Discover Four Books to Enrich Your Reading List

April has gotten off to a great start with my book selections which has helped me continue reading often. That is why I will be sharing four incredible books that you need to read ASAP!

If you asked me how I choose what to read next, I wouldn’t have a good answer ready. That’s because I don’t even know what I am going to read. I constantly add books to my reading list and pick them at random. And often times, I don’t even read the book blurb.

Usually, I will choose a book if it has a lot of good reviews, is on many lists, or the title or even book cover catches my eye. That way, I am in for a surprise. While this may seem risky and may lead to bad book selections, that is rarely the case. 

The four books I have read within the past month are not common but are beloved by many people. Novels like these are often at bookstores but unless you have heard of them, you won’t give them a chance. Hopefully, you will after reading this article. You can see the full list below!

Incredible Books That You Need to Read ASAP

• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
• The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler
• The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2) by Hisashi Kashiwai

The Memory Police

As a huge sci-fi fan, I am always reading beloved sci-fi novels and recently discovered The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, a Japanese novel written in 1994 but translated in 2019 to English. And I have to say, we were missing out on an amazing novel.

The story follows the protagonist who lives on an island where memories of items are erased from people’s minds. The Memory Police goes around enforcing them as well as rounding up people whose memories aren’t being erased and anyone hiding these people in their homes.

This novel will remind you of 1984 by George Orwell and has reminded many readers of Franz Kafka. The novel is fantastic and if it was released in English years ago, may have been considered a sci-fi classic. 

Martyr! 

Cyrus Shams is a recovering alcoholic and a former addict trying to change his life around. But he can’t seem to escape his traumatic past. His mother died when he was a baby and after he made it to college, his dead passed away. Now, Cyrus wants to become a martyr and decided to study other martyrs for his book.

But when Cyrus finds out that there is a woman dying of cancer living at the Brooklyn Museum, he decided to fly out and meet her. What he thought he knew flips upside down as he tries to existence and what truly matters to him and whether or not he wants to continue living or become a martyr.

Kaveh Akbar is a brilliant storyteller and Martyr! is an all-around fantastic book. It is funny, tragic, poetic, and impossible to put down. There is a lot of messages to be grasped from this book but above all that, it is a story about love and identity.

The Café with No Name 

I haven’t read much German novels and didn’t know what to expect when I started reading The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler. The novel takes place in 1966 in a market in Vienna. Robert Simon has made his dream of opening his own café a reality but knows nothing about how to run a café or when to even name it. 

Soon after opening, Robert gets a bunch of regulars and attends to his new life. And he hires Mila, a barmaid to help him run the café as it becomes too much for just one person to run. The novel dives into the stories of Simon, Mila, and some of the regulars and follows their stories and the importance of the café in all their lives. 

This is a beautiful story about everyday people and Seethaler makes them all feel like the protagonist of the novel. His storytelling makes this the perfect book to read by the fireside on a chilly day. 

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes

Rounding out this list is another Japanese novel, one that will want you to fly to Japan and try every dish in the book. The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai is a food detective novel and the second novel in the Kamogawa Food Detectives series.

I have come to love this series and always look forward to reading the next book because it is a feel good story. Novels like these are why I keep reading Japanese novels, new and old, because they are unlike anything else. This is a great novel for food lovers and showcases the author’s love for his home country. 

Conclusion

That is all for this list of four incredible books that you need to read asap. Two of these novels are Japanese and very different from each other. Every novel is diverse and not your typical novel but amazing books nonetheless. I loved each of them for different reasons and recommend them to every book lover out there. Happy reading!

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