The Cat Who Saved Books - Book Review
- Monika Satote
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 19
At the end of this book, there’s a small moment that really stuck with me. A girl mentions she’s struggling to read One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Rintaro, the protagonist, says something that completely changed my perspective:
“If you find it difficult, it's because it contains something that is new to you. Every difficult book offers us a brand-new challenge.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is exactly the book I’ve DNFed multiple times. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I found it difficult. I thought maybe I wasn’t smart enough for it, or maybe it just wasn’t "my kind of book." But this line made me realize: maybe that difficulty is actually the point. Maybe it means I’m growing, and the unfamiliarity is where the magic is.
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The Cat Who Saved Books is a short, fantastical Japanese novel that I think many book lovers and especially Bookstagrammers should read.It questions the mindset that you need to own more books or have aesthetic shelves to be a "real" reader, something that really resonates with the Bookstagram world.
It follows Rintaro Natsuki, a quiet boy who inherits his late grandfather’s secondhand bookstore. Rintaro is a bit of a recluse, grieving and unsure of his place in the world until one day, a talking cat named appears and asks for his help saving books. What follows is a series of magical adventures that explore what books truly mean to us and what it means to love them. Also, classic japanese literature set up - Cat, books, magical realism!
This book gave me a beautiful new lens on how we engage with books. It’s short, thoughtful, and heartwarming. If you’re a book lover, especially someone active in the online reading community, The Cat Who Saved Books will speak to you in a very personal way. It’s a reminder of why we fell in love with books in the first place. ❤️📖
I found it a bit repetitive in some parts, but that's fine. It was a good read overall, and I can't wait to read the second part The Cat who saved the library.
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