books that everyone should try ✨️
Items in this hypelist
Japanese literature
Under the Eye of the Big Bird A Novel
Hiromi Kawakami • 2025
More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
Satoshi Yagisawa • 2024
Days in the Morisaki Bookshop
Satoshi Yagisawa
No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai • 1973
<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>
Tokyo Ueno Station
Yu Miri • 2019
Born In Fukushima In 1933, The Same Year As The Emperor, Kazu's Life Is Tied By A Series Of Coincidences To Japan's Imperial Family And To One Particular Spot In Tokyo; The Park Near Ueno Station - The Same Place His Unquiet Spirit Now Haunts In Death. It Is Here That Kazu's Life In Tokyo Began, As A Labourer In The Run Up To The 1964 Olympics, And Later Where He Ended His Days, Living In The Park's Vast Homeless 'villages', Traumatised By The Destruction Of The 2011 Tsunami And Enraged By The Announcement Of The 2020 Olympics. --
The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Natsuko Imamura • 2022
The Woman in the Purple Skirt is being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes; what she eats; whom she speaks to. But this invisible observer isn't a stalker - it's much more complicated than that.
Mystery
If We Were Villains
M. L Rio (author) • 2017
Classics
When All the World Was Young
Barbara Holland • 2008
Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast (Penguin Little Black Classics)
Oscar Wilde • 2016
'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself' Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
Memoirs
Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir
Dolly Alderton • 2021
Fiction
Lost Boy
Christina Henry • 2021
We All Looked Up
Tommy Wallach • 2016
Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in Tommy Wallach’s New York Times bestselling “stunning debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).<br/><br/>They always say that high school is the best time of your life.<br/><br/>Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried “they” might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can’t wait to escape Seattle—and her reputation—and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn’t understand all the fuss about college and career—the future can wait.<br/><br/>Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth. As these four seniors—along with the rest of the planet—wait to see what damage an asteroid will cause, they must abandon all thoughts of the future and decide how they’re going to spend what remains of the present.
Non-fiction
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Bettany Hughes • 2024
Written In Bone
Sue Black • 2022
Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow.<br/><br/>Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to toe, via the teeth, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she delicately reverse engineers events, piecing together the evidence in our remains to discover the details of lives once lived.<br/><br/>All that we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently in our bones for the forensic anthropologist to decipher it. Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. Sue Black’s Written in Bone will astonish and amaze as it unravels with intimate sensitivity and compassion the inside story of what we leave behind.
Sci-Fi
Otherworld (Last Reality)
Jason Segel • 2018
“Full of high stakes, thrillers, and fantastic twists and turns, fans of Ready Player One are sure to love this addictive read.” —BuzzFeed<br/><br/>“A potent commentary on how much we’re willing to give up to the lure of technology.” —EW<br/><br/>"A fantastic journey from start to finish." —Hypable<br/><br/>New York Times bestselling authors Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller imagine a world in which you can leave your body behind and give in to your greatest desires in the first book in a fast-paced trilogy perfect for fans of the hit HBO show Westworld and anyone interested in the terrifying possibilities of the future of technology.<br/><br/>That’s how Otherworld traps you. It introduces you to sensations you’d never be able to feel in real life. You discover what’s been missing—because it’s taboo or illegal or because you lack the guts to do it for real. And when you find out what’s missing, it’s almost impossible to let it go again.<br/><br/>There are no screens. There are no controls. You don’t just see and hear it—you taste, smell, and touch it too. In this new reality, there are no laws to break or rules to obey. You can live your best life. Indulge every desire.<br/><br/>This is Otherworld—a virtual reality game so addictive you’ll never want it to end. And Simon has just discovered that for some, it might not.<br/><br/>The frightening future that Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller have imagined is not far away. Otherworld asks the question we'll all soon be asking: if technology can deliver everything we want, how much are we willing to pay?<br/><br/>“An engaging VR cautionary tale.” —The A.V. Club<br/><br/>"[A] fast-paced adventure." —Publishers Weekly<br/><br/>"Authors Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller keep the action nonstop.” —Shelf Awareness
Wildcard (Warcross)
Marie Lu • 2019
Warcross
Marie Lu • 2017
Fantasy
The Dragon's Promise
Elizabeth Lim • 2022
Six Crimson Cranes (Six Crimson Cranes)
Elizabeth Lim • 2021
Dark Literature
The Necrophiliac
Gabrielle Wittkop • 2011
For more than three decades, Lucien ― one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel ― has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop’s lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now.<br/>This new translation introduces readers to a masterpiece of French literature, striking not only for its astonishing subject matter but for the poetic beauty of the late author’s subtle, intricate writing.<br/>Like the best writings of Edgar Allan Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop’s prose goes far beyond mere gothic horror to explore the melancholy in the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.
Boy Parts
Eliza Clark • 2020
