On Book: 5 Sweet Escapes in a World of Worry (Picks for December)
This month’s picks include some of the best books I’ve read all year. They couldn’t come up at a better time.
I was already going to recommend a slate of feel-good new releases in translated fiction when the New York Times swooped in and did the same. But they’re right: certain releases in Japanese fiction, in particular, have cozy and magical characteristics that are uniquely transportive.
Translated fiction is having a major boom, with loads to choose from — it’s a great time to give them a try if they’re new to you or if it’s been a while. A couple new ones that didn’t make this particular list (they’re likely destined for a future one) are the latest from the perennial bestseller Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls (translated by Philip Gabriel), released in November; and, making her U.S. publishing debut, Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library (translated by Alison Watts). Both of them speak also to the transformative power of books.
In Japanese fiction, older favorites of mine include Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (translated by Alison Watts) and The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa (translated by Philip Gabriel); as well as the darker The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder) and the tragic and satisfyingly strange classic Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima (translated by Stephen Dodd). Puzzle room mysteries are also a big hit; for those, look for titles from Pushkin Vertigo press as a good starting point.
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The three translated picks below are full of sweetness, with an emphasis on escaping monotony, dreariness, or both. In any given year, they’d be good for escaping the gray of Seattle’s darker months, but you might find them especially good escapes right now.
It wouldn’t be a sweet escapes list without some rom-coms in the mix, so you’ll find those here too: two tales with distinct escapes (one to the stars, one to the stove), both featuring sharp, take-charge women in stages of healing and discovery, with loads of humor; both are among the most enjoyable books I’ve read in quite a while. I call Cathy Yardley’s Role Playing my “gateway drug” to rom-com fandom — I’d read some before, but that book really showed me what the genre can do with endearing characters and a good story — and when she wrote “Thanks for showing up” in metallic purple gel pen in my copy of her newest book, it felt like the greatest compliment.
Lightened with some sweet escapes, I hope you’ll find yourself more energized and able show up, too.
Great Reads: 5 Picks
The Full Moon Coffee Shop
Mai Mochizuki
translated by Jesse Kirkwood
I hope I find my own version of opera one day.
Mizuki is deflated, divorced, and adrift. Once a promising screenwriter, her career prospects have dried up as the world marches on and her way of crafting stories and relationships is now deemed irrelevant. Except for a little gig she picked up writing a side character’s happily-ever-after on a romance video game, and under a pen name to boot, she’s cut off entirely from her once-thriving creative self.
But as that side character unexpectedly lands with people and blooms into a fan favorite, Mizuki finds herself wandering into some unexpected revelations — thanks, in large part, to some talking cats at a mysterious pop-up cafe. They read her stars, make delicacies personalized just for her, and impart cryptic wisdom on her and other wanderers that stumble upon their ever-traveling sidewalk tables. As the cats guide Mizuki and others, their stars begin to align in simple and satisfying ways.
Full of tiny moments of self-care, healing from unraveling misunderstandings, and seeing the present with renewed clarity, The Full Moon Coffee Shop is a beautiful and soothing book. This is one of those wonderful “it can’t actually happen that way” stories where everything goes exactly as it should. A fairy tale for the times.
Release date: 8/20/2024, from Ballantine Books (Penguin Random House); 240 pages. See book info here.
Do Me a Favor
Cathy Yardley
Set locally
It was hard to fantasize when you felt so exhausted you didn’t dream.
Cookbook ghostwriter Willa is getting back in the game by working on a piece no one else wants to touch: creating dishes under the name of a “sexy chef” YouTube star who, more than likely, can’t actually cook (and just makes the meal prep look good).
But it’s her only shot — and an unwinnable battle. Thoroughly drained after losing her husband to illness, Willa is out of money, out of inspiration, and living in her deceased aunt’s house in a small town. Creating “sexy food” for the “sexy chef” while she’s on edge and alone isn’t exactly going well.
Enter, Hudson, the hot local guy who chases his lost dog to Willa’s porch. He’s more than willing to help her renovate the old house while she decides what to do with it. And, despite her best efforts to wall herself off, he might wind up being her hot inspiration. Y’know, just for work purposes.
Cathy Yardley has such a knack for writing women who are smart, strong, and standoffish. Her Role Playing was essentially my gateway to rom-com books, and Do Me a Favor has much the same energy. Satisfying, sharp, funny, and cute — all are here in equal parts. Like that TV show you just can’t bear to watch the series-ender of, I stretched out reading this one. The Willa and Hudson story is just too good to put away.
Release date: 6/23/2024, from Montlake Romance (Amazon Publishing); 303 pages. Book info here.
Miranda in Retrograde
Lauren Layne
Despite having built an entire career around studying the cosmos, I can’t remember the last time I actually looked up.
Miranda is in a slump, to put it mildly. A bright scientist and a rising young star professor in her department, she’s a shoo-in for tenure track … until she’s not. Now she’s at a disappointing crossroads and a choice: settle in an uninspiring position headed to nowhere, or figure out her new trajectory.
Against the odds (and her better judgment), this astronomy pro and devotee of the scientific method finds herself looking to the stars in a different way — through the lens of astrology, thought of as the woo-woo, unscientific nemesis of her field.
On a well-timed break, Miranda stays at her happenin’ (and schemin’) grandma’s townhouse for a change of scenery; runs into (quite literally) a handsome and interested suitor; and finds her space invaded by her grandma’s rude, brooding, artsy neighbor. Fireworks ensue. Can all these distractions bring her any closer to figuring out her next stages? Rom-coms love their happily-ever-afters, so you can take a guess. But this one’s ending feels particularly satisfying, as Miranda works on her next stages beyond strictly love and work.
Release date: 8/13/2024, from Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster); 288 pages. Book info here.
We’ll Prescribe You a Cat
Syou Ishida
translated by E. Madison Shimoda
You know the old saying: ‘A cat a day keeps the doctor away.’
Laden with various ailments, would-be patients enter a dubious clinic up some unmarked stairs down a dark alley. There, they’re met with a mix of curt indifference and stubborn insistence, then sent on their way with their prescribed “medication”: a cat in a kennel, with directions for dosage and use. When things don’t go as expected, they return with side effects and get a similar treatment; it’s a circle of cat.
Clearly, they didn’t get what they came for. But might they have gotten something better instead? Little by little, their eyes — heavy with sleep or allergies — are opened to unexpected truths, thanks to their curious visitors.
We’ll Prescribe You a Cat shines in descriptions of the mundane, sweetness of appreciation, and humor found in the unexpected. And, of course, the cats.
Release date: 9/3/2024, from Berkley (Penguin Random House); 304 pages. Book info here.
Mina’s Matchbox
Yoko Ogawa
translated by Stephen B. Snyder
You’ll be fine. A girl like you can go anywhere.
Tomoko ventures off to the countryside, a fantastical-seeming world that’s home to her cousin Mina and various family members, and Pochiko, a pygmy hippopotamus who’s the last remaining holdover from the estate’s former zoo.
Ogawa is better known for her more disturbing tales (of which The Memory Police is most prominent), and there are little hints of nostalgic sadness, or perhaps something more sinister, dotted throughout this one — a subdued, inkling sense that something tragic might be just around the corner. Into this fantastical world, blips of news and history — World War II; a terrorist attack at the Olympics — occasionally pierce the veil, both a reminder that this is still meant to be in the realm of reality even while highlighting how far removed it feels.
But mostly it’s just a really sweet little story, a coming-of-age tale that happens in a bubble of fantasy, where the highest drama can be found in little pictures on squirreled-away matchbooks and an active imagination. Ogawa’s latest is steeped slowly in a sense of quiet and innocent adventure, beautifully written.
Release date: 8/13/2024, from Pantheon (Penguin Random House); 288 pages. Book info here.
Chase D. Anderson is Editor & Producer of NWTheatre.org.