Before the coffee gets cold

But I digress. This book was alright. I'm not sure if it was just the translator's doing or if it's how it was originally written, but with what should be some heavy moments, it just felt devoid of emotions. This comes across as a cozy book but I've read other cozy books that still have emotional topics that allow you to feel those emotions while still feeling it's a cozy read.

I was sucked into it at first because the premise of it was so interesting and refreshing. You can travel forward or backward in time for as long as the freshly poured coffee is warm, cannot have any influence on what has already happened, and the chair that you must use is only available for a short period of time once a day because it's occupied by a ghost lady until she needs to use the bathroom. Which, I really want to know more about the ghost lady honestly.

I did appreciate the overall flow of the books and the structure of the chapters because it made it very easy to follow along and not get lost, even with new characters being introduced and seeing how the previous ones are utilized. I don't think I'll be continuing with the series, though.

This book reads like stage directions, and perhaps it would be even better suited as a play.

The book tells 4 stories about 4 different women and their experiences sitting in a special chair in a special cafe drinking a special cup of coffee (after they the moody ghost woman goes for her daily pee) and going back in time.

Each person goes back to speak to someone they know and love, and in all cases, as is repeatedly emphasized, they are not able to change anything that happened between that time and the time they sat down to go back. But they all come back changed. In story after story, we see how although looking back and interrogating the past can't change what's already happened, it can change where go in the future.

My biggest critique of the book is that it suffers from "women written by men" syndrome. The women are described by their attractiveness, their attitudes feel like a male-centered cliche ('tears are just a weapon to manipulate men', 'oh I'm a woman I don't need friends or an email'). The last story also has some deeply misogynistic undercurrents.

Overall an interesting book with a solid and distinctive time-travel premise, and a solid message supported by that narrative tool.

Au détour d'un rayon dans une librairie de gare, j'avais vu ce petit bouquin et d'autres avec lui du même genre. La 4ème de couverture m'avait intrigué : pendant le temps d'un café on pouvait retourner dans le temps. Or quelqu'un me l'a offert avec le suivant "Le café du temps retrouvé", alors j'ai satisfait ma curiosité. La 1ère nouvelle ne m'a pas convaincu, j'avais l'impression de lire un texte produit lors d'un atelier d'écriture : vous décrivez un cadre, puis vous introduisez une consigne, puis une autre et ainsi de suite. Pourtant dès la 2nde nouvelle, j'ai eu l'agréable sensation de retrouver un monde japonais tel que d'autres auteurs le décrivaient. Les rapports entre les gens sont soumis à des codes de politesse, et on découvre peu à peu les motivations des uns et des autres. Les nouvelles s'enchaînent, certes elles semblent indépendantes néanmoins il y a des indices, des clés qui les relient, et cela permet au lecteur de sentir une certaine connivence avec les personnages. Cela semble intemporel, le théme du voyage dans le passé est approprié...

Eg var usikker i starten. Forstod ikkje heilt "greia." Men jo lengre eg las, jo klarare ble det.

Boka er strukturert i fire mindre historiar, som får boka til å kjennast kort og fin, samtidig som alle historiane er kobla i lag.

Emosjonell. Fin. Morosam.

Un véritable coup de coeur ! J'y ai laissé quelques larmes, j'avoue, mais c'est si beau de voir que l'on peut trouver de petits bonheurs malgré la tristesse des évènements. Ce livre nous invite à remettre en perpective certaines situations, de créer nos propres petits bonheurs, de laisser nos remords et nos regrets derrière nous, mieux, de les accepter pour mieux vivre le présent.

The premise, there's a seat in a coffee shop that allows you to travel to any other moment in time. The constraints - you can't leave the seat, and you only have as long as a cup of coffee stays warm.

The rules of the café are a bit silly, and repeated a few too many times, but the characters and the themes of the book are warm as a good cup of coffee, charming as a small out of the way café, and mostly very sweet in a way that coffee isn't. A time travel story that makes the simple point that what we really want when we fantasize about doing it is not a change to change the world, but to speak with someone.

Worth the short read.