Today’s writing prompt asks “what books do you want to read?”. I’m trying not to grin while writing this - and wondering if I can just write “all of them”.
I love books. I’ve always loved books. Ever since I can remember. I wrote a few days ago about having something of a “bookshop problem” - don’t even remind me that I can wandering into Amazon and have a box of books delivered tomorrow - or that I can fill my Kindle within minutes.
There’s something about holding a paper book in your hands though. Something that electronic reading devices will never replace. It’s hard to explain. It’s the weight - the feeling - the smell of books. Particularly old books.
Earlier this week I listened to the WTF podcast episode where Marc Maron interviewed Paul Giamatti, and found myself completely sucked into their storied history with books. Paul happily admitted that he had almost turned his apartment into a second hand book store - lining the walls with shelves. Our lounge is half-way there.
I haven’t answered the question, have I. What books do I want to read?
At the moment I have three books on the shelf behind my desk - by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot - about a magic coffee shop where visitors are offered the chance to travel back in time.
The first is called “Before the coffee gets cold”, the second “Tales from the cafe”, and the third “Before your memory fades”.
I’ve tried not to read too much about them. Here’s the synopsis from the first book:
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer’s, see their sister one last time, and meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold.