Before the coffee gets cold: Warm-up read

I read Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold to get out of a reading slump. It is a very common thing to experience a reading slump. It happens to the best of us and it absolutely does not matter if you are an avid reader or not. But to break out of it is what matters. So, for me some light reads really helped me this year to get out of my start of the year reading slump. And this book was one of the first ones I read in my slump. I have lately started to enjoy the lighthearted mundaneness of Japanese books and the premise of this one looked pretty unique and interesting.

There are four stories in this book connected by a strange, little basement coffee shop and the special service provided there. The only connection between the stories is the cafe so this can actually be called a little anthology of sorts with a connecting factor. I have of course read the English translation so I can’t comment much on the writing. But the translation is very simple, sometimes too simple actually and the prose almost reads like a young adult novel. I suppose you could call it that. This is a decent book for a one-time read and will instantly put you in a mood to read more. Reading is also a muscle and sometimes we need certain types of books for warming up. This is definitely that kind of book.