Welcome to Litsy!

A young couple moves to the Japanese countryside. He‘s always working, she tries to readjust to the remoteness and feels isolated despite the fact that they live next door to her in-laws. She starts exploring her surroundings on her own and meets the weirdest creatures in a hallucinatory heat. Holes and cicadas fill this super atmospheric and strange little book.

#pop24 #52bookclub24 - Magical realism

I read some amazing translated books in 2023! Four out of six were originally written in Korean, and one is translated from French and the other, Japanese.

A weird, unsettling novella about a housewife who moved to the countryside when her husband got a job transfer there. Her encounter with a strange creature and her interactions with some odd persons lead her to a sequence of unusual events where she begins to wonder what is real and what is imagined. A surreal story that takes a look at women‘s role in Japan in terms of societal expectations and conformity. If you like uncanny stories,go for this.

#MayMontage
This is the second Oyamada novella that I have read & I love her style of lightly treading the waters of the awkward & occasionally dipping into the absurd or even surreal. In The Hole Asa's husband is transferred to a different job in the countryside where they will no longer have to pay rent. However they will be living literally right next to her in-laws. Asa is good natured about the situation & is def a #mellowcharacter

2021 was a great reading year for me. I finished 66 books and 21,200 pages, both of which are new records for me. Of those 66 books, 37 were fiction. Here are my top 10 fiction books of 2021!

Also, special mention to The Ghost Variations which came very close to making my top 10.
#bestof2021 #bestfiction

I loved this bizarre story, which had so many of the elements I enjoy about Japanese fiction: quiet plot and straightforward narrative style, paired with strange occurrences and a touch of creepy.

🍃🍃🍃🍃

#MayWrapUp
The Hole is my second 5 star read of the year. I loved it! I also finished Invisible Cities for my friend rec challenge. I had trouble rating it, but ultimately would say it‘s a light pick. A not so positive stand out was Hummingbird Salamander. I was really looking forward to that one, but I ended up panning it. ⬇️

The hole was weirdly endearing. Though the protagonist is as normal as normal can get and the story normal too, there was so.ething which didn't want me to put the book down.

This was weird and I dug it (...see what I did there? Hole? Dug? Ahem...)! This book had the feeling of a fever dream. A woman moves from the city to a rural area with her husband, and literally falls into a (one of many) hole. One that seems as if it were dug just for her. Oyamada‘s writing is spare and eerie. This is a strange but evocative book about the stifling role that many women are expected to play in Japanese society. Subtly terrifying!

A perfect way to begin the new year: using birthmas money to visit my four favorite bookstores to acquire some coveted books as well as some impulse buys.

There must be plenty you don‘t see.

This #audiobook filled me with dread while I was listening to it and really made me think after I was done with it. I rarely want to revisit a book once I‘ve finished it but I feel compelled to check out the print version of this one now. #TOB

No words are adequate to describe this short, enigmatic, and surreal descent into a whole different kind of reality. It's amazing!

What did I just read? This was a very strange book. Short and atmospheric but I have no idea what just happened?! #ARC #Edelweiss