The Book Blog - Learning Resources at St. Johns River State College

Five years ago I shared with my husband, Scott a time-lapsed video of a German shepherd (who looked like my beloved shepherd, Axel R.I.P.) growing up with a tiny orange tabby cat. I loved the shepherd’s gentle playfulness with the kitty who slept on him, snuggled with him, and annoyed him. Later that day, Scott shared a picture of “exceptionally cute kittens”* with me. Confused, I texted back: “Are we getting a kitten?” I had resisted getting a kitten for a couple of years and warned my family (read: Lucas, who told his dad that “We should get Brenda a kitten,” every Christmas.) that if they got me a kitten, I’d return it. That was then.

Three days later and countless views of aforementioned shepherd and kitty video, we showed up at a farm in Pennsylvania to pay $20.00 for Scott’s “prescription.” Pyewacket (pictured above), our orange tabby, is just what the doctor ordered.

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between our cat, Pyewacket and Syou Ishida’s We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, a book that is published in 17 languages. This deceptively simple book caught my eye in Brittnee Fisher’s Goodreads, so I marked it as WTR. The next day at work, Victoria Slaughter, librarian and book club host, handed me the book saying, “I saw on your Goodreads that you wanted to read it, and we have it!” (Thank you, Goodreads!) The book sat on my desk for a month. On Easter day, I devoured its heart-warming, sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes supernatural pages like so many Peeps©.

Told in five separate, yet connected, stories, Ishida details the ways in which cats at the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can make humans’ lives better. Just as Pyewacket won over my husband and me the second that he crawled onto the back of my neck, the characters in We’ll Prescribe You a Cat can’t resist the felines who worm their perfect faces, paws, and purrs into the sad, depressed, and sick humans’ lives.

In the first story, Bee is prescribed to Shuta Kagawa, who suffers from insomnia, tinnitus, and loss of appetite. He’s overworked at what he calls a “sweatshop” but won’t quit his job because he works for a prestigious company. The doctor listens to Kagawa complain about his job then says, “We’ll prescribe you a cat.” Shocked, Kagawa doesn’t get the joke, but the doctor isn’t joking when he claims that “a cat a day keeps the doctor away.” You can guess that the patient is cured by taking care of the cat, and you’re right. But the way Bee cures Kagawa is surprising, especially since Bee gets him fired! Bee also improves Kagawa’s sleep and appetite, which is not unlike Pyewacket’s influence on Scott. Revealing too much about the ways the kitty and humans interact will ruin the fun. Each story is unique with a new cat prescription to heal the human.

Syou Ishida has her finger on the pulse of humans’ relationships with cats. She has a way of relating the way cats behave with (and without) humans that is relatable and spot on from ideas that no matter what you spend on a new toy, or new bedding, or food, cats will prefer the box in which said item came! My favorite line from the book? When a patient asks the doctor if the prescription cat is a service animal, he laughs saying, “Of course not! Cats only do what they like!”

*quote from the ad in Craigslist

We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida; E. Madison Shimoda (Translator)

ISBN: 9780593818749

Publication Date: 2024-09-03

A cat a day keeps the doctor away... Discover the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation in this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats. Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they "take" their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats. Throughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic's patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

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We'll Prescribe You a Cat!

Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul prescribes cats to troubled humans....

Rereading A Clockwork Orange: How Time and Experience Changed My Perspective

The first time I read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, I thought it was just okay. The language was confusing, the violence jarring, and the story, though unique, felt more like a disturbing thought experiment than something that resonated with me personally. I admired the style but didn’t connect with it. I was also deeply influenced by my love of the film adaptation, which shaped how I approached the book- and perhaps, unfairly, how I judged it. Now, years later, I’ve decided to revisit the novel (because of this business), and to my surprise, I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s an entirely different experience this time around, and I’ve found myself thinking about why that is. What changed between then and now? The text hasn’t changed- but I have. And that’s the beauty of rereading: the book stays the same, but the reader doesn’t. I’ve come to believe that my continual reading over the years has improved my literacy- not just my ability to decode and understand complex language, but my capacity to read between the lines, to appreciate subtlety, satire, and tone. Burgess’s invented language, Nadsat (there was no web guide my first time reading), once felt like an obstacle; now it feels like a brilliantly crafted layer that adds richness and depth to the narrative. I'm picking up on references and rhythms I missed before and no longer rushing to “get through” the story. I’m savoring it. But it’s not just about literacy. I think A Clockwork Orange is one of those books that becomes more relevant- and more haunting- the older you get. When I first read it, I was closer in age to Alex and his droogs. The violence felt performative, surreal. Now, with more life behind me, I read the book through a different lens. I think about morality, free will, and the terrifying implications of state-imposed conformity. I see the tragedy of a young man shaped- and ultimately broken- by a system more interested in control than in rehabilitation. The themes of choice and consequence hit harder now. I better understand the danger of a world that prioritizes obedience over understanding. And how essential it is to preserve one’s ability to choose, even if that means choosing wrong. The moral ambiguity that once made the book feel cold now feels complex and intentional. Younger me just didn’t get it. Burgess wasn’t glorifying violence- he was interrogating it, questioning the foundations of societal control.It was also fascinating to see how our cultural context changes our reading. In today’s climate, where surveillance, algorithmic control, and polarized ideologies dominate our lives, A Clockwork Orange reads as eerily prophetic. It’s no longer just a dystopian fantasy- it’s a chilling reflection of our own reality, a warning about what happens when systems are designed to suppress rather than support the individual. This reread has been a reminder that some books are meant to grow with us. What once felt alienating, and abrasive now feels bold and brave. And maybe the best thing about literature is that it waits for us- it holds its meaning quietly, ready to reveal more as we become ready to receive it. If you haven’t read A Clockwork Orange since your younger years- or if you found it inaccessible the first time- consider giving it another shot. You might be surprised at what you find the second time around. I certainly was! Here are a few of my favorite made-up words from the book!Boomaboom- thunderClop- to knockEggiweg- eggGloopy- stupidGuttiwuts- guts...

Book Rec: The Beauty of the End by Lauren Stienstra

TW for discussions of murder, suicide, reproductive health, infertility, human trafficking, and eugenics. For thousands of years, very possibly for as long as humans have existed, people have been worried about “the end.” In both religious and scientific circles, the idea that one day we won’t exist remains a hot topic of discussion; for some, the idea that our species’ existence is finite is a source of fear or existential dread, while for others, this comes as a comfort. But what might happen if we knew the expiration date? How would that impact our lives and the way we live them? Would we do something to try to stop the end from happening, or would we welcome it? Author Lauren Stienstra attempts to answer these questions in her debut novel, The Beauty of the End. In Stienstra’s novel, humanity realizes its impending extinction in an unexpected way: the cicadas don’t emerge when they’re scheduled to. In fact, they don’t emerge at all, which prompts entomologists to start digging—literally—and they find that the previous generation of cicadas did not lay any eggs before they died. The entomologists then up all their fellow biologist buddies and begin investigating other extinct and endangered species, and ultimately discover something in every living thing’s DNA (don’t ask me what; I’m not a scientist, but Stienstra is, and this is science fiction, so I suspended disbelief and took her word for it) that can approximate about how many generations a species or individual has left in their genetic line. Humans, it turns out, have only about four generations left before the species dies out. Some individuals or families may have more or fewer generations left. While four is the average, some people may naturally score a five or even a six on their genetic report, while others can score three, two, one, or even zero. With each generation, that number goes down, and fewer people are born, which leads to some interesting changes to the society which emerges in this universe. Women are encouraged to have babies later (in their 40s or 50s if possible), or, if they can’t wait, to have a lot of babies, preferably with multiple fathers so as to “diversify the gene pool.” If you are a young woman who doesn’t want to have children but still wants to help, you have the option to become a “Mendel,” a doctor who specializes in genetics and reproduction, named for Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. People who score higher in their generational genetic testing are preferred, both as Mendels and as sexual partners, especially since it seems that reproducing individuals with lower scores tend to have greater likelihood of passing their scores on to their offspring (for instance, if you are a 2, and you have a child with a 5, despite your partner’s high score, your children will almost certainly score a 1, meaning they can have children, but their children will not be able to have children). People unlucky enough to score zero become known as “naughts” and are inevitably looked down upon for their inability to reproduce naturally. People are desperate to find a way to stop the “Limit” as that four-generation expiration date comes to be known, and from that desperation come great atrocities. Human trafficking runs rampant. Women are kidnapped and sold. Men rent their wives out to be used like breeding stock. The government gives scientists almost complete autonomy to experiment as they wish, which leads to the discovery that, sometimes, people with disabilities or terrible genetic illnesses can produce children who score as high as 12, which, in turn, leads to more of the aforementioned atrocities, now specifically targeting people with these diagnoses. Families fall apart. People kill their partners and children. Mass suicides abound. If you think that all sounds pretty awful, I would agree with you! And so, it seems, would the narrator of this story, Dr. Charlie Tannehill, a young woman who agreed to become a Mendel not out of a desire to help stop the Limit, but to continue to live a life as close to the one she believes she would have had if the Limit had never been discovered. Goods have become so expensive, and the social expectation for women to reproduce is stronger than ever, so she sees becoming a Mendel as a way to both continue to afford food and the ability to live as a single woman, and to not have to reproduce. Because the Mendelia, the organization that trains Mendels, takes your ovaries when you join in lieu of tuition. Over time, however, as she witnesses the horrors endured by her patients at the hands of her colleagues, and the way her sister and brother-in-law's lives are destroyed by their and the Mendelia’s ambition, she begins to fight back against what society has become. This book was pretty heavy in terms of content, but I thought it was a fascinating thought experiment and I enjoyed the speculative aspect of it because it seemed like something that could potentially happen. The last couple of chapters really lost me, but I think that had more to do with my personal preferences than anything to do with the way it was written. I would definitely recommend this one to any fan of speculative science fiction. ...

A Short Book That Shattered Me: I Who Have Never Known Men

Every now and then, I stumble across a book that completely blindsides me—in the best, most haunting way. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman was exactly that kind of surprise.I was just looking for a short audiobook to keep me company while cleaning the house one weekend. That’s it. Something under eight hours, something I could half-focus on while folding laundry or doing dishes. The cover caught my eye first, then the title. I didn’t even bother reading the description before I hit play. A few minutes in, though, I was hooked—and not long after, I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor, back against a cabinet, completely floored by the story unfolding in my ears.Here’s the official description from Libby:Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.It sounds dystopian, and it is—but it’s also something more: sparse, poetic, philosophical, and deeply introspective. At just around six hours long (or 184 pages in print), it’s not a lengthy read. But trust me when I say: this book holds power. A quiet, aching kind of power that lingers long after you’ve finished the last sentence.There’s this misconception that short books can’t hit as hard as epics. But I Who Have Never Known Men proves otherwise. It’s a book that made me pause, reflect, and want to start it all over again the moment it ended.It made me think about womanhood—what it means to be a woman when you’ve been completely removed from societal expectations of gender, love, and relationships. It made me reflect on the importance of community, and also the quiet strength in being alone. It’s about survival and curiosity, about being brave enough to explore the unknown even when everything feels uncertain.It doesn’t offer every answer. In fact, it leaves you with quite a few questions. And honestly? I’m okay with that. Sometimes a book doesn’t need to tie everything up neatly to leave a lasting impact.So if you’re looking for something short but profound—something that will haunt you in the quiet moments and make you look at the world just a little differently—give I Who Have Never Known Men a chance. Just maybe don’t try to multitask while you’re reading it. You might end up sitting on your kitchen floor, heart cracked open, wondering how a book so small could hold so much. You can listen through SJR State Library's Libby!...

We'll Prescribe You a Cat!

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