The Cat Who Saved Books

I picked this book as the starting point for my reading journey since it had been sitting unopened in my room for a long time and I thought that the plot itself might suit my scenario accurately. Maybe if I read this book, I would find a way to enjoy literature, and while we're at it, end up reading a really good one in the process.

To contextualize, this book is about a "hikikomori" (someone who keeps themselves isolated from social life) named Rintaro who inherits his grandfather's second-hand library after his passing. Suddenly a cat named Tora appears and tells him that he has to save the books whose souls have been lost (as it appears in the book) by their owners in three (actually four) labyrinths. Rintaro has to convince these owners that they have to learn to appreciate books and to not deteriorate their powers. With "convince" I literally mean that he has to talk them through about it. The climaxes of every chapter consist of, to put it simply, discussions Rintaro and these people have with each other. That sounds like quite the anticlimactic climax, but for the most part the book creates tension fine.

The biggest issue I have with this book is that it is never explained why he has to save the books. Tora randomly shows up in his library, tells him about the books, Rintaro says yes and that's about it. Even the idea itself of the books being saved is pretty bad, because what Rintaro does here is, fundamentally, telling the owners, and consequently the readers, the "correct" way to read books. The reality is that there isn't a "correct" way to read like what the book says. Literature is an art form, and anybody can enjoy it how the like it. It doesn't really matter that there's someone who reads a book once and never again like in the first labyrinth, because that's his own way to enjoy literature and that's okay. Using music, a type of art I'm more acquainted with, as an example, is that there's people who only like listening to it on vinyls, CDs or any other physical release, which is perfectly fine. There's also people who don't like listening to full albums, which is also perfectly fine. The same thing happens with books, and even I know that. The second labyrinth consists of a man that cuts pages to make summaries, but if that's his own way to enjoy this art, then why stop him? A justification the book presents is that when this happens to books, they lose their souls. But that isn't really true either, and even if it was, it wouldn't really affect anyone else at all. I also find it a little weird that Tora mentioned that almost reaching the ending climax of the book, almost like the author forgot to mention that before the rising action even started...

When they enter the fourth labyrinth, the lady shows Rintaro the negative consequences of his actions done to the previous labyrinths. That's when I tought that the book would tackle the above issue, but sadly, it didn't. Rintaro wins by telling her a generic fact about how books bring empathy, the lady approves, and the action (well, barely) finishes. In the end, Rintaro goes back to his library, Sayo gets safely rescued, and an obvious love relationship gets implied between the two. It was an boring ending to be honest. For me an ending has to be impactful, but this was just painfully uninteresting. I expected Rintaro to learn to face his inevitable future by leaving behind his library and adapting to live his new life with his aunt, but no. She just says he can stay there and that was it. In real life things don't usually happen like that. Quite dissapointing.

I was skeptical at first when I started reading this that it was going to be too lighthearted for me. Almost like a kid's book. I thought I had to give it time and maybe as the story progressed it would tackle more challenging topics. But, again, no. It was too simple for me. I don't know if the book was boring, but the young adult genre maybe isn't for me.

This taught me barely anything new about books. I ended up continuing to read it not because I wanted to know what happened next, but because I wanted to finish reading a 200 page book. Maybe the fact that I read it with a Spanish translation made it worse. Wait! There's something else I forgot to mention. The book was never really about a cat who loved books. Yes, you could consider Tora, but the only thing he does is telling Rintaro what to do and then leaving him to do basically everything by himself. I didn't even like Tora that much. Not recommended.