Title The Cat who Saved Books Series --- Author Sosuke Natsukawa Cover Art Yuko Shimizu Publisher HarperVia - 2021 First Printing Shogakukan - 2017 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Rintaro Natsuki, Tiger, Sayo Yuzuki Main Elements Anthropomorphic

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 secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat named Tiger appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and Tiger and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners.

Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, Tiger and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge—the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter...

This book was on the new arrivals display in the library. I tried to resist, I had so many other things to read. But it was about cats. It was about books. It was about cats and books, I gave in to temptation. And I'm glad I did, it was a lovely tale, a coming of age story where it is ok to love reading books, written in a lovely way, with a very Japanese feel to it.

A high school student lives with his grandfather in a used bookstore. But when his grandfather passes away the boy, already nearly a recluse, no longer leaves the store, not even to go to school. Till one day a talking orange tabby cat appears and request's the boy's help to save books. In one case from a man who reads books only for the sake of being able to claim how many books he's read. Or from another man that is cutting books up, turning them into abridged versions, or worse, just a single line summary. In each case, the villains actually have logical reasons for what they are doing and the boy needs to argue against them. Every time the boy succeeds, he learns something not just about books but about life, and his confidence grows.

However it had one flaw, it was kind of heavy handed, trying to impress on people that "short light books" aren't worth they paper they are printed on, that the only books of value are old, heavy and difficult to read, and I disagree. Yes, it is important to read a book that makes you think, to examine yourself, and most important, to get empathy for other people, to see inside their heads, to explore another way of life and thinking (when people say "I didn't like the book because I couldn't see myself" my response is "that is the POINT, the world doesn't revolve around you and you should learn to see the world from different points of view"). But I feel books also play a role in escape, we all need to turn off our brains for a bit now and then. And a lot of people see fantasy or science fiction as "fluff" or for kids, when those books can just as easily make the same point as some dense classic, only in an imaginary setting.

And just because a book has been chosen as a classic (who decides what is literature and what isn't anyway?), doesn't always mean it's good. Some authors used to be paid by the word so some books by Dickens or Dumas are merely bloated. Are the stories good, sure, but a good abridgement might actually improve them since the authors would intentionally pad their tomes to get more money. And if reading something boring turns people off books entirely, then I'm all for light and silly that might eventually grow into something more, rather than losing the reader outright. Will I read those books boys like about farting and underpants, no, but maybe those boys will graduate to Harry Potter, then Lord of the Rings and so on.

I wonder what Japanese readers feel though, since virtually every book mentioned is an English one. I thought at first it might be a quirk the translator put in to make it more relevant to English readers but apparently they were in the original version too. Even I got the feeling that the only "good" books were written by white, male, European/American authors a century or more ago, which of course is also not true.

So if asked which character I represent, I'll say I love books, and that I differ from the moral of this story in that I love ALL books, whether the book can change the way I view the world or it was just plain old brain candy fluff. I think everyone needs a little of both. I will admit I haven't read most of the books referenced but I got a happy twinge when Rintaro said a quote, the person he was speaking to confirmed it was Steinbeck and I was like "I read that! Of Mice and Men!" so I'm not a totally illerate noob, so there!

But for all I cringe a bit as the author accused me the reader of not reading more "quality" stuff (hey, his book isn't a classic, it's got talking cats, his book belongs in the "fluff" section too does it not? Was I wasting time I could have spent reading Proust or even if we go SF, Verne?) it was still a wonderful story about the love of books, and makes me kinda wish I could have lived upstairs of a used book store too, to have been surrounded by all these classics, non-fiction and fluffy stuff and been able to dig through the shelves whenever I felt like it. Maybe when I retire from my programming job I can get a part time job in a used bookstore!