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mermaidswithcoffee's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It was a cute, short read about books and loss and hope. There were two problems I struggled with though.
First, there was a mild but pervasive sexism throughout the whole book that was hard to ignore. It might very well be a translation issue cause I listened to it in English. Plus the cat was described in a note at the end to have an unknown gender but was def presented as male by the audiobook narrator so there was more than one place translation could be lost. It reminded me of watership down, women were just there to serve the men forward in their journey.Sometimes they were actual servants too. It was upsetting and unnecessary. Why do the other worldly men need wives to serve them?
The other issue is related to the sexism, but by how it seems to affect the men. Again; there’s def translation and culture differences I’m struggling through, so I could have misunderstood. But from what I read, there is no space for the main character to grieve or to be sad. The other characters say he is rude when his grandfather just died.I get that the book is about him coming out of his shell and realizing he has people. But this idea that he needs to go to school, do his homework and lean on the women in his life to do it is problematic. This is an example about how the patriarchy hurts men too. Boys and men should be allowed to grieve and be sad around people; not only process their feelings by either being supported by women and/or saving women and being productive.
First, there was a mild but pervasive sexism throughout the whole book that was hard to ignore. It might very well be a translation issue cause I listened to it in English. Plus the cat was described in a note at the end to have an unknown gender but was def presented as male by the audiobook narrator so there was more than one place translation could be lost. It reminded me of watership down, women were just there to serve the men forward in their journey.
The other issue is related to the sexism, but by how it seems to affect the men. Again; there’s def translation and culture differences I’m struggling through, so I could have misunderstood. But from what I read, there is no space for the main character to grieve or to be sad. The other characters say he is rude when his grandfather just died.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism
darumachan's review
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This novella has a cute and appealing premise, and the detailed descriptions of the characters and the various book labyrinths they visit make it easy to imagine as an anime adaptation.
The plot was not as solid-- the adventures were all quite simplistic, and the various "adversaries" were defeated with little more than a few superficial comments from the main character. Tiger the cat had a lot of potential as a character but was relegated to a minor role that was barely likable because of his aloofness. The plot was further weighed down by a heavily moralizing tone -- sweeping statements about how "nobody reads books anymore" or "these days the classics aren't appreciated" -- and each of the adversaries represented one of these ideas. Rintaro's arguments to defeat each of them also presented a very narrow prescription of what an ideal reader- someone who "truly" loves books- should be.
My biggest issue was with the shallow and pejorative representation of Rintaro as "hikikomori", often translated as a "shut-in," in reference to a serious condition that is viewed as a problematic social issue in Japan. There are a lot of ways that hikikomori manifests but, in general, it describes people who retreat from their public lives and social commitments because they are dealing with severe depression or other serious mental health issues. First of all, Natsukawa's use of the term for main character Rintaro comes across as slightly exaggerated because he is already fairly engaged with multiple people in his life, and he is regularly at work in the family bookshop. But throughout the novella, multiple comments fed into the harmful stereotypes about hikikomori -- for example, that Rintaro is a "moody, gloomy bookworm" and "a hopeless shut-in" -- but most frustratingly, that Rintaro's real problem is that he is just too focused on himself and that he can "get over" being a hikikomori by thinking about other people and to stop being so selfish.
The plot was not as solid-- the adventures were all quite simplistic, and the various "adversaries" were defeated with little more than a few superficial comments from the main character. Tiger the cat had a lot of potential as a character but was relegated to a minor role that was barely likable because of his aloofness. The plot was further weighed down by a heavily moralizing tone -- sweeping statements about how "nobody reads books anymore" or "these days the classics aren't appreciated" -- and each of the adversaries represented one of these ideas. Rintaro's arguments to defeat each of them also presented a very narrow prescription of what an ideal reader- someone who "truly" loves books- should be.
My biggest issue was with the shallow and pejorative representation of Rintaro as "hikikomori", often translated as a "shut-in," in reference to a serious condition that is viewed as a problematic social issue in Japan. There are a lot of ways that hikikomori manifests but, in general, it describes people who retreat from their public lives and social commitments because they are dealing with severe depression or other serious mental health issues. First of all, Natsukawa's use of the term for main character Rintaro comes across as slightly exaggerated because he is already fairly engaged with multiple people in his life, and he is regularly at work in the family bookshop. But throughout the novella, multiple comments fed into the harmful stereotypes about hikikomori -- for example, that Rintaro is a "moody, gloomy bookworm" and "a hopeless shut-in" -- but most frustratingly, that Rintaro's real problem is that he is just too focused on himself and that he can "get over" being a hikikomori by thinking about other people and to stop being so selfish.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Ableism
Moderate: Death of parent, Fatphobia, Grief, and Sexism
dismissive representation of mental healthschnaucl's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
It was a promising concept but it turned out to be gatekeeping with bonus sexism.
The book conflates books and reading, in ways that aren't always helpful. In the first labyrinth, the problem is with people who collect books to brag about them, want to brag about the number of books they read and therefore never reread them.
I rarely reread books these days. When I was younger I often reread books I enjoyed and didn't understand it when adults said they didn't reread things. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that as a child I had more leisure time and while I certainly had access to books and parents who encouraged reading, it's different as an adult with my own disposable income and access to bookstores. I don't remember having an actual written to-be-read list when I was young, as an adult it's currently about 350 books, partly because the Internet gives me access to so many different avenue for book recommendations. So even if I didn't add another book to the list until I finished what's currently listed, it would take me years to finish it so it can feel difficult to justify rereading something I've already read when I have so many books I've already bought but haven't read yet.
To be honest, I do think publicly tracking what I've read probably makes a difference, especially since until relatively recently the book sites I use didn't make it easy to include a reread of a book as a book read that year. Would I read more books if I didn't set a book reading challenge or track what I read? Maybe.
I know the best books always give something new when reread, but I have some fear that maybe I'd find I don't like the books I remember fondly as much if I reread them, especially older books where societal views have changed (usually for the better). And certainly there are things I might notice more now that I was just oblivious to then.
I have the least problem with the second labyrinth, which basically says if you read a one or two sentence summary of a book that's not the same as actually reading the book. You miss a lot of nuance and can't possibly get much out of it.
The third labyrinth has to do with selling books which include a lot of the types of books from the first labyrinth (summaries, abridged versions, etc) but also just books people might enjoy but aren't great works of literature.
There's a very strong feeling through the whole book that there's only one "right" way to be a reader and a lover of books and it's to read only great works of literature and probably reread books often and any other kind of reading is at least a less good and pure form and maybe just bad. And that's crap. People aren't inferior or bad because they like reading things that are not considered part of the great works of literature. Let people read what they want to read. Stories can be told in all sorts of forms and maybe someone who starts with one type of book eventually branches out to the kind of books this one considers acceptable. But maybe they don't. That doesn't mean that the books they read don't help them empathize with other people or that they don't learn other valuable things from them.
The end conclusion, that books teach empathy, is a good one, but that is also true of books that aren't, say, Shakespeare, which, as I understand, was pretty much the vulgar popular fiction of his day.
Rintaro would also be a pretty terrible book seller, at least for his female patrons. He recommends Pride and Prejudice to Sayo explicitly because she's a girl and keeps recommending romances only because she's a girl and apparently all girls like to read romances. (Obviously Jane Austen is great, and has a lot to say to everyone, regardless of gender). But he never asks her what she likes to read, it's just, you're a girl, you must like love stories. She's the only female main character and she struggles with reading (when reading Pride and Prejudice she complains there are so many words and so many pages and when she's ready to branch out he recommends another book she complains about and he basically says it's good to read things you struggle with. Which, yes, is true, but if you're trying to get someone to enjoy reading maybe don't make it like eating your vegetables or taking medicine).
Rintaro is also a shut in and the book takes pains to say a life of the mind isn't enough and you should also go outside and talk to other people sometimes.
The translator also made the choice to refer to the cat, Tiger, as "it." There's a note in the back that explains that pronouns aren't used as often in Japanese, and the original story doesn't specify the gender of the cat. I realize "it" is technically the gender neutral in English, but I also think it has a derogatory connotation that's usually meant to be insulting. While that clearly wasn't the intention here, I didn't know that until the end since that's where the translator's note is.
The book conflates books and reading, in ways that aren't always helpful. In the first labyrinth, the problem is with people who collect books to brag about them, want to brag about the number of books they read and therefore never reread them.
I rarely reread books these days. When I was younger I often reread books I enjoyed and didn't understand it when adults said they didn't reread things. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that as a child I had more leisure time and while I certainly had access to books and parents who encouraged reading, it's different as an adult with my own disposable income and access to bookstores. I don't remember having an actual written to-be-read list when I was young, as an adult it's currently about 350 books, partly because the Internet gives me access to so many different avenue for book recommendations. So even if I didn't add another book to the list until I finished what's currently listed, it would take me years to finish it so it can feel difficult to justify rereading something I've already read when I have so many books I've already bought but haven't read yet.
To be honest, I do think publicly tracking what I've read probably makes a difference, especially since until relatively recently the book sites I use didn't make it easy to include a reread of a book as a book read that year. Would I read more books if I didn't set a book reading challenge or track what I read? Maybe.
I know the best books always give something new when reread, but I have some fear that maybe I'd find I don't like the books I remember fondly as much if I reread them, especially older books where societal views have changed (usually for the better). And certainly there are things I might notice more now that I was just oblivious to then.
I have the least problem with the second labyrinth, which basically says if you read a one or two sentence summary of a book that's not the same as actually reading the book. You miss a lot of nuance and can't possibly get much out of it.
The third labyrinth has to do with selling books which include a lot of the types of books from the first labyrinth (summaries, abridged versions, etc) but also just books people might enjoy but aren't great works of literature.
There's a very strong feeling through the whole book that there's only one "right" way to be a reader and a lover of books and it's to read only great works of literature and probably reread books often and any other kind of reading is at least a less good and pure form and maybe just bad. And that's crap. People aren't inferior or bad because they like reading things that are not considered part of the great works of literature. Let people read what they want to read. Stories can be told in all sorts of forms and maybe someone who starts with one type of book eventually branches out to the kind of books this one considers acceptable. But maybe they don't. That doesn't mean that the books they read don't help them empathize with other people or that they don't learn other valuable things from them.
The end conclusion, that books teach empathy, is a good one, but that is also true of books that aren't, say, Shakespeare, which, as I understand, was pretty much the vulgar popular fiction of his day.
Rintaro would also be a pretty terrible book seller, at least for his female patrons. He recommends Pride and Prejudice to Sayo explicitly because she's a girl and keeps recommending romances only because she's a girl and apparently all girls like to read romances. (Obviously Jane Austen is great, and has a lot to say to everyone, regardless of gender). But he never asks her what she likes to read, it's just, you're a girl, you must like love stories. She's the only female main character and she struggles with reading (when reading Pride and Prejudice she complains there are so many words and so many pages and when she's ready to branch out he recommends another book she complains about and he basically says it's good to read things you struggle with. Which, yes, is true, but if you're trying to get someone to enjoy reading maybe don't make it like eating your vegetables or taking medicine).
Rintaro is also a shut in and the book takes pains to say a life of the mind isn't enough and you should also go outside and talk to other people sometimes.
The translator also made the choice to refer to the cat, Tiger, as "it." There's a note in the back that explains that pronouns aren't used as often in Japanese, and the original story doesn't specify the gender of the cat. I realize "it" is technically the gender neutral in English, but I also think it has a derogatory connotation that's usually meant to be insulting. While that clearly wasn't the intention here, I didn't know that until the end since that's where the translator's note is.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexism and Death
loueezat's review
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism
moonlitemuseum's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is a sweetly told and straightforward tale about a shutin who is approached by a magical tabby cat shortly after the death of his bookseller grandfather. The cast is warm and fun, if a little archetypal, and the love of literature is palpable with lots of little bonuses for fans of the Western literary Canon. I'd like to commend the translator, Louise Heal Kawai, for retaining the gender ambiguity of the titular cat and providing wonderful notes. Kevin Shen, the audiobook narrator, does a tremendous job with the various character voices. Don't come to this story expecting anything groundbreaking in terms of female characters or lategame twists, but it's a very enjoyable little story. I would definitely recommend it to young readers who express fondness for anime or roleplaying games like the Persona series.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexism and Fatphobia
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