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Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley and Holly Adams (Narrator)
Cloche and Dagger by Jenn McKinlay and Karyn O'Bryant (Narrator)
Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae and Callie Beaulieu (Narrator)
Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart
Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep by Liz Kessler (2004)
The Friendly Book by Margaret Wise Brown, Garth Williams (Illustrator)
Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence—and How It Will Change Everything by Martha Brockenbrough
Happy Place by Emily Henry
How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin, Alexandra Dowling and Jaye Jacobs (Narrators)
Icarus by K. Ancrum
Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo
James by Percival Everett
Murder in a Cape Cottage by Maddie Day and Rachel Dulude (Narrator)
The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg
The Rock from the Sky by Jon Klassen
Running in Flip-Flops From the End of the World by Justin A. Reynolds
The T in LGBT by Jamie Raines
The Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi and Emily Balistrieri (translator)
Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum and John R. Neill
Time After Time by Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat
The Twelve Books of Christmas by Kate Carlisle and Kimberly M. Wetherell (Narrator)
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Witch Hunt by Cate Conte and Amy Melissa Bentley (Narrator)
Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair by Lucy Knisley
The Yellow Bus by Loren Long


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The Tatami Time Machine Blues: 07/12/24

The Tatami Time Machine Blues

The Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi and Emily Balistrieri (translator) (2020) officially is the sequel to The Tatami Galaxy (2004). But with the way the author reuses characters, it feels like the third book, with The Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2006) in the middle.

A year or so has passed since the unnamed narrator dreamt he was trapped in a labyrinth of endless four mat tatami rooms. Now he has moved up to the second floor into the only room with an air conditioner. That is until the day when a spilled bottle of Coke shorts out the remote rendering the AC useless.

As the previous books have demonstrated, the author likes repetition of scenes to further explore themes. So it's no surprise that the scene with the remote will be replayed. The mechanism this time, though, is a time machine built on a tatami mat (of course).

Of all these books, Tatami Time Machine Blues is the shortest. It deals with the day of the event, the day before the event, the day of the event again, and tomorrow. For all the desire to have remote working again, there's also the very real fear that doing so would destroy the universe!

Chart showing the placement of the three books on the Road Narrative Spectrum.

Like the other two books, Tatami Time Machine Blues sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. In the chart I've included The Night is Short, Walk on Girl as it is more closely situated on the spectrum to Time Machine Blues than the first book. This book has a couple or family as travelers, to uhoria, via the labyrinth.

Five stars

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