discussion

Let’s Talk Bookish – All-Time Favourite Book

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Aria @ Book Nook Bits is the new host for Let’s Talk Bookish! If you aren’t following her yet, good check out her blog and give her a follow!

October 6: What Qualifies as an “All-Time Favorite Book?” (Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly)

Prompts: What books would you say are your all-time favorites? Do you have lots of them, or just a few? What makes a book one of your all-time favorites?

Welcome to another week of LTB here at DTRH, everyone! It’s the first Friday of October, and today’s topic is about what qualifies as an “all-time favorite book.” I’m assuming everyone has a favourite, though I think it may be even more common to have multiple favourites. Or no favourites at all because who wants to choose?

I think I have a couple of books that come to mind as all-time favourites. One of my old favourites was Memoirs of a Geisha, for it’s captivating tale and heart-wrenching moments. I haven’t read it again in many years but I still feel its effects of how it made me feel at the time. The most recent one I’ve read that also makes it to this ultimate list is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I honestly enjoyed for very similar reasons and also makes it to my top list for similar reasons in the way it made me feel.

I think for the longest time I just had the one, but not because no books were objectively better afterwards, but rather because of the impact it had on me. I still enjoyed plenty of books from when I only had the one favourite, but none that made me feel as much as the first book did. By pure recency bias, I’d probably say Seven Husbands is my new favourite book, though another book, The Song of Achilles, I would say is a very close second—again, for basically all the same reasons. I guess there may only be a narrow set of plot lines that can really tug at my heartstrings, but I think that’s a discussion for another day.

For me, I think a book can be considered my all-time favourite for a bunch of reasons. I have to have enjoyed basically all aspects of the book, and it really had to have a big impact on me emotionally, the magnitude of which is unsurpassed by other books. Another interesting side effect is that if it’s my favourite, I would not want to read it again, almost to preserve that first time impression and to maintain that memory and impact. I have plenty other 5-star rated books that I would read again, although I suppose in general, I don’t have the time or motivation to re-read books except for book clubs or some other particular reason.

Do you all have all-time favourite books? Do you read and re-read them? Maybe I’m just weird for keeping to that one time first impression. Let me know in the comments below!

musings

Life Update: Semi hiatus and crazy 2023

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Hello blogging friends and new friends alike.

Can I start by saying 2023 was a WILD year? Or was that just me?

Why does this sound like an end of year post that should be done in December? I mean, yes, 2023 still has 3-ish months to go, but I wanted to take a moment to say: Andge is back!

(Or I guess some people may not have noticed I left, then hello again. I’m back.)

Where did I go? Why’d I take an unannounced and technically unplanned hiatus from most blogging this year? I was SO active the last two years – yes, perhaps in part due to staying home so much for the pandemic – but I had other reasons for being AWOL for the most part this year.

I started this blog when I was a student (and had so much more time, omg). I’m no longer a student, haven’t been in a while actually. (Note to self: should update my bio, whoops). But I have now moved onto another amazing milestone in life that took up way more time than expected.

I got married! *insert confetti falling from the sky*

While I’d like to think I didn’t even come close to bridezilla mode these last months, the planning is exhausting. I saved money by not booking a wedding planner but it’s a lot of work at times on top of the day job. There were plenty of highs and lows, and reading, let alone blogging, were far from my mind unfortunately.

Why’d we see so many posts from this blog this year anyway?

I want to highlight my good friend Fives posting his lovely reads while I was away even though he’s also got a lot going on this year. Thank you, Fives! ♥️

I hope you’re excited for more content we’re gonna plan for the rest of 2023 and into 2024. I’m excited at least and pumped to get back into this community and space.

See you all soon!

4.5 star

Review: Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café 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…

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula’s time-travelling offer.

Among some faces that will be familiar to readers of Kawaguchi’s previous novel, we will be introduced to:

The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
The son who was unable to attend his own mother’s funeral
The man who travelled to see the girl who he could not marry
The old detective who never gave his wife that gift…

This beautiful, simple tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

This is the second book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, though strictly speaking it isn’t necessary to read the first book. I thought I had rated it a full 5 stars, but actually it was only a 4. Nevertheless I will rate this sequel as a nice 4.5. It wasn’t necessarily “better” than the first, but considering the expectations from the first book I had going in, it actually met the (somewhat high) standards I had going in, thinking there wouldn’t be much more to add.

Tales from the Café is a continuation from the last book, but mostly it’s just new characters coming into this special cafe in Tokyo. The rules are simple, the café allows you to time travel, but only until your coffee gets cold. The main caveat is that the past (or future) cannot be changed no matter what you do in that short journey. So why would anyone want to go back? Nevertheless there are those who do, and each book is a collection of such people’s experience who wish to travel through time.

The characters in the café remain the same, though we get a further exploration of their characters, which I think was really excellent, and a nice backdrop to the main substance of the story through the customers coming in. The characters who came to travel through time were also well done, and I definitely had some teary moments during those conversations, no matter just how short they were. The emotional build up and the change in the characters truly illustrates the power of the cafe, and the book knows how to capitalize on it.

I commented last time that some of the translations were a bit off, but I think in this book I didn’t notice it as much. That, or I just got more used to it. Nevertheless, I didn’t see it as a problem here, perhaps contributing to its higher rating.

The plot was once again excellent. There is always a very gentle continuity between the short stories, and between the customers and the café characters. I really enjoyed all their interactions and it really helped to add the emotional suspense and the connection that you felt to each character and their circumstances. The book also sets out the pace really well. Sometimes I get the feeling that the character or their plight is a little bit predictable, and it usually starts off that way, but the way that it’s developed and how the author derives the message and meaning from the story really gives me new perspective, which I really appreciated all throughout the book.

I definitely enjoyed this book a lot and I’m glad I picked it up. I definitely recommend the first two books in the series. Not to mention they’re very short reads! Stay tuned for book 3 in the series.

Overall Recommendations

Tales from the Café is the second book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, which again takes places in this special café in Tokyo which allows a person to travel back into the past to speak with someone, usually a loved one. However, there is nothing that can be done during the travel to alter present reality. While this usually deters most customers, some others will go anyway. Just what is the purpose of such a travel, and what can be learned from a conversation where nothing in reality can be altered? Find out in this collection of very short stories, full of emotions and a journey of self-realization and self-discovery. I definitely recommend the first two books in the series!