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Hello! Paper Back from Japan.

H

haginotani

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Hello. My name is Haginotani, and I am Japanese, so please forgive me to write wrong English.

My job is selling books at the book store, Aoyama Book Center, in Tokyo, and this spring I'm in charge of the foreign books section in spite of my very poor English. So it is easy to misunderstand what kind of books they are. In the labyrinth called English, but I try to do my best. I wish that sometime native English speakers say to me "You understand what we need!"

I want to get information what books and authors are the hottest and the most popular in America. I collected for a book fair in our shop, The Pulitzer Fair. And I must think about next. Now I image ultramodern and radical (I want to say edged) novels, like Aimee Bender, Kelly Link and Barry Yourgrau. If you have an idea, please notify me.

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu.
 
Hello there Haginotani and welcome to B&R. You're not the only one here whoes English is his second language :cool:. Your English is readable, so don't worry about it. :)

There are these links that might help in finding the popular books in the US:
- USA Today list of best selling books per week
http://asp.usatoday.com/life/books/booksdatabase/default.aspx

- NewYork Times Book Reviews
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html
You can find on the webpage the Best Sellers of
.Hardcover Fiction
.Hardcover Nonfiction
.Hardcover Advice
.Children's Books
.Paperback Fiction
.Paperback Nonfiction
.Paperback Advice
.Inside the List
 
Thank you for your advice!

I checked the url you noticed me. And I can find the titles that we also have in our shop. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is so famous I think, but it is not so famous in Japan. Our shop's best selling books are like "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "The Interpretation of Murder" by Jed Rubenfeld. I can understand why "The Road" is good selling, but I don't know why Jed Rubenfeld? I don't know who is he! The distance between US and Japan still long meybe.

But thank you very much for your advice!
 
You're welcome!
Make sure if you have any other questions about books or authors, to post in the General Book Discussion, Author Discussion or Book Search & Suggestions. There are many people here that can help.
 
Hi Haginotani,

Your English is just fine.
I'm in the UK and like edgy books. Perhaps you could try Chuck Palahniuk (he wrote Fight Club) and less commercial authors like Elfriede Jelinek - she's an Austrian Nobel Prize winning feminist writer who writes very unconventional / controversial books.

Can you recommend some Japanese writers for me? I like Ryu Murakami, sometimes I read a bit of Haruki Murakami. I have heard of Out by Natsuo Kirino and will read this soon. If you know of any dark and unconventional Japanese writing that I can get in English translation, I would be very grateful.

Welcome to the forums!

pooh_bah
 
Welcome :D

Maybe you could try stocking Salman Rushdie books? He's in the world spotlight at the moment for his 'edgy' book The Satanic Verses, and I believe he won the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children.
Stephen King is definitely an author you should be looking into if you are looking for extremely popuar books. Pretty much all of his are bestsellers.
 
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