The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon

Reading this book reminded me that at least some of what makes a book wildly popular is totally random. Happenstance, luck, a bizarre confluence of events--whatever it is, it is definitely a mystery. The Shadow of the Wind has been popping up everywhere for a few years now, one of those books that people keep...

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

I am a hyper-organized and super neat person, and I definitely went through a phase as a kid where I was obsessed with storage solutions (there was a store near where I grew up called Placewares that I absolutely loved). So this book has been on my radar for a while. I knew the basic...

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I am so baffled by this book! I picked it up knowing absolutely nothing about it, because I'm on a short audiobooks kick, and have been listening to lots of books under 6 hours. I stumbled across this one while browsing around Hoopla and figured, why not? Then I discovered that it is apparently super...

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin

This was a strange one, and I read it very fast because I had to return it to the library. I'm not sure I did myself a service, reading it so quickly, because it only added to the dream-like quality of the book. It was confusing and oddly structured, and I didn't really take the...

Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara

Machi Tawara was only twenty-six when Salad Anniversary was published. It was an instant bestseller in Japan, and eventually became one of the bestselling books in the country's history. It was also critically acclaimed, and one of the poem sequences in the book, "August Morning", won the prestigious Kadokawa Tanka Prize. So there's an interesting...

Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I picked this one up as part of my search for graphic short stories. I read How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis a few months ago, and ever since, I've been slightly obsessed with graphic short story collections. There are many individual short stories that I love, but I rarely fall in love with...

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

I picked this up because I've been enjoying reading nonfiction comics recently. I loved Persepolis, and I honestly wasn't expecting Embroideries to be as good. What a delightful surprise! Embroideries is a short graphic memoir that takes place on one afternoon. Satrapi sits with her mother, grandmother, aunt, and a group of their friends and...