What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama

 

What it's about:

Five lost souls, each with a yearning inside them to be or do something more. And a wise community librarian who guides them to the book that will help them see a path forward to seizing opportunities and fulfilling their dreams. Each book is different. But then so are the five characters. There's Tomoka, who is a young sales assistant in a department store; Ryo, who wants to open his own antique store; and Natsumi, a former magazine editor who is struggling to balance motherhood and her career. I really liked those three, but I think the last two were my favorite:  Hiroya, an unemployed artist who feels like a failure; and Masao, who just retired from his job of forty-two years and now doesn't know what to do with his life. Every chapter introduces another character, another book, another dream. I enjoyed their individual journeys and their moments of intersection. 

My thoughts:  

This was a bittersweet read for me. Don't get me wrong, I loved this quiet literary novel, but it's the book I was supposed to read this month with Melody. We planned it back in February. And I kept wanting to talk to her about it, ask her which character she liked best, compare notes, hear her thoughts and insights. I know she would have loved the Japanese setting and how books played a role in each character's journey. I really wish I could have read this book with her. I bet she would have given it 5 stars. I did. 

Happy Reading!

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

 

Blurb from Goodreads:  Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

My thoughts:  This novel is quietly enchanting, especially the first half. I loved Takako's time at the bookshop with her uncle, and how books and reading became so important in helping her find her way out of her depression. I also loved reading about Jimbocho, Tokyo's famous book district. What a cool neighborhood! In the second half, Takako leaves the bookshop and her aunt, Momoko, who has been gone for five years, comes back. I didn't like Momoko very much, and Takako doesn't spend much time in Jimbocho or at the bookshop in this part of the book, so I didn't enjoy the last half nearly as much as I did the first half.  

Here are two of my favorite quotes from this book...the first one is Takako's Uncle speaking of his adventurous youth traveling the world, and the second one is Takako talking about her newfound love of reading.  

"I wanted to see the whole world for myself. I wanted to see the whole range of possibilities. Your life is yours. It doesn't belong to anyone else. I wanted to know what it would mean to live life on my own terms."

 

 "It was as if, without realizing it, I had opened a door I had never known existed. That's exactly what it felt like. From that moment on, I read relentlessly, one book after another. It was as if a love of reading had been sleeping somewhere deep inside me all this time, and then it suddenly sprang to life. ... I'd never experienced anything like this before. It made me feel like I had been wasting my life until this moment."

Happy Reading!

P.S. This book counts towards Susan's Bookish Books Reading Challenge. 

 

Silence Once Begun

"The story of Oda Sotatsu begins with a confession that he signed."

A confession that isn't true.

Then Oda Sotatsu stops talking.

In jail. At the trial. When he's condemned to die.

He never says a word.

Jesse Ball is determined to find out the reason why. So he interviews Oda Sotatsu's family, reprints the newspaper coverage from the trial, talks to the prison guards, and finally tracks down Jito Joo, the mysterious girl who faithfully visited Sotatsu through it all. 

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another. To simply find out what had happened to Oda Sotatsu, that was the main thing. That was always the main thing. But if in learning that, I could see somehow farther....

Set in Japan, this novel reads like a literary documentary. Even though Oda Sotatsu remains illusive throughout, the mystery of his silence is oddly compelling. The author himself, acting as interviewer and scribe, becomes a character in his own novel. I thought it was a unique and interesting way to narrate a story and that it worked surprisingly well. This book, which is only 232 pages long, reads super fast. It's stylistic, and different, and worth checking out. I liked it a lot. I don't know what Jesse Ball's other novels are like, but I intend to find out.

Happy Reading!

  

A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

I'm not sure how to describe this book.  On the surface, it looks straightforward and simple, but there are layers and overlaps to this story.  (Think Schrodinger's Cat.)  I've never read Ruth Ozeki before, but I'm glad I stumbled onto this book when I was at the library.

It begins with Nao Yasutani, a 16-year-old Japanese teen, and her diary; she is contemplating suicide, but wanting to write the life story of her great-grandmother, Jiko, first.  Jiko is a Zen Buddhist nun who claims to be 104.  She teaches her great-granddaughter what it means to be a time being.

"A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."

Then there's Ruth, a middle-aged Japanese American woman living on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Oliver.  One morning she finds a red Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore.  In the lunchbox?  Nao's diary.

Here's where the overlapping begins:  between Nao writing her story, and Ruth reading it.  They are years and miles apart, yet somehow their lives intersect.  I loved how Ozeki intertwines their narratives. Talk about creative. And so well-written. This is an unexpected, and unique novel; one I won't soon forget.

 "If you do decide to read on, then guess what?  You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic."

Happy Reading!