“In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.”
“Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Solar System – only 4.3 light years away.
To Kirby and his followers it meant freedom – freedom from the tyranny and repression of Earth’s dictatorship.
But that freedom would have to be earned – the flight to Alpha Centauri would mean five years jammed in the belly of an obsolete spaceship, five years of praying that the food supply would last, five years of fighting off the Government ships sent out to intercept them….
And if they did manage to reach the unknown planets that were their goal, what would they find? Freedom? Or a fate more terrible than any they could have faced on Earth?”
READING NEXT
Among my long list:
The Guest Cat,
by Takashi Hiraide
Literary fiction
Translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland
猫の客 was first published in 2001
2014
140 pages
Will buddyread it (January 12-16)
with Mallika @ Literary Potpourri
Counts for Japanese Literature challenge 19
“A bestseller in France and winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living.
A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen…
As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraide’s work “really shines.” His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for “its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae.”
Guilt (Detective Godai #1),
by Keigo Higashino
Mystery
Translated from the Japanese by Giles Murray
白鳥とコウモリ was first published in 2021
April 7, 2026 by Minotaur Books
416 pages
Counts for Japanese Literature challenge 19
Received through Netgalley
Woohoo, a new series by Higashino!
“A tour de force crime novel from one of the international masters of the form, where a simple murder case questions the simple notions of good and evil, guilt and redemption.
Homicide Detective Godai of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is assigned to investigate the death of a lawyer, Kensuke Shiraishi, whose body was found on a Central Tokyo riverbank.
His investigations leads him to one Tatsuro Kuraki, who claims to have had limited contact with Shiraishi – but, surprising the investigators, Kuraki not only confesses to the lawyer’s murder, but another one from thirty years ago – for which another man was arrested and died in custody before trial.
This brings unexpected resolution to two cases but there is one problem: to Detective Godai the confession rings false.”
The Inheritors,
by William Golding
scifi
1955
233 pages
Counts for my Classics Club 5th list
and for #VintageSciFiMonth
Received through Netgalley
I saw this classic scifi on Netgalley, so of course I went for it.
“When the spring came the people – what was left of them – moved back by the old paths from the sea. But this year strange things were happening, terrifying things that had never happened before. Inexplicable sounds and smells; new, unimaginable creatures half glimpsed through the leaves. What the people didn’t, and perhaps never would, know, was that the day of their people was already over.
From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors is a startling recreation of the lost world of the Neanderthals, and a frightening vision of the beginning of a new age.”
🎧 CURRENT AND NEXT AUDIOBOOKS 🎧
8,2 secondes,
by Maxime Chattam
Narrated by Cachou Kirsch
Mystery
2025
391 pages / 11H29
I have read and really enjoyed several books by Chattam, especially Prime Time.
This is his latest, not yet translated into Engish.
Here is my translation of the official synopsis:
“8.2 seconds: The time it takes to fall in love. The time it takes to die.
Jack and Constance have never met. Yet a single secret connects them—and puts them both in danger. In this gripping psychological thriller set between New York and the Great Lakes, Maxime Chattam delivers a Hitchcockian page-turner you won’t be able to escape.”
I love how the book starts, with various people and contexts, including the plot of a book inside this book. Really curious to see how this will all connect.
🎧 Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1),
by John Le Carré
Narrated by Simon Vance
Mystery
1961
144 pages / 4H35
Will be listening for my BookBound project
Counts for Hundred Years Hence Reading Challenge (#HYH26) (hosted by Neeru)
For the 1961 club
and for my Classics Club 5th list
This is one of my husband’s favorite author, and I have only read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the #3 in this series.
As this one was ublished in 1961, I decided to start with this series for the 1961 club.
I’ll be listening to it, as the narrator is Simon Vance, one of the best narrators out there.
“John le Carré classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him — and his hero, British Secret Service Agent George Smiley, who is introduced in this, his first novel — unprecedented worldwide acclaim.
George Smiley had liked Samuel Fennan, and now Fennan was dead from an apparent suicide. But why? Fennan, a Foreign Office man, had been under investigation for alleged Communist Party activities, but Smiley had made it clear that the investigation — little more than a routine security check — was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed. The very next day, Fennan was found dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn’t go on. Smiley was puzzled…”
HAVE YOU READ OR ARE YOU PLANNING
TO READ ANY OF THESE?
WHAT ARE YOUR READING PLANS FOR JANUARY?
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Words And Peace