I take my time choosing the books I read. Not because I expect perfection, but because I want the stories I let in to matter.
I don’t usually talk about the books I didn’t finish (for whatever reason they ended up in my DNF list). I just quietly set them aside, like mismatched puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit where I am.
But the ones that stayed with me – the ones that linger long after the last page – I feel the need to share them like soft echoes I hope reach someone else.
Here are three books I finished recently. Each one was strange, sad, and quietly powerful in its own way. They left me feeling full, broken, haunted, and somewhat changed.
1. Someone To Watch Over You, Kumi Kimura
Set during the early days of the pandemic, Someone To Watch Over You is a story of a hush, slow-burn echo of loneliness, guilt, and the rumors that stick like dust you can’t sweep away.
What is it about:
Tae is a former teacher living alone in an empty family house she can’t quite call home and blamed for things she never truly did. Shinobu is a man who went back to his family home wandering around town with nowhere to belong and carrying accusations that cling to him like second skin.
Strangers. Both of them were quietly judged and exiled and drowning in things left unsaid. But in the middle of all that silence, they find an unlikely kind of comfort in each other’s presence. Not loud, not romantic in the sensual sense, but kind. A simple knock on the door. A late-night call. A favor no one else would do.
No grand gestures. No promises. Just two people, misunderstood by everyone else, taking care of each other without even knowing they’re doing it.
Sometimes that’s all a love story needs to be: a soft place to rest when the world outside is too loud.
How do I recommend it:
You should read this book if you love slow, quiet stories that ache a little. The kind that reminds you that comfort doesn’t always look like flowers and fireworks. Sometimes, it’s just someone staying when they could have left.
2. Asa: The Girl Who Turned Into A Pair Of Chopsticks, Natsuko Imamura
Asa: The Girl Who Turned Into A Pair Of Chopsticks is a collection of three surreal and emotionally quiet stories. Each one is centered on a girl who slowly turns into something else – literally.
What is it about:
Asa only wanted to feed others, but people never consumed her food – may they be given by her, cooked by her, or bought by her. In the end she became a tool that people used for eating instead – chopsticks. Nami, on the other hand, was never hit, until she does. And Mayumi, one crawls out of her life like a stray cat, searching for something close to home.
Each story feels like a soft dream turning sour, a whisper that gets stranger the longer you listen. It’s absurd in the most poetic way, dark, delicate and somewhat disorienting. But underneath the weirdness lies something achingly familiar: the silent, desperate ache to be needed. The need to be seen. The want to be loved without having to transform.
This book does not explain itself. It just hands you three girls, and dares you to ask what they turned into, and why.
How do I recommend it:
You should read this book if you like surreal tales that linger (this is magical realism at its finest). You’d totally relate if you’ve ever felt like you were becoming something else just to stay in someone’s world.
3. Hunger, Choi Jin-young
There is nothing soft or clean about this book. It’s raw, brutal, and told like a cry you didn’t mean to let out.
What is it about:
Dam and Gu grew up together in a world where survival leaves no room for tenderness. All they have is each other, and even that gets torn away.
Told through fragmented, almost breathless thoughts, Hunger reads like two people trying to cling to something warm in a world that’s always been cold. It’s about poverty, violence, and silence. But most of all, it is about need. A need that was so deep it becomes feral. A love so hungry it loses its shape.
It is not a pretty story. But it is honest. And devastating. And it will haunt the part of you that’s ever been desperate to keep something that was already slipping away.
How do I recommend it:
If you’re not scared of stories that hurt, read Hunger. If you want to see what love looks like when it’s starving, and still trying to be love anyway, this is for you.
Some stories stay because they were beautiful. But there are some that stay because they broke something open inside you. And these books, stayed because they felt strange, uncomfortable, and painfully real in ways I didn’t expect.
If any of these books find their way to you, I hope they speak to something tender in you, too. And if you’ve read something recently that stayed, even quietly, I’d love to hear about it.
We never really finish books like these. We just carry them differently.
