazzling new collection of short stories—the first major new work of fiction from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami since his #1 best-selling Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic. –goodreads.com

What I Liked

I really enjoyed the bite sized looks into the lives of those within the stories. I felt like the stories were well paced and the length of each one was perfect. I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything, but I also never felt like a story went on too long. A very difficult balance to maintain as a writer. I felt that while we got a snippet of each of these men, each was unique and I didn’t feel like a plot was recycled in any way.

Another thing I really enjoyed was the fact that these short stories has the same feel that I have previously loved in works I have read by the author. This is personally a worry for me when I am used to reading novels by an author, changing the type of fiction an author writes can at times ruin an author for me because they can loose a sense of what I enjoy about them. Happily that was not the case at all here.

What I Didn’t Like

As with short story collections there are some winners and some not great ones. I normally have this experience with collections, but I have to say I felt overall very positive about the collection and I didn’t outright hate or fully dislike one in particular.

Overall

This is a great collection of short stories and I am very glad that my cousin picked this for me to read. I was lucky enough to bring this with my on vacation and it was honestly perfect for that setting. It was bite sized chunks of great works by a very talented writer. The stories didn’t go to fast or drag on in any way. If you love Murakami or have been wanting to give his works a try, but 1Q84 is overwhelming I think you should look into this collection.

Up Next

Next month I am reading a book picked by the lovely Minna, where you can find them on twitter as @bookishminna and on their blog bookishminna. I really love their combination of book content and life where their personality shines through as well as their passions.

Have you read this book before or is it on your TBR?

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