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.

Today is International Plant Appreciation Day. To align with today’s theme, I am featuring books with any plant featured in their titles. Without ado, here are some “plant” books.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose 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 Cake Tree in the Ruins
Author: Akiyuki Nosaka
Translator (from Japanese): Ginny Tapley Takemori
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publishing Date: 2018
No. of Pages: 157

Synopsis: 

In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka lived through the Allied firebombing of Kobe. His father and mother were killed in the raid. His sister died shortly afterwards. The unforgettably powerful stories in this book are inspired by his memories of that time.

A lonely whale searches the oceans for a mate, and sacrifices himself for love; a mother desperately tries to save her son with her tears; a huge, magnificent tree grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable.

Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, these stories express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also reveal how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.

Title: The Flower Mat
Author: Shugoro Yamamoto
Translator (from Japanese): Mihoko Inoue and Eileen B, Hennessy
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Publishing Date: 1977 (1948)
No. of Pages: 173

Synopsis: 

First published as Hanamushiro in 1948, the setting for The Flower Mat is eighteenth-century Japan, a time when families were bound together by a rigid code of honor and individual lives were of necessity valued far less than the interests of the group. It tells of a young bride, Ichi, born into such a tradition, groomed in the virtues of ideal womanhood, and finally tempered by tragedy. Her life and fate are bound up inexorably with the fortunes of her in-laws, high-ranking officials. She soon becomes aware that something is dreadfully wrong, that something is threatening her home and her peaceful way of life. Uneasy and frightened, she tries to put clues together, but her questions go unanswered. Political intrigue and sudden tragedy force her into a new and unfamiliar world. We follow Ichi as she grows from passive observer – a wife suppressing her own passions – to active agent – a woman who will risk anything for justice. Struggling for truth and justice, Ichi finds that her only weapons are her own strength and the lovely mats, decorated with delicate flowers, that she designs.

Title: Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Publishing Date: 2008
No. of Pages: 202

Synopsis:

Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel, originally published in 1934, tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, “a living exultation” of a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there’s also Mehaley and Big’Oman, as well as the scheming Hattie, who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attention. Even after becoming the popular pastor of Zion Hope, where his sermons and prayers for cleansing rouse the congregation’s fervor, John has to confess that though he is a preacher on Sundays, he is a “natchel man” the rest of the week. And on in this sympathetic portrait of a man and his community, Zora Neale Hurston shows that faith, tolerance, and good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and the physical. That she makes this age-old dilemma come so alive is a tribute to her understanding of the vagaries of human nature.

Title: Evening Primrose
Author: Kopano Matlwa
Publisher: Quercus
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 149

Synopsis:

When Masechaba finally achieves her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, her ambition is tested as she faces the stark reality of South Africa’s public health care system. As she leaves her deeply religious mother and makes friends with the politically minded Nyasha, Masechaba’s eyes are opened to the rising xenophobic tension that carries echoes of apartheid. Battling her inner demons, she must decide if she should take a stand to help her best friend, even if it comes at a high personal cost.

A powerfully insightful novel from one of the foremost voices of South Africa’s “Born Free” generation, Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender, and the medical profession with tenderness and urgency.

Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Author: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Publisher: The Dial Press
Publishing Date: August 2008
No. of Pages: 274

Synopsis:

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’d never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. He’d come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb. Perhaps she could tell him where he might find more books by this author.

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect his members from arrest by the Germans.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the Society’s charming, deeply human members, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Through their letters she learns about their island, their taste in books, and the powerful, transformative impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.