Preachy, patronising, paternalistic, and just plain smug. The author's love for books is everywhere evident, but unfortunately so is his belief that there is a particular way to enjoy them, and that other ways are wrong and hurt the books, ignoring, for example, neurodivergence, differences in taste, and personal preference.

The characters are largely likeable broad-strokes types, which is a reasonable choice - This is a fantasy story and it lends itself well to archetypes and stylisation. Where this is more detrimental is when it comes to the adversaries of each story. The book is based on a set of debates with a series of strawmen for problems which do not seem to exist. Classics are not disappearing, they are easier to access now than they ever have been! It is difficult to take the book's claim that few bookshops stock Complete Works of Shakespeare seriously, and digests and abridged versions of books have been around for millennia, but they have never supplanted the originals. The Cat Who Saved Books is left saving them from a melodramatic clutch of non-issues.

There is admittedly some lovely prose, and Louise Heal Kawai and Yoko Tanji each deserve praise for, in the former case, providing a translation which flows and sounds natural, and, in the latter, producing a beautiful cover. They cannot, however, make up for the book's fundamental flaws. It aims to be an ode to books and book enthusiasts, and just hits elitism. It implores the inhabitants of this modern, (apparently) book-hating world to show some empathy and I am just left thinking: you first.