Books

2023

  • Pinocchio by: Carlo Collodi
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by: Haruki Murakami
  • Asleep by: Banana Yoshimoto
  • Selected Letters by: Lucius Annaeus Seneca
  • The Ghost Writer by: Philip Roth
  • Novelist as a Vocation by: Haruki Murakami
  • A Short History of Decay by: Emil Mihai Cioran
  • Timaeus and Critias by: Plato
  • The Story of the Stone Volume 3 by: Cao Xueqin
  • The Woman in the Dunes by: Kōbō Abe
  • The Universe and Dr. Einstein by: Lincoln Barnett
  • The Romanians: A Concise History by: Mircea Eliade
  • Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension by: Rudolf v. B. Rucker
  • ‘Salem’s Lot by: Stephen King
  • Fragil by: Simona Goșu
  • Zuckerman Unbound by: Philip Roth
  • Convenience Store Woman by: Sayaka Murata
  • Schoolgirl by: Osamu Dazai
  • The Hellbound Heart by: Clive Barker
  • The Sign of Four by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Life After God by: Douglas Coupland
  • Five Preludes & A Fugue by: Cheon Heerahn
  • Old Wrestler by: Jeon Sungtae
  • Europa by: Han Kang
  • Divorce by: Kim Soom
  • Kong’s Garden by: Hwang Jungeun
  • Milena, Milena, Ecstatic by: Bae Suah
  • Demons by: Kang Hwagil
  • Left’s Right by: Han Yujoo
  • Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis by: Sigmund Freud
  • Aminitiri şi Poveşti mai deocheate by: Neagu Djuvara
  • Diary of a Mad Old Man by: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
  • Seymour: An Introduction by: J. D. Salinger
  • Notre-Dame de Paris by: Victor Hugo
  • The Vegetarian by: Han Kang
  • Foundation by: Isaac Asimov
  • Quicksand by: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
  • Sweet Bean Paste by: Durian Sukegawa
  • The Box Man by: Kōbō Abe
  • Earthlings by: Sayaka Murata
  • Foundation and Empire by: Isaac Asimov
  • The Fabric of the Cosmos by: Brian Greene
  • Second Foundation by: Isaac Asimov
  • The Feather Thief by: Kirk Wallace Johnson
  • The Lord of the Rings by: J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Frumoasele Străine by: Mircea Cărtărescu
  • The Anatomy Lesson by: Philip Roth
  • In Praise of Failure by: Costică Brădățan
  • The Prague Orgy by: Philip Roth
  • Mother Night by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Trick by: Domenico Starnone
  • Proof by: David Auburn
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice
  • The Caretaker by: Harold Pinter

2022

  • Neverwhere by: Neil Gaiman
  • At the Edge of the World by: Masatsugu Ono
  • Mikumari by: Misumi Kubo
  • The Transparent Labyrinth by: Keiichirō Hirano
  • The Keep by: Jennifer Egan
  • Miss Wyoming by: Douglas Coupland
  • Portnoy’s Complaint by: Philip Roth
  • Our Gang by: Philip Roth
  • The Breast by: Philip Roth
  • A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by: David Foster Wallace
  • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by: Ken Liu
  • The Diving Pool by: Yōko Ogawa
  • Devils by: Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Lonesome Bodybuilder by: Yukiko Motoya
  • The Great American Novel by: Philip Roth
  • Confessions of a Mask by: Yukio Mishima
  • Protagoras by: Plato
  • Submission by: Michel Houellebecq
  • Cursed Bunny by: Bora Chung
  • Sputnik Sweetheart by: Haruki Murakami
  • Piranesi by: Susanna Clarke
  • The Woman in the Purple Skirt by: Natsuko Imamura
  • Chemistry by: Weike Wang
  • Pe culmile disperării by: Emil Mihai Cioran
  • Kafka on the Shore by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Devotion of Suspect X by: Keigo Higashino
  • Monkey Business: New Writing From Japan — Volume 1 by: Various
  • The Complete Faity Tales by: Charles Perrault
  • Venus in Furs by: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
  • Absolutely on Music by: Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa
  • The End of Gender by: Debra Soh
  • Will Oldham on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy by: Will Oldham and Alan Licht
  • My Life as a Man by: Philip Roth
  • Breasts and Eggs by: Mieko Kawakami
  • Emerald City by: Jennifer Egan
  • After Dark by: Haruki Murakami
  • One Two Three…Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science by: George Gamow
  • Lost in Canada by: Lydia Perović
  • The Illustrated Man by: Ray Bradbury
  • A Parisian Affair by: Guy de Maupassant
  • Cosmos by: Carl Sagan
  • Memories, Dreams, Reflections by: Carl Gustav Jung
  • The Professor of Desire by: Philip Roth
  • The Beatles – All These Years – Extended Special Edition: Volume One: Tune In: Book Two by: Mark Lewisohn
  • Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love by: Haruki Murakami
  • Nightmares & Dreamscapes by: Stephen King
  • The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1 by: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover by: D. H. Lawrence
  • De Ce Iubimi Femeile by: Mircea Cărtărescu

2021

  • Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by: Yasunari Kawabata
  • Men Without Women by: Haruki Murakami
  • Friend of My Youth by: Alice Munro
  • Friendship For Grown-Ups by: Nao-Cola Yamazaki
  • Spring Sleepers by: Kyoko Yoshida
  • Columbine by: Dave Cullen
  • A Brief History of Religious Ideas Volume 1 by: Mircea Eliade
  • A Man Without a Country by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Carrion Comfort by: Dan Simmons
  • First Person Singular by: Haruki Murakami
  • Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by: Raymond Carver
  • Night Shift by: Stephen King
  • Fragile Things by: Neil Gaiman
  • after the quake by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Collector by: John Fowles
  • The Virgin Suicides by: Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Philebus by: Plato
  • The Scorpion God by: William Golding
  • Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by: Jordan B. Peterson
  • When She Was Good by: Philip Roth
  • Confessions by: Kanae Minato
  • Poems of Thomas Hardy by: Thomas Hardy (Ed: Claire Tomalin)
  • Ms Ice Sandwich by: Mieko Kawakami
  • Audition by: Ryū Murakami
  • Slow Boat by: Hideo Furukawa
  • Modern Man in Search of a Soul by: C. G. Jung
  • Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Real World by: Natsuo Kirino
  • The Martian Chronicles by: Ray Bradbury
  • Missing Heels & The Gotthard Railway by: Yōko Tawada
  • The Girl Who Is Getting Married by: Aoko Matsuda

2020

  • Man’s Search For Meaning by: Viktor E. Frankl
  • The Magus by: John Fowles
  • I’ll Be Gone In The Dark by: Michelle McNamara
  • The Coddling of the American Mind by: Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
  • Palm Sunday by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Naked by: David Sedaris
  • The Elements of Style by: William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
  • Moby Dick by: Herman Melville
  • Early Socratic Dialogues by: Plato
  • South of the Border, West of the Sun by: Haruki Murakami
  • Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by: Anne Brontë
  • Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories by: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
  • Hotel Iris by: Yōko Ogawa
  • Goodbye, Columbus by: Philip Roth
  • Skeleton Crew by: Stephen King
  • Masks by: Fumiko Enchi
  • Discourses, Fragments, Handbook by: Epictetus
  • The Beatles – All These Years – Extended Special Edition: Volume One: Tune In: Book One by: Mark Lewisohn
  • In the Miso Soup by: Ryū Murakami
  • Notes from the Underground by: Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Magicians by: Lev Grossman

2019

  • Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, and Crito by: Plato
  • Theaetetus by: Plato
  • Symposium by: Plato
  • Killing Commendatore by: Haruki Murakami
  • Future Sex by: Emily Witt
  • The 120 Days of Sodom by: The Marquis de Sade
  • The Story of the Stone Volume 2 by: Cao Xueqin
  • Collected Short Stories by: Roald Dahl
  • Solitude by: Michael Harris
  • Republic by: Plato
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by: Jules Verne
  • Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by: Mason Currey
  • Gorgias by: Plato
  • Girlfriend in a Coma by: Douglas Coupland
  • The Portable Edgar Allan Poe by: Edgar Allan Poe (Ed. J. Gerald Kennedy)
  • Kokoro by: Natsume Sōseki
  • Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by: Haruki Murakami
  • Slaughterhouse-Five by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Misery by: Stephen King
  • The Graveyard Book by: Neil Gaiman
  • Metamorphoses by: Ovid
  • The Portable Jung by: Carl Justav Jung (Ed. Joseph Campbell)
  • Letting Go by: Philip Roth
  • NP by: Banana Yoshimoto
  • Boy by: Takeshi Kitano
  • Snakes and Earrings by: Hitomi Kanehara
  • The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain by: Mark Twain (Ed. Lawrence I. Berkove)
  • Smoke and Mirrors by: Neil Gaiman
  • Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by: Haruki Murakami
  • Time Differences by: Yōko Tawada
  • Stand-in Companion by: Kazufumi Shiraishi

2018

  • The Magic Mountain by: Thomas Mann
  • Aesop’s Fables by: Aesop
  • Lala Pipo by: Hideo Okuda
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four by: George Orwell
  • The Trouble With Being Born by: Emil Mihai Cioran
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by: Susanna Clarke
  • A Tale for the Time Being by: Ruth Ozeki
  • 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by: Jordan B. Peterson
  • Meno and Other Dialogues by: Plato
  • Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by: Pu Songling
  • White Noise by: Don Delillo
  • Notes of a Crocodile by: Qiu Miaojin
  • Six Records of a Floating Life by: Shen Fu
  • At the Mouth of the River of Bees by: Kij Johnson
  • The Odyssey by: Homer
  • 1Q84 by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Tao of Pooh by: Benjamin Hoff
  • The Te of Piglet by: Benjamin Hoff
  • David Copperfield by: Charles Dickens
  • Demian by: Hermann Hesse
  • Pet Sematary by: Stephen King
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by: Douglas Adams
  • Letters From a Stoic by: Lucius Annaeus Seneca
  • Fairy Tales by: Hans Christian Andersen
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Hobbit by: J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Complete Short Stories by: Oscar Wilde
  • The Best of Richard Matheson by: Richard Matheson
  • No One Belongs Here More Than You by: Miranda July
  • The End of Absence by: Michael Harris
  • The Little Prince by: Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  • The Strange Library by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Key by: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

2017

  • S. by: Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams
  • Watership Down by: Richard Adams
  • The Elephant Vanishes by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Gum Thief by: Douglas Coupland
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane by: Neil Gaiman
  • the briefcase by: Hiromi Kawakami
  • Arvida by: Samuel Archibald
  • A Wild Sheep Chase by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Complete Cosmicomics by: Italo Calvino
  • Frost by: Robert Frost
  • The Count of Monte Cristo by: Alexandre Dumas
  • Bagombo Snuff Box by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Dirty Job by: Christopher Moore
  • Hyperion by: Dan Simmons
  • Revenge by: Yōko Ogawa
  • Grotesque by: Natsuo Kirino
  • The Story of the Stone Volume 1 by: Cao Xueqin
  • Coin Locker Babies by: Ryū Murakami
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by: Douglas Hofstadter
  • A Brief History of Time (Illustrated) by: Stephen Hawking
  • The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by: H. P. Lovecraft
  • Dance Dance Dance by: Haruki Murakami

2016

  • Selected Tales by: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by: Philip K. Dick
  • Benito Cereno by: Herman Melville
  • Norwegian Wood by: Haruki Murakami
  • Steppenwolf by: Hermann Hesse
  • The Great Gatsby by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Sirens of Titan by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Magic Toyshop by: Angela Carter
  • The Familiar: Volume 1 by: Mark Z. Danielewski
  • The Housekeeper and the Professor by: Yōko Ogawa
  • The Karamazov Brothers by: Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Piercing by: Ryū Murakami
  • Kitchen by: Banana Yoshimoto
  • The Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction by: Various
  • American Gods by: Neil Gaiman
  • No Longer Human by: Osamu Dezai
  • The Bridegroom Was a Dog by: Yōko Tawada
  • Battle Royale: Remastered by: Kōshun Takami
  • The Fox/The Captain’s Doll/The Ladybird by: D. H. Lawrence
  • Phaedo by: Plato
  • Needful Things by: Stephen King
  • Out by: Natsuo Kirino
  • The Razor’s Edge by: W. Somerset Maugham
  • Wind/Pinball by: Haruki Murakami
  • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by: Haruki Murakami
  • Tongue by: Kyung Ran Jo

2015

  • The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by: Stephen King
  • The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah by: Stephen King
  • The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower by: Stephen King
  • Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by: J. D. Salinger
  • Meditations by: Marcus Aurelius
  • A Study in Scarlet by: Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Over to You by: Roald Dahl
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau by: H.G. Wells
  • Ubik by: Philip K. Dick
  • Crime and Punishment by: Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Pyramid by: William Golding
  • Changing Places by: David Lodge
  • The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition by: Stephen King
  • While Mortals Sleep by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Coraline by: Neil Gaimon
  • Child of God by: Cormac McCarthy
  • Millay by: Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • House of Leaves by: Mark Z. Danielewski
  • A Christmas Carol by: Charles Dickens
  • The First Philosophers by: Robin Waterfield

Before 2015

I didn’t keep a list during this time, but from memory some of my favourites were:

  • The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by: Stephen King
  • The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by: Stephen King
  • The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by: Stephen King
  • The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
  • Dracula by: Bram Stoker
  • The Pickwick Papers by: Charles Dickens
  • Welcome to the Monkey House by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Winnie-the-Pooh by: A. A. Milne
  • The House at Pooh Corner by: A. A. Milne
  • Sons and Lovers by: D. H. Lawrence
  • Look at the Birdie by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Wuthering Heights by: Emily Brontë
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by: Oscar Wilde
  • Hamlet by: Shakespeare
  • A Clockwork Orange by: Anthony Burgess
  • It by: Stephen King
  • I am the Messenger by: Markus Zusak
  • The Catcher in the Rye by: J. D. Salinger
  • Lord of the Flies by: William Golding
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by: Mark Haddon
  • The Darren Shan Saga by: Darren Shan
  • The Giver by: Lois Lowry
  • The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Trilogy by: Alvin Schwartz