Open Books Challenge 2026: Translated from its Original Language

The Open Books Reading Challenge is a year-long reading challenge for people interested in pushing the boundaries of their reading. For full details of the program, please check-out our page at: https://www.rplmn.org/books-more/discover-more/open-books-reading-challenge

These are some ideas that fit the 2026 category of "A book that was translated from its original language."

Happy Reading!

Updated December 31, 2025
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Open Books Challenge 2026: Translated from its Original Language

The Open Books Reading Challenge is a year-long reading challenge for people interested in pushing the boundaries of their reading. For full details of the program, please check-out our page at: https://www.rplmn.org/books-more/discover-more/open-books-reading-challenge

These are some ideas that fit the 2026 category of "A book that was translated from its original language."

Happy Reading!

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I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki
Baek, Sehee
Paper Book
The New York Times bestselling therapy memoir translated by International Booker shortlistee Anton Hur. PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you? ME: I don't know, I'm-what's the word-depressed? Do I have to go into detail? Baek...
On the clock
Baglin, Claire
Paper Book
Claire Baglin's On the Clock packs a family saga, a penetrating picture of social inequality, and a coming-of-age story into a compact tale told in two alternating strands. The first follows the 20-year-old narrator's summer job at a fast food franchise and the other shows us moments from her...
The diving bell and the butterfly
Bauby, Jean-Dominique
Ebook
We had to remove this post
Bervoets, Hanna
Paper Book
WHAT IS "NORMAL"? WHAT IS "RIGHT"? AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE? To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst--but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her task: review offensive videos...
The good son
Ch ng, Yu-j ng
Ebook
"Ingeniously twisted." --Entertainment Weekly, "Must List" "Will leave even the most seasoned crime fiction readers guessing." --CrimeReads "[Jeong] maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist's fate until the bitter end." --The...
The midnight shift
Cheon, Seon-Ran
A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness. When four isolated elderly people die back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn't understand why she's...
Beyond the door of no return
Diop, David
Paper Book
A Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature | Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award One of The Atlantic's 10 Best Books of 2023 A Financial Times Best Book of 2023 | Named a best book of the year by...
Hope : the autobiography
Francis, Pope
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional memoir to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope moved him to make this precious legacy available sooner. Now, the book stands as his testament; the spiritual,...
Your second life begins when you realize you only have one
Giordano, Raphaëlle
Paper Book
THE #1 FRENCH BESTSELLER MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE The feel-good #1 bestselling French novel about a woman whose mission to cure her "routine-itis" leads her to lasting joy and true fulfillment, for fans of The Alchemist and Hector and the...
Red queen
Gómez-Jurado, Juan
Paper Book
"Pacing of the breakneck variety. Short chapters, funny asides, lethally potent descriptions: They all contribute to a frenetic page-turning momentum... you'll have great fun reading it." --The New York Times Book Review The #1 International bestseller is now...
The guest cat
Hiraide, Takashi
Paper Book
A bestseller in France and winner of Japan's Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living. A couple in their thirties...
The Kamogawa food detectives
Kashiwai, Hisashi
Paper Book
The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. What's the one dish you'd do anything to taste just one more time? Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto...
Before the coffee gets cold : a novel
Kawaguchi, Toshikazu
Paper Book
*NOW AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER* *AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* The first book in the five million-copy bestselling magical realism series If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet? ...
The life-changing magic of tidying up : the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing
Kond , Marie
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The book that sparked a revolution and inspired the hit Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo: the original guide to decluttering your home once and for all. ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE--CNN<...
Lily the thief
Kukkonen, Janne
Paper Book
In Janne Kukkonen's swashbuckling fantasy graphic novel Lily the Thief, a young girl tries to make a name for herself in a secret and perilous society of thieves. Lily is a young novice who dreams of being a master thief. That's not easy when the Guildmaster of Thieves...
The three-body problem
Liu, Cixin.
Paper Book
The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America "A mind-bending epic."--The New York Times * "War of the Worlds for...
Night train to Lisbon
Mercier, Pascal
Paper Book
A huge international best seller, this ambitious novel plumbs the depths of our shared humanity to offer up a breathtaking insight into life, love, and literature itself. A major hit in Germany that went on to become one of Europe's biggest literary blockbusters in the last five years, Night...
Novelist as a vocation
Murakami, Haruki
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller--and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running....
The cat who saved books : a novel
Natsukawa, So?suke
Paper Book
AN INDIE NEXT PICK! From the #1 bestselling author in Japan comes a celebration of books, cats, and the people who love them, infused with the heartwarming spirit of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the...
Suite franďĹ˝caise
NďĹ˝emirovsky, IrďĹ˝ene
CD
A lost masterpiece of French literature, this epic novel of life under Nazi occupation was discovered 62 years after the author s tragic death at Auschwitz. Originally intended to be in five parts, the two that form this work are complete in themselves. Part One, "A Storm in June," is set in the...
Blitzed : drugs in the Third Reich
Ohler, Norman
Ebook
A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post). The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping...
Snowglobe
Park, Soyoung
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The groundbreaking Korean phenomenon that Entertainment Weekly called "The Hunger Games meets Squid Game"--now in English for the first time! A COSMOPOLITAN BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE YEAR * A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST...
Wild poppies
Saleh, Haya
Paper Book
Two brothers fight to reunite amidst the turmoil of the Syrian War. Since the passing of their father, Omar has tried--and in his little brother Sufyan's eyes, failed--to be the man of his family of Syrian refugees. As Omar waits in line for rations, longing...
The last wish : introducing The witcher
Sapkowski, Andrzej
Paper Book
Geralt the Witcher--revered and hated--holds the line against the monsters plaguing humanity in this collection of adventures, the first chapter in Andrzej Sapkowski's groundbreaking epic fantasy series that inspired the hit Netflix show and the blockbuster video games. ...
The murmur of bees
Segovia, Sofa?
Paper Book
From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel--her first to be translated into English--about a mysterious child with the power to change a family's history in a country on the verge of revolution. From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a...
The perfect nanny
Slimani, Lel?a
Paper Book
*Soon to be an HBO series starring Nicole Kidman and Maya Erskine* She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. One of the 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR of...
Crossing
Statovci, Pajtim
Audiobook
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST From the acclaimed author of My Cat Yugoslavia: a stunning, incandescent new novel that speaks to identity, war, exile, love, betrayal, and heartbreak The death of head of state Enver Hoxha and the loss of his father leave Bujar...
Kristin Lavransdatter
Undset, Sigrid
Mother River
Xue, Can
0101817956853
YA GRAPHIC NOVEL XAV
Paper Book
Who were the jujitsuffragettes? In the early twentieth century, women in England demanded the right to vote--and faced violent retaliation. Rather than back down, the suffragist group Women's Social and Political Union formed its own security unit. Edith Garrud, a pioneering self-defense...
The picture bride
Yi, KÅ­m-i
Audiobook
We
ZamďĹ˝iďĹ˝atin, EvgeniďĹ˝i Ivanovich
Paper Book
" Zamyatin's intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself-makes We superior to Huxley's Brave New World ."-George Orwell Translated by Natasha Randall .Foreword by Bruce Sterling Written in 1921...
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