Joy 📚 Bookstagram

🇯🇵 Japanese classics 📚 One of my reading goals this year is to read 12 classics and I noticed recently that half of the six I’ve read so far this year have been Japanese classics: 📕 Schoolgirl, Osamu Dazai 📗 The Samurai Detectives vol. 2: The Killer on the Streets, Shōtarō Ikenami 📘 Troubled Waters, Ichiyō Higuchi Are there any other Japanese classics I need to add to my list? 📸 image description in alt text (Troubled Waters and The Samurai Detectives were gifted finished copies)

📚 my physical TBR 📚 At the end of 2025 I had exactly 25 books on my physical TBR so this became my 25 in ‘26 because we love a 5x5 grid. I’ve read or DNF 12.5 of these and as I’m exactly halfway through, I thought I’d have a little review of my physical TBR 📊 It’s continued to grow and now sits at 30 books not including the six I plan to read this month. I’ve only purchased two new physical books this year, one I audiobooked last year and wanted a physical copy and one preorder I’ve since read. I’ve bought nine secondhand books of which eight are still to be read and the rest of my physical acquisitions have been kindly sent by publishers and friends 🥰 Shoutout @bookish_lizzy @glareusy @spookula 🙌 I’m trying to be restrained with physical copies to save money and space as I’ll be moving soon but fear not, I’ve also purchased 24 ebooks this year (mostly 99p) and do much of my reading with my BookBeat audiobook subscription 🎧 Influence/deinfluence my TBR! Are there any here I need to prioritise? A couple are re-reads! What does your physical TBR look like? No shade to anyone with a smaller/larger TBR, but this is what works for me and my budget, reading habits and lifestyle right now. I’d ideally like to whittle it down a bit more but that’s proving easier said than done!

You know when you can tell almost immediately that a book is going to be five stars? THAT. What a treat to discover a new favourite author and illustrator in one swoop! 📗🎨 Blurb: Charlotte and Francesca were best friends at university but drifted apart. Years later, Fran contacts Charlotte out of the blue with an invitation to live in her rambling house in the countryside. Charlotte impulsively agrees and she and her partner join Fran and her husband. Their new life feels utopian until old tensions begin to rise to the surface… I am a notorious blurb avoider/skimmer and confess that I didn’t actually realise that this was an illustrated novel until it arrived! I used to be an avid reader of graphic novels but have never read anything quite like this, and I love how Lizzy Stewart seamlessly weaves prose, illustrations and graphic novel panels together. Also, this is a small thing but it was literally so satisfying that no sentences were split across pages. The illustrations are absolutely STUNNING and brought the four MCs so vibrantly to life. Honestly there are so many images I want as prints for my walls! Having read a lot of books with younger MCs recently, it was so refreshing to spend a chunk of time with characters my own age in all their messy, passionate, entangled glory! I could’ve devoured this in a weekend but I really tried to make it last as I was enjoying both the story and the reading experience so much. I have immediately added Alison to my wish list and will definitely be re-reading The Wreck in the not so distant future. Pro tip: Avoid flicking through the book to admire the illusions as it’s a lot easier to see spoilers in illustrative form 🤭 HUGE thanks to @vintagebooksinfluencers for the gifted finished hardback copy 🙏🏻 The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart is available now! Are you a graphic novel reader? 📸 Image descriptions in alt text

📚 May hopefuls 🤞🏻 Happy birthday month to meee and fingers crossed for a better reading month than last May which had quite a few disappointing reads 😩 As always, I’m prioritising ARCs and my owned TBR but have selected titles from my physical, eBook and audiobook queues for #DisabilityReadathon, #AAPIHeritageMonth, #ReadAfricaMonth and #MemoirMay. I aim to read diversely year-round but find monthly themes a helpful way to narrow down my ever-growing TBR! Have you read any of these or are they on your TBR? PHYSICAL Maggie: Or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, Katie Yee The Book of Mysteries, Rebecca Tamás* Little Vanities, Sarah Gilmartin* Dominion, Addie E. Citchens Disability Visibility, Alice Wong (buddy read with @melreadsx ) My Only Boy, Rosa Rankin Gee* *ARCs / PR copies. As always, huge thanks to publishers who have sent books my way 🥹 AUDIOBOOKS What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo The Ending Writes Itself, Evelyn Clarke The Years, Annie Ernaux Kin, Tayari Jones My Cousin Rachel, Daphne du Maurier (buddy read with @melreadsx & @rosaareads ) Notes from an Island, Tove Jansson EBOOKS Maame, Jessica George 📸 image descriptions in alt text

📚 April reads ☔️ April was a rather trying month and it was definitely more of a struggle to focus on reading than usual 😩 I had a few flops and DNFs but did enjoy some excellent buddy reads and discovered a new fave author/illustrator in Lizzy Stewart, review of The Wreck to follow soon! 🎨 Have you read any of these or are they on your TBR? I’ve ⭐️ed my faves! PHYSICAL Event Horizon, Balsam Karam* ⭐️ To Exist As I Am, Grace Spence Green Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke (buddy read with @spookula & @rosaareads ) Let Go, Daisuke Yosumi* ⭐️ The Wreck, Lizzy Stewart* Guilt, Keigo Higashino* Bad Asians, Lillian Li* *ARCs / PR copies. As always, huge thanks to publishers who have sent books my way 🥹 Please see photo tags for details! (Yesteryear is a proof copy but passed on to me by a friend, ty!) AUDIOBOOKS A Woman is No Man, Etaf Rum Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk Kingfisher, Rozie Kelly Bring the House Down, Charlotte Runcie ⭐️ Dreamland, Rosa Rankin-Gee EBOOKS My Friends, Hisham Matar (buddy read with @melreadsx & @literaryphdelights ) Beautiful World Where Are You, Sally Rooney (beautiful baddie read with @andreareads100 @spookula @conversationswithkara @glareusy @melreadsx @rosaareads & @rootsinlibrary - while this wasn’t a fave book of the month, I really loved the experience of reading with these baddies!) 📸 image descriptions in alt text

I was rather late to the Marie Kondo party, but I read and absolutely loved Letter from Japan last year 🥰 I was so excited to see she’d partnered with Genki Kawamura (author of If Cats Disappeared from the World) for this novelisation of the KonMari method and it did not disappoint. Miko, a professional tidying consultant, helps people tidy their homes and identify items that bring them joy. Along with her companion, an opinionated talking box (yes really 🤣), Miko has a special power that no one else knows about - the ability to hear the voices of the items. I’ve become a little fatigued with Japanese healing fiction but this felt like a breath of fresh air. It also helps that the sense of clarity and contentment the characters experience feels a little more attainable IRL than stumbling upon a time travelling café or healing hippo! 🦛 It’s incredibly sentimental and a little cheesy but I found it genuinely heartwarming and inspiring too. The KonMari principals are seamlessly woven into the narrative, and the book includes some helpful “tips for tidying” at the end too 🧺 Warning: You *will* want to tidy everything you own while reading this! 😬 Have you read anything by Marie Kondo? Somewhat embarrassingly I’m actually still yet to read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up! I originally read the audiobook in January but @leapbooksuk were kind enough to send me a finished copy for which I’m immensely grateful as the illustrations are adorable! 🥹 Whispering Rooms by Marie Kondo & Genki Kawamura is out now. 📸 image descriptions in alt text

Happy Pub Day to The Oldest Bitch Alive by Morgan Day 🐕🦠 I’m hoping to squeeze this one into my April TBR but for now I thought I’d show off my @akoyapublishing collection as they look so good together 🤩 I think my fave so far is They by Helle Helle, a quiet and contemplative but impactful slice of life about a mother and daughter. Have you read any of Akoya’s books yet? Blurb for The Oldest Bitch Alive: Two creatures live inside Gelsomina, her warm flesh a vessel that contains them. They grow stronger while she begins to fade. As time passes, the lovable French bulldog and the parasites she hosts confront questions that have vexed philosophers for centuries: “Who designed this life that I am living?” “Do they have a plan for me?” “Do I have free will to live my life as I please?” Huge thanks to @akoyapublishing for the early copy of The Oldest Bitch Alive by Morgan Day. It’s out today! 📸 image description in alt text

wake up babe new sunburn just dropped That’s it, that’s the review 🤭 Suffice to say, I absolutely loved this one 🥰 Huge thanks to my pal who found an ARC left by the @bookfairies_cornwall and shared it with me after reading as she knew I was super excited for it! It’s reminded me it’s been a while since I did any Book Fairying of my own! 🧚🏻‍♀️ Have you ever found a book left by the @bookfairies_uk ? Will you be adding Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave to your TBR? I think it would be a perfect summer read! ☀️ Blurb: Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking too much and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet the spark is undeniable…but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make… 📸 image description in alt text

📚 On Wednesdays we read pink 💖 AKA I guess I kind of forgot and/or didn’t feel like posting 🤷🏻‍♀️ Do you try to get out of a posting slump or just ride it out? Conversely I’ve been in the opposite of a reading slump and am having a wonderful time buddy reading Beautiful World, Where Are You with some booksta pals 🥰 What are you reading this week? 📸 image descriptions in alt text

📚 April releases 🌧️ There’s so many great books coming out this month! Have you read any of these or are they on your TBR? Are there any other new or upcoming releases that have caught your eye this month? 👀 Let Go, Daisuke Yosumi (2/4) Little F, Michelle Tea (9/4) Guilt, Keigo Higashino (9/4) Honey in the Wound (16/4) Event Horizon, Balsam Karam (23/4) Molka, Monika Kim (30/4) Let Go and Event Horizon are on my TBR for this month but I’ve read, enjoyed and posted reviews for everything else! As always, huge thanks to the publishers who have sent books my way 🥹 Please see photo tags for details! 📸 image description in alt text

My bookish tastes have changed a lot over the years but one genre I’ll always come back to is mysteries and I’m particularly partial to a Japanese mystery at the mo! Guilt was my first Keigo Higashino novel but I’m sure it won’t be my last. If you’ve read any of his novels, which would you recommend I pick up next? I won’t say too much about the plot as I much prefer to go in without reading the blurb! Guilt takes the reader on a wild ride starting with the mystery seemingly being solved in the first quarter of the novel?! Surely not! I’m generally pretty good at sussing out mysteries before the characters but this one kept me on my toes until the end with so many twists, turns and reveals. Despite the complex plot, Guilt is relatively slow-paced for a crime novel and incudes the repetition and recapping I’ve come to expect from Japanese translated lit. I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone but as an AuDHD reader who’s often reading three books simultaneously, I find it quite helpful! Some of the dialogue (particularly during the police interrogation scenes) felt a little clunky but this could be the translation or idk maybe that really is how Japanese cops speak to their suspects and persons of interest 🤷🏻‍♀️ This novel also introduced me to the “victim participation system” which sounds kinda made up but is apparently a real thing in Japan! There are rather a lot of characters to keep track of and the list in the front of a the book is a godsend! The style reminded me of Richard Osman’s books and I think this would be a great introduction to Japanese mysteries for those looking to branch out. Thank you to @littlebrownbookgroup_uk for the advanced copy. Guilt by Keigo Higashino is out tomorrow (Thursday 9 April) in the UK. Will you be adding this one to your TBR? 📸 image descriptions in alt text

📚 April hopefuls 🤞🏻 As always, I’m prioritising ARCs and my owned TBR but have selected a couple of titles from my physical, eBook and audiobook queues for #DisabilityReadathon**, #DisabilityBookWeek (19-25 April) and #SWANAHeritageMonth. I aim to read diversely year-round but find monthly themes a helpful way to narrow down my ever-growing TBR! Have you read any of these or are they on your TBR? PHYSICAL Bad Asians, Lillian Li* Guilt, Keigo Higashino* Disability Visibility, Alice Wong Event Horizon, Balsam Karam* Let Go, Daisuke Yosumi* Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke (buddy read with @spookula ) Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You, Candice Chung* To Exist As I Am, Grace Spence Green *ARCs / PR copies. As always, huge thanks to publishers who have sent books my way 🥹 Please see photo tags for details! (Yesteryear is a proof copy but passed on to me by a friend, ty!) AUDIOBOOKS (not pictured) A Woman is No Man, Etaf Rum Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk Kingfisher, Rozie Kelly The South, Tash Aw Dreamland, Rosa Rankin-Gee EBOOKS (not pictured) My Friends, Hisham Matar **I picked and photographed my hopefuls before seeing that the Disability Readathon had been pushed back to May this year. As I’ve ended up with more NF titles than I’d usually read in a month, I may save Disability Visibility for next month as this year’s buddy read is Year of the Tiger (also by Alice Wong) which I’ve already read! 📸 image description in alt text