Keiko Furukura is the type of person others consider “strange”, and it isn't until she gets a job at a convenience store as a college student that she finds her place in the world. There's no manual on how to be a normal person, but there is a manual on how to be a convenience store worker.

When I got my short-lived first job, I had a similar feeling. I walked to my workplace with my head held up high, feeling like I had finally become a part of what we call society. I wouldn't say I'm like the main character at all, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't hit close home now and then.

The protagonist lives happily in function of her job at the store, down to the food she eats and water she drinks, but as satisfied with her life and good at performing her duties she is, what she does it isn't considered a “proper job” by society—and as she reaches 36 years of age (and 18 years of working at the convenience store), the pressure from her peers to get married increases day by day. The arrival of an oddball new hire at her workplace disturbs the peace of her carefully-oiled-machine-like life, and what follows is a story both funny and deeply empathetic, exploring the idea of “normalcy” and the ways humans interact and rub on each from the (often a bit relatable) perspective of an outsider. From the synopsis, I wondered if it would develop into some sort of romance, but just a few pages in I was assured that this wouldn't be the case. Not everyone's perfect life is alike, no matter how much people try to pretend otherwise, and the ending left a smile on my face.

It's a very neat little book, and I'm glad I finally got around to it after all these years of it sitting in my to-be-read list (and also glad that I only got around to it as an adult, because I don't think high-schooler-me would get it—)

A high school girl who centers her existence around her oshi has her world shaken when he's embroiled in a controversy for punching a fan—contrary to my initial expectations, this was a story much less about the idol or the controversy itself than about the act of liking him, which is often described in religious terms, and the personal struggles of a protagonist who is quietly going up in flames in a way both similar and completely different from her idol. It's a deep, often uncomfortable dive into the mind of a young girl falling apart, written with stark honesty and beautiful imagery throughout. I could not put it down from the moment I started reading. It's got an incredibly pulling rhythm—kind of like an obsession.

I'm afraid that if I talk about it in any sort of depth, I won't know when I'm talking about the book and when I'm talking about myself…and that probably tells you everything you need to know.

A 14-year-old boy with a lazy eye who has been relentlessly bullied by his classmates for his entire school life suffers in silence and alone, until one of his classmates, a girl similarly a victim of bullying, reaches out to him through letters and notes left in his desk. The two kids forge a relationship away from the eyes of others, trying to understand each other and attempting to find meaning in suffering, to make sense of what makes someone a target of violence from their peers.

It's an incredibly raw and brutal work, but it's also beautiful in equal measure. It was somehow difficult to read and yet impossible to put down.

I know I go on like a broken record on here about when I had surgery to fix my eyesight, but that's because I feel like I'm never able to properly convey what it was like. Neither the pain I felt, nor the way the world slowly gained clarity afterwards. Really, there's no one to share it with, even now. Just the beauty.

A novel that starts with two friends playing armchair detectives as they read from a book called “The Tokyo Zodiac Murders” and try to solve the seemingly impossible case, some 40 years after the fact—how meta can you get? In the middle of the book, the story is interrupted by a note from the author himself challenging the reader to solve the mystery before the culprit gets revealed—I have to admit I had no clue, and when I turned the page I was like, FUCK!—it really was right in my face the whole time….! At the very least I managed to answer his two questions on the next author note…

Anyways, it's a very fun read. Once the initial fog is lifted, what's left behind is an incredibly clever mystery—and a deeply human tragedy. I can't recommend this one enough.

Seven members of a university's detective novels club, each carrying the nickname of a famous mystery writer, come together to spend spring break at an island where several murders yet unsolved took place in the year prior. As they settle in a strange decagon-shaped house, planned by the island’s eccentric former owner, seven plates announcing victims first to last, plus a detective and a murderer appear on top of the 10-sided dinner table—and soon they find themselves being killed off, one by one, just like in a certain novel they're constantly referencing.

Pretty meta, right? A love letter to classic mystery fiction, and also a real page-turner. I couldn't have figured this one out if my life depended on it—it’s pretty damn clever, and also an incredibly fun read. These Pushkin Vertigo releases are really becoming my bread-and-butter these days.

The death and subsequent reading of the will of the head of a rich and powerful family gives way to a series of freak murders—but there are no supernatural curses to be found here, just a lot of dark family secrets and a really good mystery.

It's the second Seishi Yokomizo book I've read, and I enjoyed this one even more than The Honjin Murders, which is saying a lot. He's a real master of the craft, and Kindaichi is a pretty fun detective to read, in all his disheveled glory. I was this close to solving the whole mystery—I only managed to figure out half of it, even though the answer for the other (and probably most important) half was staring at me right in the face the whole time…! Well, that's also part of the fun.

I know this has an anime girl on the cover but it isn't a light novel. I'm 100% allowed to talk about it here. Anyways.

I remember talking to my friend about Zaregoto and how crazy it is and offhandedly mentioning that I once saw something about a book where the detective has to solve every case in 24 hours because her memory resets everyday but I wasn't sure who the author was and—ah, of course, who else could it be but Nisioisin.

We have the average chronically unlucky protagonist who can't help getting embroiled in criminal incidents—and can't help falling in love with a very uncommon detective. I can't blame him, though. I think I'm in love too. I feel like I'm holding my hands out, trying to reach her—probably also how Kakushidate feels. Nisioisin just has a way of writing girls that seem made to steal my heart. White hair, glasses, a bookworm—she reminds me a lot of Hanekawa. That I love their relationship dynamic probably goes without saying.

The cases are more on the normal side if you compare it to Zaregoto or that crazy conspiracy stuff in Pretty Boy Detective Club, but they're not any less fun to read. It's a more chill vibe in general, and I liked it quite a bit. I want to finish by saying something like “I'll get to the rest of the series soon!” but the number of volumes is a tad daunting, to say the least. How can one guy write so much…

I read Grady Hendrix’s “Paperbacks from Hell” sometime around Halloween last year, and the only title that I remembered enough to google afterwards was this one. “A newlywed, pregnant 16-year-old girl gets lost inside some endlessly twisting cave tunnels right under her house and has to learn to survive in the inhospitable darkness” is quite the pitch, and the story itself met my expectations wonderfully.

It's a suffocating situation, and an equally suffocating story. In the complete dark, notions of time, humanity, and even reality blur and erode. Scenes of familiar normalcy contrast with the raw and painful world beIow. Even if you manage to claw your way out of the darkness, the darkness doesn't quite leave you. Is there anything supernatural afoot, or is there only human cruelty and unfairness? In the end, I almost felt like a part of my mind was still inside those pitch-black tunnels, unable to get out.

This book actually has two unrelated stories; I didn't like the second one, "Beauty Is...", as much(though it's not bad at all!). It’s got the same strong points as the first one—the twisting, introspective pictures of the characters' thoughts, the cruelty, never made casual but made inescapable—look at it, she says, see how much it hurts.The story goes from a past filled with magic that slowly falls apart to a present filled with struggles, and along the way we're given small, tantalizing bits of hope that end up feeling like a knife to the chest, like knowing a tragedy's coming even if you can't exactly tell how it's going to happen.

Either way, it's an amazing read...though not very easy to stomach. Love me a book that makes me feel like I've got a migraine...or maybe it's an actual migraine? Only time will tell.

How would you define “island”? The last time I picked up a dictionary surely coincided with the first time I got a cellphone that could access the internet. But upon reading that line, I got up from my sofa and dug through the pile of books in the living room, finally unearthing a battered, cover-less dictionary that's been in this house since the late 90’s. The definition for "island" (well, "ilha") was circled, as it if was waiting for me. I wish I could put it in this review, but the books were recently moved and I've lost the dictionary again as a result...oh well. That'll teach me to write the important stuff down. I remember thinking the definition given in the book was much better, but who am I to criticize, really?

In this world, there's many jobs you have no idea exist. I never gave any thought to the process behind how a dictionary was put together, but I love reading about people who are passionate about what they do—and passion is what this story is all about.

Whether it's money and time constraints, whether it's romance and personal life, whether it's discussions of how to define words, everyone is bound together by their dreams—even if it seems like a weird, pointless dream to those on the outside.

All in all, it's a lovely book. The characters’ relationships are lively and fun to read about, and as someone who spent a long time reading the dictionary as a kid, it also made me feel “seen”, in a way.

Now I wonder how it was for the people who put that old dictionary together. Probably they were just doing their jobs as always, but I hope they enjoyed the process, somehow.