Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: 2024 TBR Titles You Didn’t Get To

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: The Healing Season of Pottery
Author: Yeon Somin
Translator (from Korean): Claire Richards
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publishing Date: 2024 (2023)
No. of Pages: 262

Synopsis: 

After breaking down at the office and abruptly quitting her job, thirty-year-old Jungmin holes up in her apartment, speaking to no one for days on end. When she finally emerges, she stumbles upon a pottery studio in her neighborhood and is invited in by the mysterious workshop teacher. The smell of clay, the light filtering through the plant-filled windows, the friendly cat, and the incredible coffee the students drink awaken her senses and make her feel alive and inspired for the first time in months. As the seasons change, Jungmin slowly returns to herself and builds a new community with the other members of the studio, who are all working through their own pasts at the pottery wheel. When the holidays approach and snow piles up on the studio windowsill, Jungmin realizes how much she has changed – with her hands busy and her mind clear, she may be ready to face the memories she’s been running from and open her heart.

For fans of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookshop, Yeon’s charming English-language debut is a testament to the joy of slowing down in a fast-paced world, and an homage to the art of ceramics and the power of friendship. Readers won’t want to leave the enchanting world of The Healing Season of Pottery after the final page.

Title: Marigold Mind Laundry
Author: Jungeun Yun
Translator (from Korean): Shanna Tan
Publisher: The Dial Press
Publishing Date: 2024 (2023)
No. of Pages: 248

Synopsis: 

Born with mysterious powers she does not know how to control, young Jieun accidentally causes her family to vanish. She vows to live a million lives in search of them.

Finally, one night, she brings the Marigold Mind Laundry into existence. Its service: to remove the deepest pain from our hearts. Jieun listens while customers share their unhappy memories. As they speak, she transfers sadness onto T-shirts as stains. After a spin in the washing machine, the stains become flower petals that soar into the air, and Jieun’s customers find solace.

Five wounded souls come to Jieun for help: a frustrated young filmmaker, a spiraling social media influencer, a mother betrayed by her husband, a woman jilted by her lover, and a talented photographer who hides in the safety of a mundane job. As Jieun listens to each of their stories, she learns that the will to heal is not a rare gift, but a power we all possess – if only we are open to it.

Joyous and inspiring, Marigold Mind Laundry offers wonderment and comfort as it teaches us to tap into the magic that lives within us all.

Title: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat
Author: Syou Ishida
Translator (from Japanese): Madison Shimoda
Publisher: Berkley
Publishing Date: 2024 (2023)
No. of Pages: 297

Synopsis: 

Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can be found only by people who are struggling in their lives and who genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, and occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout these pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a hardened handbag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha learns to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients grapple with their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

Title: Mysterious Setting
Author: Kazushige Abe
Translator (from Japanese): Michael Emmerich
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publishing Date: 2024 (2006)
No. of Pages: 222

Synopsis: 

Shiori knows that she was destined to sing – even if she is completely tone-deaf. Forced to give up her dream of becoming a travelling troubadour, she moves to Tokyo at eighteen to forge a career in music, whatever the cost. 

But she quickly becomes isolated in this vast new city, and even the people she calls friends take advantage of her naivety. Then one day, she is entrusted with a secret of enormous power. If she chooses to, she can take revenge on the world.

Shot through with dark irony and a playful sense of the absurd, Mysterious Setting is a propulsive and gloriously strange story of innocence and experience.

Title: Marshland
Author: Otohiko Kaga
Translator (from Japanese): Albert Novick
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Publishing Date: 2024 (1985)
No. of Pages: 831

Synopsis: 

At forty-nine, Atsuo Yukimori is a humble auto mechanic living an almost penitentially quiet life in Tokyo, where his coworkers know something of his military record but nothing of his postwar past as a petty criminal. Out of curiosity he accompanies his nephew to a demonstration at a nearby university and is gradually drawn into a friendship, then a romance, with Wakako Ikehata, the brilliant but mentally unstable daughter of a university professor. As some of the student radical groups turn to violence and terrorism, Atsuo and Wakako find themselves framed for the lethal bombing of a Tokyo train What follows is a delicate balance of Kafkaesque procedural, revealing the corrupt intricacies of the police and judicial system of Japan, and an exploration of the “marshland” of the title through extraordinarily beautiful pastoral scenes.

The wealth of Kaga’s work in fiction remains to be discovered by the Anglophone world. Marshland is a revelation of modern Japanese history and culture, a major novel (though only the second to be translated into English) from a master well-known in his own country.