The Nine Lives of a Bookshop Cat is Not an Ordinary Cats and Books Story

I just finished reading this charming book, The Nine Lives of a Bookshop Cat by Kentaro Utsugi.  This title has been popping up in my Facebook cat groups, and some members recommended it as a must-read for people like me who love both cats and books.  However, don't be misled by the title into thinking this is a cozy read, because deep down, it is a story of loneliness, resilience, second chances, survival, and yes, the complicated relationship between humans and cats.  Told from a cat's point of view, the novel blends fantasy and history; it pulled me in so much that I finished it in a day.

The story follows Kinnosuke, a grumpy black cat who, at the start of the novel, is already on his ninth life.  He is still a kitten, yet after eight previous lives, he has become so cynical and distrustful of people that he doesn't want anything to do with them.  When his mother and siblings left one day to check a house where they found food and never returned, he instantly assumed that they have become pets.  He set out for town by himself, ending up in a busy area where people ignored him as they went about their business.  Wandering off to find a quieter place, he came upon the mysterious Hokuto-do (Big Dipper) Bookshop, run by a woman named Erika Kitahoshi.

Initially apprehensive about going to the shop, he stayed away from the shop and its occupants.  Aside from Kitahoshi, the shop also houses four cats who urge him to stop being stubborn and come inside because it is his destiny.  However, Kinnosuke also regarded them with disdain for being pets, which he considered the lowest a cat could go.  Eventually, his need to survive won, and he ventured into the shop where everyone called him Kuro, or black, because he wouldn't tell them his true name.

Once inside, Kinnosuke realized how weird the bookshop actually was.  Erika, whom the other cats call the witch, could actually talk to cats: not the one-way talk we usually do with our kitty, but she could have a conversation with them and understand what they were thinking and saying.  Then there were the books that the shop never seemed to run out of, even when there were no deliveries.  The oldest cat in the group, Lulu, explains everything later while doing the shop inventory on her hind legs and clutching a pen with her paw. 

It is also here in the bookshop that Kinnosuke would open up to us readers about his past lives, which he spent in various crucial moments of Japan's history.  Here he explains why he finds it difficult to attach emotionally to other people, including Erika, except for the writer whom he lived with in his third life.  By the way, he learns that all the other cats in the shop once lived with authors, and the annex of the book shows that these were Japanese literary greats.  

Later, he meets a young girl who aspires to be a writer, and when she falls into unfortunate circumstances, Kuro has to overcome his cynicism to help her. It's also here that he finds out about the real story of the bookshop and Erika and restores his faith in humanity.

AI-generated image

What surprised me about this book is its emotional depth. It's not a simple, feel-good, whimsical story of a cat in a bookshop as its title suggests.  Instead, it explores complex emotions of distrust and love, of resilience in adversity, compassion, life, and death.  Kinnosuke is such a complicated main character that his narrative becomes reflective and almost meditative.  Couple that with Utsugi's almost soothing and easy-to-follow writing style, and you find yourself completely drawn to the story.  

A word of warning, though.   The story tackles some aspects of animal life and suffering that pet lovers would find difficult and heartbreaking to read.  As a cat parent, I felt a lump in my throat each time the main character loses his life.  They bring back memories of the cats I lost in the past.

In the end, this is not just a story about books and cats, but also compassion and how important it is to give everyone, animal or human, a second chance.  This may be why I, along with the other members of our cat group, found it worth reading. 

The Nine Lives of a Bookshop Cat

Kentaro Utsugi

Sylvia Gallagher  (Translator)

Kindle Edition,  187 pages

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

www. amazon.com

It took me some time to finish this book because it's hard to read. Not because it was badly written, but because reading about what the three sisters in this story went through for years is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. While I like reading and watching true crime stories, I had to put down the book several times because the details were just too much.  

If You Tell chronicles, the abuse three sisters had to endure while living with their sadistic mother.  The mother, Michelle "Shelly" Knotek, is someone who could go  "zero to sixty, from calm to rage, in less than five seconds."  She subjected her daughters Nikki, Sami, and Tori to all kinds of abuse, torture, and degradation. Such acts of sadism extended to relatives and friends, which eventually led to murder and her incarceration.  As manipulative as she was, she even convinced one of her daughters to participate in one of her crimes.

Gregg Olsen described the events in a raw, graphic, and sometimes sordid way.  He interspersed the recollection of people who knew Sherry, including her stepmother, her daughters, and her ex-partner. You'd be forgiven to think that the book is fiction, but it's not. It all happened. What happened to the sisters was so horrific that normal everyday objects would trigger memories of their fears and anguish. He also underscored that despite the horrific events,  the sisters remained resilient and how, through the strength of the bond between them, they became empowered to end their mother's reign of terror.  To this day, they remained in contact with each other.

I just wonder how such terrible acts could happen, and nobody could even notice it.  Especially that these events happened in a small, rural town in Washington where everybody supposedly knew each other. Of course, nobody could blame the sisters because years of manipulation and mental abuse would make them submissive to their mother.  In fact, the police and other authorities did not act when the sisters reported to them earlier and acted only after someone has died.

While the narrative is simple, the details became repetitive in several parts and did not contribute to the story anymore.  Olsen also did not completely tell what drove the mother to such heinous acts.  Was she born evil? Was her troubled past responsible for the behavior her stepmother already noticed when she was still very young?  Clearly, the book was not to psychoanalyze Shelly or her victims.  However, these are unanswered questions that should have been addressed to better understand how this monster came to be. 

If You Tell: 

A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

Gregg Olsen

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer 

Publication date: December 1, 2019

Kindle Edition (File size: ‎ 4464 KB)

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Animal, Vegetable, Junk: An Account of Man's Relationship with Food

This book takes a long look at how we have transformed the way we get and consume our food.  Bittman -- a bestselling cookbook author, journalist, and food writer--  gives a comprehensive account of how man obtains his food, from hunter-gatherers to early agriculture and industrial farming.  He argues that the food we eat now is not the same as what our early ancestors ate.  He noted that deceptive marketing techniques made us unhealthy through the years.  How we presently produce our food is also not sustainable and harms us and the environment than good.

Bittman also touched on the politics of American agriculture.  He cited how its expansion excluded black Americans from some government programs and how current practices continue to disadvantage certain groups.  His most damning arguments include how the US Department of Agriculture continues to favor big companies and disregard the people’s and the environment’s welfare.  

Despite painting a bleak scenario for the agriculture industry, Bittman says that a systemic overhaul of the sector could still save it.  He offers an ecological solution he calls "agroecology.” However, he admits that there would be resistance, especially from those in power.  

Most parts of this book sound like a scathing criticism of modern agriculture and American politics by an outraged man. To be fair, Bittman did a lot of work and research to cover not only agriculture and food production but also the underlying socio-political issues. The effort shows in the number of references he cited and the pages dedicated to his endnotes. However, he started proselytizing his ideas in the final chapters and sounded like a propagandist for veganism and social organizations. 

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK

A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal

By Mark Bittman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Kindle Edition (4087 KB)

Published on February 2, 2021

A Man- a novel on identity

amazon.com

I just finished reading the novel, A Man by Japanese writer, Keiichiro Hirano.  This is Hirano's first novel translated and published in English, but he's written several books already.

A Man revolves around a family lawyer, whose former client asked him to investigate the mystery behind her dead husband. The family of the dead man informed the woman that her husband was not their kin. The lawyer had to solve two puzzles: the real identity of the dead man, and what happened to the person whose identity and past he claimed as his. Through his investigation, the lawyer learned the meaning of our identity and the memory and legacies we leave,  

 Hirano covered a lot of topics, aside from the meaning of identity, he also touched on racism, middle life crisis, and relationships. It also gave us a glimpse of the complicated Japanese law on the family registry system. A Man is a great read, especially if you enjoy a good mystery.

A Man

by Keiichirō Hirano, Eli K.P. William (Translator)

295 pages

Note: I read the Kindle edition of this book, available through the Kindle First Reads program under my Amazon Prime subscription

"What If?" Answers some of the most bizarre questions

I just finished reading this very amusing book named, "What if? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"

The author, Randall Munroe, is a physicist who used to work at NASA as a roboticist. He created the webcomic xkcd, which features stick figures and deals with science, technology, and math themes.  Alongside this webcomic, he created whatif where he answers questions sent to him by his readers.

The webcomic actually has a cult following and has already received over 70 million hits.[citation needed]  The book is a compilation of some of the more bizarre questions he's received and answered since he started the project.

This is the first time I encountered Munroe and his work, so I am pretty amused by his writing style.  He answers questions that if I or anyone asked a school teacher, I would be immediately dismissed as impertinent.  Consider the following questions:

• What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
• How quickly would the oceans drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space were created at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean?
• If someone's DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?
• How much physical space does the Internet take up?
• What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?
• If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And my favorite: What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?    His answer: You can stack the top two rows without much trouble; The third row would burn you with fire; the fourth would kill you with toxic smoke; the fifth would do all of those and give you a mild dose of radiation; the sixth would explode violently and; Do not build the seventh row.  He gave a more detailed explanation of these answers in the same chapter.

All of these and the rest of the other main questions were answered meticulously by the author using scientific facts and his brand of humor.  Yes, sometimes the reader needs a little background about the things he says but this won't stop you from enjoying the book.   Also, don't forget to read all the footnotes, which were also as entertaining as the main texts. There's even a running joke about his constant use of [citation needed]. 

In between the questions are inserts called "Weird (and worrying) Questions From the What If? Inbox," and these contained even stranger questions (example: What is the total nutritional value of the average human body?) which Munroe answered with some funny stick figures or even deliberately left unanswered.

And one more thing, many of the questions and answers lead to scenarios of the destruction of our home planet, which may be the reason why the author, after discussing the effect of the different magnitudes of an earthquake (Q. What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let's say, New York?),  ended his book with, "Sometimes it's nice not to destroy the world for a change."

I really enjoyed reading this book.  I laughed and learned a lot while reading it. Even if it's your first time encountering the author and his work, you will still find the book very interesting.  

What if? by Randall Munroe

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 303 pages

Available from amazon.com

Kindle Unlimited: Over 600,000 Books Available But...

I recently received an email from amazon.com inviting me to avail of a 30-free day trial of their new service, Kindle Unlimited. The idea is great for any book lover: for thirty days you are free to read as many books as you want (and can) from 600,000 titles. After the trial period, you only need to pay $9.99 per month as subscription.  It also comes with a complimentary three-month Audible membership, which gives access to additional 150,000 audiobook titles.

from amazon.com

This is good news for someone like me who loves reading and at the same time owns a Kindle reading device.  Yes, you can also read through any of the free reading app from the company and the audiobooks are available to those who own Kindle Fire. 

So what is the "but" on the title for?  For three reasons. First, although 600,000 title seem a lot, at present I couldn't find the kind of titles I am interested in and want to read.  I expect Amazon will improve the selection later but right now it is extremely limited.

from amazon.com

Second, if I choose to stop the subscription, I will lose all the books.  This is because I don't own them and only rent them from the service.

Lastly and related to my second reason, the price of the subscription.  I like reading books at a leisurely pace or at my own pace. If I really like the book, I can finish it in one to three days.  Sometimes, I read it only when I have the time. Most of the books for Kindle are at or near the $9.99 price point, the same amount as the subscription.  I do not see myself buying one book per month so that means that there will be months that I'd be obligated to pay for the service which I cannot use.


I am not discouraging anybody from trying the service.  You may want to take advantage of the free 30-day trial subscription for now.  I am sure that heavy readers would find Kindle Unlimited as a great way to enjoy reading books and save money at the same time.

Fall of Giants and Winter of the World: A Review

I just finished reading Ken Follet's works one after the other: "Fall of Giants" and "Winter of the World", which are part of the Century Trilogy.  Both books are massive. Kindle gives a reading time for each book at 16 hours.  It took me weeks to finish them.

The books are about five families in different parts of the world, Russia, Germany, Britain and the USA, which were intertwined by events of the last century.  Follet introduces them to us in Fall of Giants, which took place in the 20s and 30s and pretty much covered events leading to and during World War I, the Russian Revolution and political events that changed the course of history, including women's suffrage.

The second book, Winter of the World introduces us to the next generation and mostly offsprings of the characters in the first volume.  We also see changes in the lives and social standing of many of the characters.  For me, this is darker than the first book because it dealt about the atrocities of the Nazi Regime, the terror of World War II and the savagery of the Red Army which was supposed to liberate Berlin after the war.  Oh, and it also set the stage for the cold war with the introduction of the atomic bomb.

Follet described everything in vivid imagery.  He is a master of description: from the darkness of the coal mine pit, to the battlefields in France, the blitzkrieg, and the harsh Russian winter.  Follet described everything so well that you could almost even smell his characters when he says that they haven't bathed for weeks.  

I think this is why I got hooked with these books and kept me turning page after page.  Follet made me feel like I was part of the events as they unfold.  It felt like, I was sitting beside the Dewars while they were negotiating for the establishment of the United Nations or when the British Parliament was debating whether to unseat Chamberlain or not.  It does help that the reader knows basic modern history but it is not necessary.

This brings us to the next point I want to make.  Follet made the reader learn history and the behind the scenes stories about the events without the reader noticing it.  I learned a lot about the conditions of the miners in Wales and how the British women won their right to suffrage by reading this book.

Spending weeks reading these books also made me feel that I knew these families well enough that I am interested to what would happen to them. "Winter of the World" ended in a hopeful note, on Christmas Day, with Carla von Ulrich surrounded by her family singing a Christmas Carol.   

I am looking forward to the third and final installment of the trilogy.  

Fall of Giants and Winter of the World are both available for Kindle on amazon.com.

Defending Jacob: A Family Drama (SPOILER ALERT)

Defending Jacob by William Landay is a court drama, a family story, a suspense-thriller all rolled into one. The story is told to us by the father, Andy Barber, the First Assistant District Attorney of a small town in Massachusetts whose life and career took a bizarre turn when his 14-year old son was accused of  murdering a schoolmate.

Landay tells how this once happy suburban family became a portrait of a troubled family.  While he was able to keep his son out of jail and keep his family intact, it resulted to the loss of friends and colleagues. The reader could earlier surmise that what ever the outcome of this trial, Barber is finished.

Landay keeps everyone guessing whether Jacob actually killed his classmate thus laying out the groundwork for everyone to make a judgement.  And then he pulls out a twist.  While Barber insists that his son is not capable of murder, it turned out that violence do run in the family.  It was revealed that Andy's father and Jacob's grandfather is behind bars because of killing a girl.

This revelation will ultimately result in an horrific ending that one would probably not see coming.

The book is a real page turner, the details of what goes on in the life of a defendant in a murder case and how it could impact in the family will keep the reader involved.

(Defending Jacob by William Landay 421 pp.)

Amazon announces four new Kindle Readers

I woke up this morning to some great news from Amazon.com.   The company announced not one (as earlier posted) but four new Kindle e-readers, with prices starting at US$79.  On the Amazon website, CEO Jeff Bezos called the new devices the "best Kindles we've ever made." 

The top of the line among the new Kindles is the Kindle Fire.   The Kindle Fire offers Wi-Fi connectivity and a web browser called Amazon Silk which will use cloud computing to speed access to content over the Internet.  The device is basically a souped up version of the Kindle with a 7-inch color touch screen.  Many pundits are claiming that this gadget is the only real threat to Apple's iPad.  For one, at US$199 it is really way cheaper than Jobs's tablet.  However, Kindle Fire does not come with a camera, a microphone and a 3G connectivity which may not appeal to those who want to these features.  

One of the things that stopped me from considering Kindle Fire is its backlit screen.  I have a first generation iPad and I have to admit that I find it hard to read on it for a long period of time.  Unless Amazon can transpose e-ink technology, I think this gadget will be good for consumption of other media, namely music, magazines and movies which does take long periods of time.

What I am considering is the new Kindle Touch.  This new addition to the Kindle family comes with an easy to use touch screen to make it easier to turn pages, all you need to do is tap to turn a page.  It still comes with e-ink technology and connects through Wi-Fi for access to the Amazon Store.  It is only 6 inches and is lighter at 7.8 ounces.  Battery life is also great - it can last for two months on a single charge without the wireless connection.  If you leave the wireless on, it will still work for 6 weeks on a single charge.

I would really want to know more about the X-Ray Feature of this gadget.  Amazon explains it as "a new technology that lets customers explore the 'bones of the book'."  It says that with just a single tap, readers can see all passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, etc. that interests them.  I think it's worth exploring.

A 3G enabled model of the device will also be available.  The Kindle Touch will be available at US$99 with special offers.  What this simply means is that you will receive special offers and sponsored screen savers.  However, these will only appear when you are not using your device or at the bottom of the screen.  Amazon promises that it will not interfere with our reading.  If you don't want these special offers then opt for the one that does not come with it, priced at US139.  Prices for the 3G enabled model start at US$149.  Both models will be available on November 21, 2011.

If you don't want a touch screen model, there's the Kindle.  The new latest generation Kindle is for readers who want the lightest, most compact Kindle at an incredible price. The latest generation Kindle features a new design that is 30 percent lighter at just 5.98 ounces, 18 percent smaller, and turns pages 10 percent faster. Kindle is now small and light enough to fit easily in your pocket and carry with you everywhere, yet it still features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.  It comes with a price tag of only US$79 and is available starting today at Amazon.com.  

(all images from amazon.com)

Favorite Apps

In one of our discussions, one of my fellow Mac fans asked us what iPad or iPhone Apps are our favorites and can't live without.  I told him I have a number of favorite apps but not necessarily I can't live without.  I downloaded some apps from the Apps Store to my iPad and use some of them more often than the others.

One of these is Pulse, a news aggregator developed by two Stanford students.  It combines the convenience of RSS feeds with the engaging interface of a web browser.  What I like about this app is that I can choose which news provider to subscribe to and place them in a grid.  I can access them anytime I want and get updated on current and tech news without leaving the app.

For making on the spot reports and other documents, I use Pages.  It is almost the same as the desktop version except that when sent through email, you will have to convert your work into a document that Pages could read.  Otherwise, it's the only app I need to make documents.

I use iBooks and Kindle for iPad alternately to read my e-books because I have books on both formats.  My only issue about reading on an iPad is eyestrain.  Yes, even with the adjustable brightness, I cannot read as much as I would with paper book.  This is one reason why I am contemplating on buying a Kindle.

Another favorite is Magic Piano. I can actually make music with this app even if I don't know how to play the instrument.  All I did was turn on one of it's auto modes and voila! I can play music from it's songbook by just following the falling dots on the screen.

If I have time to waste, which is very seldom, I play games on my iPad.  The big screen on this baby could sometimes make me waste more time than I should.

There's Angry Birds, the insanely addicting game that involves slinging birds to beat the green pigs that stole their eggs.  The game is so wicked because its levels become more and more challenging as you progress.

Also wicked is Zynga's Scramble. It looks easy because you only need to make words from random letters on a 4x4 board.  Try playing the online mode and compete with other players around the globe. The next thing you knew, hours have passed and the deadline you're trying to meet has come closer.

These are the apps that I use most of the time.  There are others on my iPad that are also worth mentioning and I would discuss on another post.

On the Brink: From the Man in the Center of the Storm

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System is the first hand account of former US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson Jr. of what happened before and during the 2008 financial crisis that almost brought the world to its knees.

Paulson's narrative was fast paced and in very simple language. The reader does not have to be well-versed in financial matters to understand what Paulson wanted to say. His recollection of the efforts of his colleagues and staff to save the financial institutions affected by the crisis was very informative.

In fact, reading the book is almost like being there with Paulson during the times when he made critical decisions and his meetings with key personalities in the race to save the US Financial System from complete meltdown.

I am particularly amused at his account of the meetings of Congressional leaders before they took up the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Law, especially the one where the House members from both parties engaged in a shouting match and almost came to blows because they could not agree on the legislation.

To his credit, Paulson did not sound like he was rationalizing his actions and his decisions during those turbulent months. His recommendations in the book's afterword are also worth exploring. I just find this section of the book a bit like an academic lecture though.

If you want to know the whys, whats and whos of the 2008 financial crisis, read Hank Paulson's On the Brink.


On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry Paulson is available in Kindle Edition from amazon.com.

Kindle for Mac Now Available

After being labeled as "Coming Soon" for months, Amazon finally released its Kindle application for Mac this week.  It is a free download from the Amazon.com site.

The application has the same functionality as the PC version and only runs in Intel Macs and requires Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard.  Download took less than 10 minutes and just like any Mac OS X application, the user must drag dmg file unto the Applications folder.

Kimdle for Mac OS X has the same functionality of its PC sibling.  The user can change the size of fonts for easier viewing.  However, it also does not give the user the ability to right down notes and annotations.  I hope this will be one of the features amazon.com promised to include in its future release.

My favorite feature of course is the Whispernet which synchronizes all Kindle applications across platforms.  When I downloaded and opened one of my books, I was immediately brought to the page I was reading on my Kindle for PC application.

I don't know if Amazon.com timed the release of this software just before the iPad becomes available in the market.  The iPad of course has the iBooks e-book reader application which has a more appealing GUI than the Kindle.  However, iBookstore won't be available here in the Philippines so I would be sticking with both Kindle for PC and Mac OS X for now.  Or until my Kindle arrives.