Tag Archives: Sayaka Murata

My 2022 in Reading: Jo Needs a Nap

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I read 192 books this year in a split of: 54 ARCs (up from last year), 33 audiobooks (down from last year), 72 manga volumes (down from last year), 20 physical copies (up from last year), 8 light novels (up from last year), and 5 eBooks (down from last year). I want to share my favorites, so please enjoy my favorite 20 2022 books, favorite 10 books from before 2021, and my favorite 5 manga. I would have done a favorite 20 of backlist books, but, unfortunately, I did not prioritize this year, and I think that contributed to my exhaustion.

Overall, it’s not as many things as last year, and it did bring me dangerously close to burning out on reading. 2023 will be a year for resetting some of my priorities with regards to reading, which will focus on my backlog and reading a whole lot of light novels.

Note: Harper Collins book links have been replaced with the linktree for the Harper Collins Union until that publisher goes back to the bargaining table

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December 2022 Reading Recap

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December is a strange month for me because of traveling to get home and other plans, and having to recon with my own success at completing my own goals (not going to touch on that whatsoever here). It was a month where I read a bunch of things in translation and a singular ARC which feels more in the direction of how I want to be reading into 2023.

December’s only blog interview:

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Review: EARTHLINGS by Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (trans.) (2020)

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Genre: Adult Horror
Year Release: 2020
Source: Audible

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Trigger warnings: child sexual assault (graphic), incest, murder, suicidal ideation, child abuse, child neglect, depression, murder, cannibalism, vomiting

Don’t let the adorable cover fool you, this book is an exploration of trauma and never feeling quite human. Natsuki is essentially a child neglected by her parents and her best friend is the plush toy on the cover, Piyyut. Summer proves a reprieve when she spends time with her best friend and cousin Yu, while her city home life is a nightmare of being preyed upon by a teacher and her parents ignoring her. What ensues is a deeply interior journey of understanding “the factory” that makes the adults around Natsuki the way they are and the stark ways she does not want to partake in that system, either implicitly or explicitly.

Brutal in its prose and harsh in its indictment of the ways parents and society fail children at every turn, absolutely heed the trigger warnings before giving this one a read.

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