More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

Content Warning: This section of the guide incudes discussion of death.

Throughout More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, characters discuss their love of books and their very personal motivations for reading. Each character loves books but is drawn to reading for different reasons related to their pasts and general outlooks toward life. For Takako, her love of reading began in the aftermath of her breakup in Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, when she moved to the bookshop and found solace in the books around her. Now, reading is a way for her to process and explore love: “Reading had started to affect me in ways I hadn’t expected. I had been touched by the kinds of love I read about in books, and that had strengthened my belief that I needed to take my own affections more seriously” (36). Takako’s relationship with reading began because she needed an escape from her heartbreak. She finds comfort in reading stories of love, and it is through these stories that she gains a better understanding of love and the ways in which she can find it in the real world. Takako finds herself changed by what she reads, as it influences her perception of love and the ways in which she interacts with it.