Justin's Notes
May 16, 2025
This story is a sequel to Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. It follows the same girl, Takako and her everyday life. I really enjoyed this book, and I think reading the second installment of the story caused me to retroactively enjoy the first book more. The stories are incredibly similar in tone, as one might expect, so many of the thoughts I have about the first book (which you can read here) hold true to this one as well. That said, I just love how the story is about regular life. It is simple, charming, and relatable in so many ways.
I think what makes me enjoy these stories as much as I do is that they just feel like regular life. No extravagant scenes happen, no out of the ordinary interactions. Just normal people living their normal lives. It makes the story relatable to me and especially feels easy to empathize with the hardships and the successes that the characters face. Similarly to the first book, I really enjoyed how Yagisawa used the relationships and interactions between characters as the main tool to develop the characters and their growth. As I have seen in my own life, we really are influenced so heavily by those around us, and I think Yagisawa displays that really well in this story.
I also loved Yagisawa honing in on how much something as mundane as a small bookstore can mean so much to people, and I can't explain to you how much I wish I lived near a street full of used bookshops. I picture Jimbocho Street in the story being similar to this strip of little bookstalls that I got to walk through in Madrid last year. Just full of people peacefully browsing stories upon stories.
If you are looking for an easy, readable, and heartwarming story about the joys and difficulties of life, I think these books are a great place to find that. It's a cute story that I think is definitely worth a read, especially as a quick palette cleanser between longer reads.
