Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburō Ōe

Blurb from Goodreads

The first novel by Japan’s most celebrated living writer, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime.When plague breaks out, their host abandon them and flee. However, the boys’s brief, doomed attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love and tribal valour inevitably fail in the reflux of death and the adult nightmare of war. 

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you are having a great start to the week. Today is also the first Monday of July. Wow, time does fly. It still feels like January was just yesterday (HAHA). Who’d have thought that we’re already halfway through 2021! July is filled with celebration. It is my birth month. My father, paternal grandfather and a slew of my friends and relatives were also born in July. But before I get lost in my thoughts, let me all wish you a great Monday and an even greater week ahead. I hope and pray that you are all doing well, especially in this most uncertain of times.

To start the week right, I am opening a new blogging week with a Goodreads Monday update. I am currently immersing in the depths of Japanese literature. I have been featuring Japanese works I want to read these past few weeks. For this week’s update, I am featuring 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Kenzaburō Ōe’s Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids. I recently availed a copy of the book, hence the decision to feature this work. To be honest, I have been a little ambivalent about Ōe that it wasn’t until last year that I mustered the courage to read one of his works. I guess another factor in this apprehension is his reputation to be one of Haruki Murakami’s biggest literary critics.

Nonetheless, my first Ōe novel created a deep impression on me that I am tempted to read more of his works. What makes Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (alternatively published as Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring) stand above his other works that I bought (I also have copies of A Personal Matter, and Death by Water) is that it was his debut novel. As I have mentioned in my other blog posts, I have a growing interest on the debut novel of prominent writers. On top of this, it was his only work to be listed as part of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The book is rather slender and I just might include it in my July reading list.

How about you fellow reader? What work by a Japanese writer do you have in your reading list? What made you add it to your list? I hope you could share your answers in the comment box. For now, have a happy Monday!

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