A book review or PSA for Loyola to create an action plan for redistributing their books? Both?
A mash-up between Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and one of Hayao Miyazaki's fantastical films with a moral agenda, Sosuke Natsukawa's The Cat Who Saved Books skillfully navigates the tumult of adolescence, imaginative realities, a rather sassy cat, and the role of books in our lives. Natsukawa's fable-like novel follows Rintaro, a bumbling teenager mourning the loss of his grandfather and their bookshop. With the help of a furry friend, a potential love interest, and memories of his grandfather, Rintaro confronts those who abuse, misuse or misunderstand books in a series of multidimensional adventures. In the process, Rintaro also confronts the loss of his grandfather, just as we readers are forced to confront the absence of meaningful books in our day-to-day life as we read The Cat Who Saved Books. Natsukawa crafts a story that goes beyond the confines of its pages and urges us to reconsider what we read, how we read, and why we read.
Supposedly, according to my alma mater, we read and learn and study to one day "set the world on fire." I'm not sure, however, that setting books on fire is what our founders had in mind. While Loyola is not literally (although perhaps metaphorically) lighting books on fire, they are discarding a half million books in their campus reconstruction. Dr. Reed's and Loyola's actions eerily echo a section from The Cat Who Saved Books in which a publishing president shamelessly destroys books in pursuit of more knowledge, and more money. I hope that this parallel I draw is not the case. Loyola must address concerns regarding these books and ensure they are preserved. For more information on how you can be like Natsukawa's cat and help save these books, visit Save Our Sources.
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