Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

Blurb from Goodreads

From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Just like that, we are down in the last week of the year’s first month. The second month of the year is just over the horizon. But before that, we will be greeting the Chinese New Year. How has the new year been so far? I hope that 2025 is showering everyone with positive news and blessings. The year has been quite busy so far. Thankfully, I completed the document I have been working on in the past three weeks. It was mentally and physically taxing. I am just glad I was able to finish my task. I hope everyone was able to finish what they are working on. I also hope everyone started the work week on the right note. I hope you all had a good start to the workweek. I hope everyone makes it through the week. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit, not only this week but for the rest of the year.

Despite the new year, some things never change. As customary, I am kicking off the blogging week with a fresh Goodreads Monday update. This has become an essential part of my weekly blogging ritual. I can’t believe that this is already my 264th update. How time flies! Anyway, with the new year come new goals and resolutions. For this year, I have quite some lofty reading goals. For one, I have already set my reading goal to 100 despite historically initially setting it at a more conservative level. I want to challenge myself and maintain the reading momentum I built in the past three years. If the past three years are to be the barometer then I can do it again this year. I also plan to read more translated works to reduce the gap between books originally published in English and translated literary works.

In line with my goal of reading more translated works of literature, I am featuring Sayaka Murata’s latest novel to be translated into English. A couple of years ago, Murata rose to global prominence with her novel Convenience Store Woman. She backed it up with Earthlings and Life Ceremony, a short story collection. She gained a fan in me with Convenience Store Woman and its deadpan narrator. Earthlings was quite grotesque, at least the closing scenes were. This year, she will be releasing Vanishing World. It seems that Vanishing World leans more toward Earthlings because of its eccentricity. Not that I am complaining. I am actually looking forward to it. From the blurb, it seems that the Vanishing World will not only be eccentric, it will be next-level eccentric. Well, they used the term “bold.”

I hope I am not raising my hopes too much. I can only that the book will hold my interest. I hope it will not disappoint. For now, I am just going to look forward to obtaining a copy of the book which is slated to be released on April 24. How was your Monday rather? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!