The cat who saved books – Sōsuke Natsukawa

In the past, I have talked about the consumerism of books and seen it online in essays and video essays. This book is all that discourse in one helpful book brought with so much fun that even people who aren’t interested in such things will suddenly care.

The book in short
The Cat Who Saved Books is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others – and the tremendous power of books.
Grandpa used to say it all the time: ‘books have tremendous power’. But what is that power really?
Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse.
After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated, and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone . . .
I got this information here.

My thoughts
the translator of the story is brilliant. Honestly She explained in the little translator’s note how pronouns are used in Japanese and how that differs from English. Then she talked about why she made certain decisions to circumvent her misstating the original intention of the story. How some terms weren’t translated because the word itself is more of a concept. When you hear the world a whole heap of things come to mind and it would be a disservice to just translate it. As someone who is bilingual, I couldn’t have loved this explanation more. Languages simply do not translate one on one and I adore the knowledge and the reverence for the original work.

The book was short, 217 pages which you can go through easily. There is not much to it in terms of pages but there is in terms of content. I really enjoyed it. There is a lot of talk online about the online book space and the way people read and consume books and this book is all those essays and videos combined in an elegant 217 pages. Not to mention there is a cat as well.

The story made me think about why I love books. The boy goes through four labyrinths and he helps people who view books and reading in ways they shouldn’t view it. Reading for the sake of having read a lot, cutting them up in little pieces until the story is almost lost. Only really bothered with summaries. Or pumping out books as publishers while not caring for the value of the book. Buying a ton of books and having hundreds of unread books around, gives you no value and skews the data so that it is not clear which books bought are actually read. Never caring what happens to the book, not reading them, not re-reading them fully. Losing the substance of the whole thing. If you have so many it’s at that point just paper, stacks upon stacks of paper with letters in it. But the value of the love of the book is not there.

Books are meant to teach lessons, they are meant to make you feel. They are part of your personal journey what you get out of a book someone else doesn’t and what you get out of it today might be different from what you learn next year when you visit the book again.

The whole cat thing was a bit quirky but I did enjoy it. It made the story a bit more light-hearted otherwise it would have been quite heavy. I enjoyed it. I also borrowed the book, it isn’t mine but it is a total recommendation.