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Recommendations based on Lizardby Banana Yoshimoto
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Goodbye Tsugumi
by Banana Yoshimoto
A bittersweet story of two cousins, their summer together, and the inevitable goodbye that awaits them.
Tsugumi is a sickly but feisty and somewhat unpleasant young girl living in a small Japanese seaside town at the family inn with her parents, sister Yoko, aunt Masako, and cousin Maria (the ... (Wikipedia)
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and healing, exploring the kitchen of her dreams.
From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into the life of a young Japanese woman ... (Wikipedia)
Asleep
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of grief and recovery after the death of her mother.
Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, ... (Goodreads)
South of the Border, West of the Sun
by Haruki Murakami
A married man's reflections on a once-in-a-lifetime love affair, and his struggle to reconcile the past with the present.
Alternate cover edition, here,. Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. ... (Goodreads)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami
Collection of surreal and mysterious stories, exploring the depths of human emotions.
Collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human ... (Goodreads)
Out
by Natsuo Kirino
Exploration of the dark side of modern society through the story of four female factory workers.
The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from ... (Wikipedia)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
All Families are Psychotic
by Douglas Coupland
A dysfunctional family's story of love, loss and redemption.
The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's space shuttle blast off at the Kennedy Space Center . The Drummonds are a group of misfits ... (Wikipedia)
In the Miso Soup
by Ryū Murakami
A tour guide leads a mysterious foreigner through the neon-lit nightlife of Tokyo.
Twenty-year-old Kenji is a Japanese "nightlife" guide for foreigners—he navigates, gaijin, men around the sex clubs and hostess bars of Tokyo . On December 29 he receives a phone call from an ... (Wikipedia)
JPod
by Douglas Coupland
A darkly humorous look at the lives of the twenty-somethings working in the video game industry.
JPod , Douglas Coupland's most acclaimed novel to date, is a lethal joyride into today's new breed of tech worker. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are ... (Goodreads)
A Personal Matter
by Kenzaburō Ōe
A man’s personal struggles with the birth of his disabled son, the consequences of his actions and his search for redemption.
The plot follows the story of Bird, a 27 year old Japanese man. The book starts with him wondering about a hypothetical trip to Africa, which is a recurrent theme in his mind throughout the story. ... (Wikipedia)
Strange Weather in Tokyo
by Hiromi Kawakami
A tale of love and friendship between two lonely people in Tokyo.
Tsukiko is drinking alone in her local sake bar when by chance she meets one of her old high school teachers and, unable to remember his name, she falls back into her old habit of calling him ... (Goodreads)
Girlfriend in a Coma
by Douglas Coupland
A group of friends must grapple with a mysterious coma, while reflecting on their lives and relationships.
The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen's lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as ... (Wikipedia)
The Devotion of Suspect X
by Keigo Higashino
A genius physicist helps his neighbor cover up a murder, while a relentless detective investigates the crime.
Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered. ... (Goodreads)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
The Housekeeper and the Professor
by Yōko Ogawa
A gentle story of friendship and understanding between a brilliant mathematician and his housekeeper.
The narrator's housekeeping agency dispatches her to the house of the Professor, a former mathematician who can remember new memories for only 80 minutes. She is more than a little frustrated to find ... (Wikipedia)
Timequake
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A man is forced to relive the life he lived before, discovering the beauty of second chances.
Vonnegut uses the premise of a timequake (or repetition of actions) in which there is no free will . The idea of determinism is explored—as it is in many of his previous works—to assert that people ... (Wikipedia)
Death with Interruptions
by José Saramago
A mysterious phenomenon that stops all deaths leading to a dilemma of moral, ethical and social implications.
The book, set in an unnamed, landlocked country at a point in the unspecified past, opens with the end of death. Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, no one in the country ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible Monsters
by Chuck Palahniuk
A woman's journey to re-establish her identity and find her place in the world.
The narrator of the story is an unnamed disfigured woman who goes by multiple pseudonyms, notably Daisy St. Patience and Bubba Joan—identities given to her by Brandy Alexander, with whom she spends ... (Wikipedia)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury
A dark fantasy tale of two boys confronting a mysterious and sinister carnival.
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes , now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre. For ... (Barnes & Noble)
Yu-Gi-Oh!, Vol. 1: The Millenium Puzzle
by Kazuki Takahashi
A young boy named Yugi solves an ancient puzzle and gains the power to summon powerful creatures to duel with.
The Millennium Puzzle,Sitting by himself in the back of the class, 10th-grader Yugi always had his head in some game–until he solved the Millennium Puzzle, an Egyptian artifact containing a powerful ... (Barnes & Noble)
Crewel
by Gennifer Albin
In a world where women have the power to weave time and matter, a young girl must navigate political intrigue and rebellion.
Incapable. Awkward. Artless. That’s what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys has a secret: She wants to fail. Gifted with the ability to weave time with ... (Goodreads)
The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
A young couple's story of love and sacrifice as they give up their most prized possessions for one another.
On Christmas Eve , Della Young discovers that she has only $1.87 to buy a present for her husband Jim. She visits the nearby shop of a hairdresser, Madame Sofronie, who buys Della's long hair for ... (Wikipedia)
What I Did for Love
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
A Hollywood actress flees to a small town and hires a former football star to help her prepare for a role, but their relationship becomes more than professional.
“Writing with both sharp wit and terrific emotional warmth, Phillips delivers another of her supremely satisfying contemporary romances.” —,Chicago, Tribune, , , Perennial, New York Times, ... (Barnes & Noble)
VALIS
by Philip K. Dick
A man's quest to uncover the meaning behind a series of mystical visions.
VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer ). This disorienting and bleakly funny ... (Goodreads)
Mary Poppins Comes Back
by P.L. Travers
Mary Poppins returns to the Banks family, bringing more magic and adventure to their lives.
'Pulled down from the clouds at the end of a kite string, Mary Poppins is back. In Mary’s care, the Banks children meet the King of the Castle and the Dirty Rascal, visit the upside-down world of Mr. ... (Goodreads)
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
A mysterious storyteller reveals a dark family secret, transforming the lives of those around her.
Vida Winter, a famous novelist in England, has evaded journalists' questions about her past, refusing to answer their inquiries and spinning elaborate tales that they later discover to be false. Her ... (Wikipedia)
High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
A man reflects on his past relationships while trying to understand the nature of love.
Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old man who owns a record shop in London called Championship Vinyl. His lawyer girlfriend, Laura, has just left him and now he's going through a crisis. At his record shop, ... (Wikipedia)
A Boy Called Christmas
by Matt Haig
An adventurous elf embarks on a magical quest to find his father, saving Christmas along the way.
You are about to read the true story of Father Christmas. It is a story that proves that nothing is impossible. If you are one of those people who believe that some things are impossible, you should ... (Goodreads)
An Acceptable Time
by Madeleine L'Engle
A teenage girl travels through time to ancient history and faces a moral dilemma. She must choose between her own desires and the greater good.
Happy to be away from her large family for a while, Polly O'Keefe is spending the autumn with her maternal grandparents, Dr. Kate Murry and Dr. Alex Murry, getting a better education from them in ... (Wikipedia)
