This is the second copy of this book that has come my way, but I plan to read this one first. Some of the alumnae of my university organized a post-Holiday used book exchange, and I received this. It took me a while to read it, but I'm very glad I did. A book that is both compelling to read, and thought-provoking.

From amazon.com:
"“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home."

This book was SO good, and I'm very excited to pass it on to a new reader. I'll release it at tonight's meeting of the Tbilisi English Book Swap, and if no one claims it, I'll leave it on the shelves there.

This turned up at last night's BookSwap at Tea House Near Opera. Hope the next reader enjoys it!