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My favorite book recs
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items A collection of books that genuinely stayed with me, from literary fiction and surreal worlds to emotional stories about love, identity, loneliness and human connection. You’ll find favourites by writers such as Haruki Murakami, J. D. Salinger and Er...
Sections
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Fiction
My Murakami Favourites
Fiction
These are the novels that pulled me into their world and gave me something to think about beyond the story itself. Some were comforting, some were emotional, and others stayed with me long after I reached the final page.
A classic coming-of-age novel that follows Holden Caulfield as he struggles with loneliness, identity, and the “phoniness” of the adult world. Honest, rebellious, and emotionally complex—it’s especially memorable if you enjoy character-driven stories...
The Catcher in the Rye
This is a short book, but there is so much happening beneath its quiet conversations. Franny’s frustration with superficial people and her search for something more meaningful felt painfully honest to me, while Zooey brings a complicated mix of sharp...
Franny and Zooey
This is a love story set against the brutality and uncertainty of war, but it never feels overly romantic or dramatic. Hemingway’s writing is simple and restrained, yet the emotions underneath it are anything but simple. I would recommend it to anyon...
A Farewell to Arms (Penguin Classics)
If you enjoy Murakami’s strange blend of ordinary life and impossible events, this is one to try. The devil arrives in Moscow and everything quickly becomes chaotic, funny, dark and philosophical. It is not always an easy read, but it is incredibly o...
The Master and Margarita: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Klara observes people with so much curiosity and tenderness that it becomes impossible not to care about her. Through her unusual perspective, the story quietly explores love, loneliness, sacrifice and what it actually means to be human. The writing ...
Klara and the Sun
This is one of those books that sounds simple but stays in your mind for a long time. A woman who has spent her life imprisoned underground enters an empty world without knowing why she was held or what happened outside. It is haunting, philosophical...
I Who Have Never Known Men
The mystery is revealed early, but the real fascination is discovering how a group of intelligent students reached that point. It has a dark academic atmosphere, complicated friendships and characters who become more morally unsettling as the story c...
The Secret History
This is a long book, but the characters and family conflicts make it worth the commitment. Through two interconnected families, Steinbeck explores love, rejection, jealousy, identity and whether we can choose to become different from the people who c...
East of Eden
Even if you have never read "Huckleberry Finn", this novel stands powerfully on its own. By retelling the story through James’s perspective, Percival Everett reveals how language can be used for survival, resistance and control. It is intelligent, em...
James (2024 B&N Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner)
This follows four generations of a Korean family trying to build a life in Japan while facing poverty, discrimination and difficult choices. It is a sweeping story, but the small family moments are what make it so moving. I would recommend it to anyo...
Pachinko (Deluxe Limited Edition)
You do not need to know much about Shakespeare to be moved by this story. Rather than concentrating on the famous writer, it focuses on his family and the loss of his young son, Hamnet. The writing is beautiful and intimate, capturing grief, marriage...
Hamnet (Women's Prize for Fiction Winner)
My Murakami Favourites
Reading Murakami feels like entering a dream where everything is strange but somehow still familiar. His stories move between love, loneliness, memory, music and alternate realities in a way I haven’t found anywhere else. These are the books I would ...
If someone asked me where to begin with Murakami, this would be one of my first suggestions. It’s mysterious, imaginative and sometimes deeply unsettling, with talking cats, strange coincidences and two stories that slowly move toward each other. Not...
Kafka on the Shore
This one feels different from Murakami’s more surreal novels because it stays much closer to reality. It is a beautiful but emotionally heavy story about first love, grief, loneliness and growing up. I would recommend it to someone who enjoys quiet, ...
Norwegian Wood Tokyo Blues (Italian Edition)
This is a quieter and more reflective Murakami novel, filled with longing, memory and the feeling of searching for something you cannot fully explain. It moves between reality and an enclosed city that feels both beautiful and lonely. I think it is b...
The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
This is a big commitment, but once I entered the strange parallel world of 1Q84, I wanted to keep going. It is a slow, detailed story about love, isolation, fate and two people trying to find their way back to each other. I wouldn’t choose it when lo...
1Q84
After Dark captures the strange, lonely feeling of a city when most people are asleep. Taking place over a single night in Tokyo, it follows several characters whose lives quietly cross paths. It’s shorter than most Murakami books, but it still has h...
After Dark
This is one of Murakami’s strangest and most imaginative books. It moves between two completely different worlds that slowly begin to connect, mixing science fiction, mystery and questions about memory, identity and the mind. It can feel confusing at...
Hard-Boiled Wonderland & End of the World
A strange photograph and a mysterious sheep turn an ordinary life into a very unusual search. This book has mystery, humour and that lonely, dreamlike feeling Murakami does so well. It is weird in the best way and becomes more meaningful as the story...
A Wild Sheep Chase: Novel (Trilogy Book 3)
This one continues the world of *A Wild Sheep Chase*, so I recommend reading that first. It feels mysterious and surreal, but underneath it is a story about loneliness, human connection and trying to find a reason to keep moving. Strange, emotional a...
Dance Dance Dance
A quiet and beautiful story about loving someone who may never love you in the same way. It explores longing, identity and the distance that can exist between people, even when they care deeply about one another. It is short, emotional and filled wit...
Sputnik Sweetheart
This is a more realistic Murakami novel about first love, marriage and the temptation to return to a life that might have been. I liked how it shows that nostalgia can be both beautiful and dangerous. It is a quiet story, but the emotions underneath ...
South of the Border, West of the Sun: Novel
Tsukuru has carried the pain of being rejected by his closest friends for years without understanding why. His search for answers becomes a journey through memory, friendship and the way old wounds shape us. I found this one more grounded than some o...
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki & His Years of Pilgrimage
This book starts with something as ordinary as a missing cat and slowly opens into a much stranger and darker world. It explores marriage, memory, loneliness and the hidden effects of history. It is long and sometimes confusing, but it has the kind o...
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
A painter moves into an isolated house and discovers a mysterious painting that seems to open the door to another reality. It is a slow and atmospheric story about art, grief, memory and the strange places our minds can take us. I especially enjoyed ...
Killing Commendatore: A novel
Murakami’s first novel is short, simple and much quieter than his later books. It follows ordinary conversations, memories and moments of loneliness during one summer. You can already see the beginning of his familiar style, making it especially inte...
Wind/Pinball
This early Murakami novel turns an obsession with an old pinball machine into something surprisingly personal and melancholic. The story feels fragmented and strange, but it captures loneliness, nostalgia and the difficulty of letting go. It is a sho...
Pinball, 1973