Author: Michiko Aoyama
Language: English (Japanese translated)
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Books about books, Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Japanese Literature
Ratings: 5/5
What you are looking for is in the Library
Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian Sayoari Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provides just the book recommendation to help them find it.
My review:
I haven’t read such a book in a very long time, and while reading the same, it felt like this was the right time to pick it up, I think the statement, “You may say that it was the book, but it’s how you read a book that is most valuable” is completely true. So, coming to the story, as most of the Japanese books out there, it has several short stories of different people living their own lives, having their struggles, and looking for their answers, and in search of those answers, they end up in the community library. They meet the infamous librarian who grants them something they need rather than what they’re looking for with a cute felt toy to remember by.
Every story is different in its’ own way and makes you think about how different every individual is yet on the basic level we’re all the same and connected. The author has tried to cover every age group and tried to influence every class under these broad short stories. These stories will make you think about love, sacrifice, ambition, regret, pain, suffering, kindness, and most importantly trust (as mentioned in the book, “Trust makes the world go round”).
I felt connected to every individual whether it be a lost guy with no ambition or an old guy with several failed dreams. The concept of the story may sound repetitive but trust me, once you start connecting with the differently same characters, nothing can stop those tears from racing down to your cheeks.
I also loved how different things/plots/characters from one story were also somehow connected to the protagonist of some other short story, which actually makes you think however wide the world might be, it all eventually comes back. There are quite many lines from the book that broadened my playground of thoughts but I won’t share them here, it’ll make much more sense when you read it yourselves as the book itself says, “Readers make their own personal connection to words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique”.
So, if all of this sounds like something you’ll like, why not give this book a chance? (and then offer me some coffee as a treat for recommending this book to you?)
That was my review, it was an infinite star read for me in this specific genre and I really hope you like it too.
Happy Reading.
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