Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is a weekly meme created by Marcia at Mailbox Monday and is being hosted all this month by Marie of Burton Book Review.

I'm participating in the Japanese Literature challenge 6, hosted by Dolce Bellezza - and I'm very excited for this nice pile of books (of course I will be reading in English, even though I would have preferred to read the original...):

1Q84, by H. Murakami (Books 1 and 2)

"A parallel existence, 1Q84 —Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question"

Once I was able to shut my mouth (this is a seriously big book...), I started reading the first pages - I think I will be totally submerged in it!

In praise of shadows, by J. Tanizaki

"An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings."

I've always been attracted by Oriental aesthetics in general, but I'm really interested to read how shadows can also provide a sense of beauty.

In a Grove, by R. Akutagawa

"An early modernist short story, it consists of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto".

Considered to be among the greatest stories in Japanese Literature, In a Grove was also used by Akira Kurosawa in one of his films - for me, a sure indication of its preciousness...

The Remains of the Day, by K. Ishiguro 

"A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England"

I must be one of the very few not to have read this book, so I'm really looking forward to it - will I cry? I hope so!

Supermarket, by S. Azuchi

"A novel of the human drama surrounding the management of a supermarket chain at a time when the phenomenon of the supermarket, imported postwar from the US, was just taking hold in Japan" 

From from the subject and the historical point of view, I find this book fascinating!