My birth month is over. It flew past quite quickly I barely felt it. Nevertheless, I am leaving behind July with a treasure trove of memories. To celebrate my birthday, I climbed Mt. Fuji later in the month. It was a memorable experience. I also got to make new friends along the trail. Anyway, it is now August, the cursed ghost month. I hope that August, and the rest of the year for that matter, will shower us with good news, positive energy, and blessings. But before I could wave July goodbye, let me share the book titles I was able to acquire during the month. Compared to the previous months, July has been a rather slow book-hauling month. Without ado, here are the books I obtained during the month. Happy reading!

P.S. I just realized that all five books I obtained during the month are all translated works.

Title: Kairos
Author: Jenny Erpenbeck
Translator (from German): Michael Hoffman
Publisher: Granta Publications
Publishing Date: 2024 (2021)
No. of Pages: 294

Synopsis:

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she betrays him with a colleague, the relationship takes a darker turn – just as the GDR begins to crumble, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.

Title: My Brilliant Friend
Author: Elena Ferrante
Translator (from Italian): Ann Goldstein
Publisher: Europa Editions
Publishing Date: 2016 (2011)
No. of Pages: 331

Synopsis: 

From one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship. Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country undergoing momentous change.

Title: Mild Vertigo
Author: Mieko Kanai
Translator (from Japanese): Polly Barton
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publishing Date: 2023 (1997)
No. of Pages: 169

Synopsis:

Housewife Natsumi leads a small, unremarkable life in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes on tris to the supermarket, visits friends and gossips with neighbours. Tracing her conversations and interactions with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her own internally buzzing internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything and nothing happens. With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante and Lucy Ellman, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist and critic Mieko Kanai – whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan – is a disconcerting and radically imaginative portrait of selfhood in late-stage capitalist society.

Title: Honeybees and Distant Thunder
Author: Riku Onda
Translator (from Japanese): Philip Gabriel
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2024 (2016)
No. of Pages: 425

Synopsis: 

In a small coastal town just a stone’s throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous – and painful – moments of their lives. Though they don’t know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, for ever.

Aya was a piano genius, until she fled the stage and vanished; will the tall and talented Makun bring her back? Or will it be child of nature Jin, a pianist without a piano, who carries the sound of his father’s bees wherever he goes? Each will break the rules, amaze their fans and push themselves to the brink. But at what cost?

Title: The Forest of Wool and Steel
Author: Natsu Miyashita
Translator (from Japanese): Philip Gabriel
Publisher: Black Swan
Publishing Date: 2020 (2015)
No. of Pages: 215

Synopsis:

Tomura is startled by the hypnotic sound of a piano being tuned in his school. It seeps into his soul and transports him to the forests, dark and gleaming, that surround his beloved mountain village, At that moment, he becomes determined to discover more.

Under the tutelage of three master piano-tuners, Tomura embarks on his training, always asking himself one unfathomable question: Do I have what it takes?

Set in small-town Japan, this warm and mystical story is for the lucky few who have found their calling – and for the rest of us who are still looking. It shows that the search for purpose in life is a winding path – one filled with treacherous doubts and, for those who persevere, astonishing revelations.