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Recommendations based on On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on One Beautiful April Morningby Haruki Murakami
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South of the Border, West of the Sun
by Haruki Murakami
A married man's reflections on a once-in-a-lifetime love affair, and his struggle to reconcile the past with the present.
Alternate cover edition, here,. Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. ... (Goodreads)
Sputnik Sweetheart
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of love and longing, as two people struggle to come to terms with their feelings.
Sumire is an aspiring writer who survives on a family stipend and the creative input of her only friend, the novel's male narrator and protagonist, known in the text only as 'K'. K is an elementary ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)
Zorba the Greek
by Nikos Kazantzakis
A man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, learning to embrace life with gusto and joy.
The book opens in a café in Piraeus , just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning. The year is most likely 1916. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few ... (Wikipedia)
The Clown
by Heinrich Böll
A young man's reflective journey through post-war Germany, exploring the consequences of war.
Hans Schnier is the "Clown" of the novel's title. He is twenty-seven years old from a very wealthy family. At the beginning of the story he arrives in Bonn, Germany. As a clown, he had to travel ... (Wikipedia)
The Baron in the Trees
by Italo Calvino
A young boy's journey of self-discovery as he lives among the trees, away from society.
A landmark new translation of a Calvino classic, a whimsical, spirited novel that imagines a life lived entirely on its own terms Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, ... (Barnes & Noble)
Daddy-Long-Legs
by Jean Webster
A young girl's coming-of-age story, learning to navigate the world of adulthood.
Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage . The children were completely dependent on charity and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual ... (Wikipedia)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
by Eliezer Yudkowsky
A rational, scientific approach to the world of Harry Potter, exploring the implications of magic.
Upon arriving at Hogwarts, Harry attempts to apply the scientific method to the study of magic with the help of Hermione Granger . At the same time, he befriends Draco Malfoy and tries to show him ... (Wikipedia)
In the Miso Soup
by Ryū Murakami
A tour guide leads a mysterious foreigner through the neon-lit nightlife of Tokyo.
Twenty-year-old Kenji is a Japanese "nightlife" guide for foreigners—he navigates, gaijin, men around the sex clubs and hostess bars of Tokyo . On December 29 he receives a phone call from an ... (Wikipedia)
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
by Victor Hugo
A story of love, loyalty and redemption set amidst the stunning architecture of 15th century Paris.
The story is set in Paris in 1482 during the reign of Louis XI . The Romani Esmeralda (born as Agnes) captures the hearts of many men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire , but ... (Wikipedia)
The Man Who Laughs
by Victor Hugo
A man with a disfiguring facial deformity, who is sold into a life of suffering and exploitation.
The novel is divided into two parts: La mer et la nuit ( The sea and the night ) and Par ordre du roi ( On the king's command ). In late 17th-century England, a homeless boy named Gwynplaine rescues ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
The Gadfly
by Ethel Lilian Voynich
A young man’s struggle to find his place in the world against his oppressive society.
The Gadfly is a novel by Ethel Lilian Voynich, published in 1897, set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisings. The story centers on the life of the ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
Three Comrades
by Erich Maria Remarque
Three German friends struggle to survive in the aftermath of World War I, facing poverty, illness, and political turmoil.
The city, which never is referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts in ... (Wikipedia)
Trout Fishing in America
by Richard Brautigan
A poetic and humorous exploration of the American experience.
Richard Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He came of age during the ... (Goodreads)
The Hotel New Hampshire
by John Irving
A family's uproarious journey of growth and transformation, set in a series of hotels.
This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly, and Egg. The parents, both from ... (Wikipedia)
The Little Match Girl
by Hans Christian Andersen
A poor girl tries to sell matches on a cold winter night and experiences a series of visions before passing away.
The wares of the poor little match girl illuminate her cold world, bringing some beauty to her brief, tragic life. ... (Goodreads)
Dear Life
by Alice Munro
A collection of stories of ordinary people facing extraordinary moments of change and transformation.
Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these tales about departures and beginnings, accidents and dangers, and outgoings and homecomings both imagined and ... (Goodreads)
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man's quest for happiness and meaning, resulting in a journey of self-realization.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
by Neil Gaiman
A collection of short stories featuring mysterious characters and unexpected twists.
In the deft hands of Neil Gaiman , magic is no mere illusion... and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world ... (Goodreads)
The Solitaire Mystery
by Jostein Gaarder
A young boy's journey to uncover the mystery of his past and the truth of his identity.
The book follows two seemingly separate stories: A 12-year-old boy, Hans-Thomas, and his father are driving through Europe on a journey to locate and bring home the boy's estranged mother. Whilst on ... (Wikipedia)
Shopaholic on Honeymoon
by Sophie Kinsella
Newlyweds Becky and Luke go on a luxurious honeymoon, but Becky's shopping addiction threatens to ruin their trip.
As readers of the Shopaholic series will know, I have never described Becky and Luke's honeymoon, which happens after they get married in Shopaholic Ties the Knot. So as a free update for Shopaholic ... (Goodreads)
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and healing, exploring the kitchen of her dreams.
From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into the life of a young Japanese woman ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder
A journey of philosophical discovery told through a young girl's exploration of the world.
Sophie Amundsen is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Lillesand , Norway. The book begins with Sophie receiving two messages in her mailbox and a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag. Afterwards, she ... (Wikipedia)
Immortality
by Milan Kundera
An exploration of the human desire for immortality and the implications of eternity.
Divided into seven parts, Immortality centers on Agnes, her husband Paul and her sister Laura. Part One: the Face establishes these characters. Part Two: Immortality depicts Goethe 's fraught ... (Wikipedia)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by Raymond Carver
Exploration of relationships, revealing the complexities of love and its many forms.
Alternate-cover edition can be found, here, In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting ... (Goodreads)
The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
A young boy's journey through a graveyard, learning the secrets of the dead.
The story begins as the man Jack murders most of the members of a family (later revealed to be the Dorian family) except for the toddler upstairs. Unknown to him, the toddler has climbed out of his ... (Wikipedia)
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.
In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)
