January in Japan 2015 is less than a month away now, so the announcement of the group read books is well overdue. Still, I got there in the end, and these are the two books I’m suggesting this time around 🙂
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A couple of years ago, our group read choice was Hiromi Kawakami’s The Briefcase (later released in the UK as Strange Weather in Tokyo), and I’ve gone back to Kawakami for one of my choices for 2015. This time it’s her novel Manazuru – even if the weather’s cold, it should make for a nice trip to the Japanese coast 🙂
The second choice is a classic of modern Japanese literature. Yasunari Kawabata needs no introduction (but if he does, try this one!), and we’ll be reading his novel The Sound of the Mountain, a wonderful story of a man coming to terms with the frailty that arrives with age.
The idea is that we’ll read the books and post reviews around the same time – I’ll be creating a page on this blog as a home for links to those reviews. The schedule is:
I hope that many of you will decide to join in – the more people who read the books and take part in the discussions, the better it will be. See you in January 🙂
January in Japan 
Wow, was The Briefcase a few years ago already? Anyway, 100% in for the Kawakami group read 🙂 Not sure yet about Kawabata, that depends on the rest of my reading…
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So excited to see that you picked Sound of The Mountain! Off to write it on the calendar, next to Don Quixote for Richard's January read-along.
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I have Kawaata's Snow Country in the TBR, so will be reading that as a kind of parallel road readalong ….
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Carola – January 2013! I had to check that myself – it didn't seem that long ago…
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Bellezza – I think it'll be a bit more popular than the Murakami last year 😉
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Lizzy – It's all good – and I'm sure that'll bring you to this one, eventually 😉
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It really doesn't… Anyway, I'm now trying to make up my mind whether I shall read Manazuru in Dutch (have the book at home) or English (can get the book from my library). Ahhhh what to do haha.
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Tony – Decisions, decisions – it's a nice dilemma to have (I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive…).
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I started reading the Dutch edition. I'm not sure if it's the edition or just the story itself but I'm not enjoying it as much as I had hoped 😦
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Carola – Oh dear – both people I've heard from now haven't really loved it… I've finished it, and I liked it – I'm rereading it before starting on my review.
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