Maru's pretty awesome. I'm glad some of the captions from the blog carried over, but much of Maru's charm lies in the videos and quantity of photos online. This is just a taste of the awesomeness that is Maru!

Unbelievably self-indulgent pap. I'll give it 1.5 stars because the cat can be cute, but this was one of the silliest, stupidest books I've read in a while. I'm glad I checked it out of the library instead of paying for it. Recommended only for cat lovers. ( )

If you are already a fan of Maru, either from his blog or from I Can Has Cheezburger, then you will enjoy this book. It is much like Maru's blog with lots of cute pictures of the expressive, round-headed Scottish Fold, narrated in the same whimsical, slightly lost-in-translation style. If you're not already a Maru fan, I suggest you visit YouTube for some of his box-sliding adventures before picking up this book. In short, general cat lovers & Maru fans will give it a big thumbs up. ( )

Intrinsically, this book isn't especially interesting. If you're a follower of the cat, Maru, on the internet you'll probably like this book. If you're a cat lover (I own four cats), you'll find this book amusing, but there are better photo books of cats, e.g., The Big Book of Cats. We purchased the bilingual edition as an aid to our daughter for helping her with her Japanese lessons. The text is in English and Japanese (hiragana). Most of the text is rather simple, such as "My favorite chair" and "It's fun playing with a towel." This makes it very useful for my daughter to practice reading Japanese. I might recommend other simple, children's bilingual Japanese books for the same purpose, such as The Moon Princess (Kodansha's Children's Classics) which we also own and use for the same purpose.

Arigato, Maru!

(This review has also been posted on Amazon.com) ( )